The Children's Prayer Network

On Wednesday I had lunch with Laura, an American woman who works with a Cambodian man named Phang, who runs a children's ministry. He is particularly concerned with children at risk and educates pastors and church leaders about how they can improve the situation of children in their community.

Often parents, particularly in the northern provinces go off to Thailand to find work. Sometimes they have to leave their families here in Cambodia. Sometimes both parents have to leave home to work. Other times they never come back: they take on a new identity in their new country and marry a new spouse. This leaves the kids in the lurch. With no supervision they don't go to school and grow up illiterate. Often they are recruited as labor force.

Phang encourages churches to do "non formal education", that is, they tutor kids who have dropped out of school in the lower grades to bring them up to grade level so that they can go back to school in the next grade from when they dropped out. Evidently this has been a very successful endeavor, and they have wonderful stories about how kids can now read and write and are doing well in school.

One of the most exciting aspects of Phang's ministry Ka Kmeng (Kmeng means Children) is the Children's Prayer Network. Sometimes congregations are composed largely of children and young people. Sometimes these kids are the only believer in their family and are beaten or otherwise persecuted for their faith.

In order to provide support for these kids, Phang has organized the Children's Prayer Network. He invites churches to send up to ten children to a prayer retreat, where they meet other Christian kids and pray for their needs, their families and their nation. These kids really mean business when they pray! They are a force to be reckoned with!

At the first prayer retreat, 5 churches each sent 10 kids. At the last one 40 churches sent a total of 340 children! Now there is a prayer force!

The Cambodian church is not likely to die out within a generation or so. Their future leaders are prayer warriors who have learned at a young age to depend on their Heavenly Father through prayer.