I've been writing to you a fair bit lately, sharing my heart to make our organisation more than it is - to what it can be. My heart aches for the commander who is under resourced, working a double-shift so to speak because he hasn't the leaders he needs to effectively serve the boys and girls in his care.

If I could offer advise - it would be the same as the advise Jesus offered - "Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field." (Matt. 9:38).

I know what it is like to work with far to few labourers. I know what it is like to work with plenty of labourers.

I'd prefer to work with more than is needed. It's easier and it provides time to develop relationships with children and leaders alike.

Children's worker or postal worker

You see, without relationship we are like postal workers processing mail. Postal workers never see the contents of the mail they direct to our letter boxes. They just sort it, bag it, transport it and deliver it.

They never understand the contents of the letter. They know nothing of the writer or recipient of the letter. In fact they couldn't care less. They are just workers, labourers for the postal system.

Jesus said "I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you."

You see, we're not just workers, processing "souls". We know our masters business.

We not only have and opportunity to instruct in bible doctrine, or to satisfy a child's need for activity. We can get to know the children in our care. To spend time with them. To know them. Their personality, they concerns, their strengths, their heart, their weaknesses and their desires.

This is the difference Rangers can make

No experience a child enjoys deals with a child the way rangers does. Royal Rangers develops the total child for Christ.

Sunday school is only concerned with the spiritual side. School is only concerned with the mental side, physical and maybe social side. Weekend sport is only concerned with the physical and maybe social side. Kids playing in the street only is concerned with the social and maybe physical side.

Royal Rangers caters for the physical, the mental, the social and the spiritual side of a child.

As commanders we get to see the child engaged in all four sides of their life. As Rangers, children get to see their commanders engaged in all four sides of their life.

When we go camping, they see us when we first wake in the morning and just before we turn in at night. On Ranger program evenings they see the level of our preparation and the degree of our enthusiasm. They share good and bad, fun and tedious moments with us.

Where else in life do you get that? Nowhere!

You don't see your pastor in this light. Sometimes well-adjusted families work like this. But the experience of many children and their families is that they don't see this.

Commander: You have an awesome privilege to lead children by your example - your whole of life example. You are more privileged than your pastor. You have an responsibility. Didn't Jesus say in Matt. 18:6 "But if anyone causes one of these little ones [children] who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea."

Develop relationships with your kids.

If you do you have the privilege in inputting into their lives, influencing the way their lives will turn out. Change the future of the world. Building an enduring impact that Satan fears. You can make a difference.

If you don't - you have wasted your time and probably God's time too. Isn't he the one who out you where you are? Isn't he the one who intersected your life and the life of the child? Aren't you the one who was to influence that child - to make that difference?

Stand up.
Take up the challenge.
You are in rangers to change the world. You are in Rangers to populate heaven.
You can make a difference - if you choose to.

The LORD will indeed give what is good, and our land will yield its harvest. (Ps. 85:12)