WE INTERRUPT YOUR REGULARLY SCHEDULED PROGRAMMING FOR THIS IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT:
Hello, this is Evan Doyle reporting for the Way We See It Blog. This morning in Kids Church while writing this blog post, I caused our media application to crash. We were watching a DVD, and it stopped. It never got started again, because I was tediously fast forwarding at just 2x the regular speed. The moral of this story: Don’t do other stuff on the computer during Kids Church. It’s a bad plan.
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The 10/40 window. We always hear about this area between 10 and 40 degrees north of the equator. It is reported to be the part of the world where the fewest people have heard the true Gospel. It is the focus of most missions.

But that’s not the 10/40 window I’m talking about. The one I’m talking about is right here at home. Perhaps right next door. It’s the $10K-$40K a year income bracket. The most, perhaps, unchurched income bracket in the entire United States. How is this, you ask? It’s simply how churches have been and continue to be run.

The church constantly forms programs to reach the ultra-poor. The ones who may not have a home, may not have a car, and on and on. Pastors love the upper-middle and upper class brackets, because they give the big bucks in the offering. The 10/40 middle ground, however, is completely ignored. And so they don’t come. They’re simply not there.

They typically have kids, usually several. A perfect place to draw in kids and parents from. Why do we ignore them? Because they’re not always the cleanest, they don’t always give the big offerings, they’re not always the nicest dressed, they’re not always the greatest acting, and they’re not always “in the know” on “church ettiquete”.

Those in this bracket are often in need of something to fill in that spiritual void. No one reaches out to them, and so they try to fill it with things, when what they really need is Christ. In some churches this may take the form of a bus ministry (which is a great ministry, if you are ready for the commitment!), in others it may take the form of an inner-city church, and in others it may take another form. These kids are ripe for you to teach them, but it may be hard (as Ryan mentioned in his post earlier today!) But they must be reached, so how will you do it?