Global Children's Forum
Global Children's Forum
The Global Children’s Forum ('GCF') is an emerging and growing partnering network of children's ministry agencies and leaders that operate with a global or major regional focus.
  • Our vision is to ensure that every child in every generation is given the opportunity to engage fully with Jesus, through God's word.
  • Our focus is the strategic opportunity of evangelism and discipleship to the world's 2 billion children and the conviction that this needs to be a significant priority for the worldwide church.
  • Our aim is to celebrate what each individual organisation does, but to intentionally explore what can be achieved together. We believe that together we generate the ideas and momentum to achieve the paradigm shifts required.
  • Our method is to convene gatherings of global children’s ministry agencies, champion children, foster collaborations and connect resources to needs.

The GCF 'story' in brief

  • We began with the challenge of 2.1 billion children and 1 billion who have never heard.
  • We recognised that paradigm shifts would be needed to address this (see ‘Aim Lower’ video).
  • We also recognised that there are many layers to discipling children and this makes it imperative to work together (see Reaching Every Child videos and the Pattaya Scale).
  • At GCF 2008 (July - Chicago), we started to identify some of the gaps and dreams for this journey and investigated ways we could work together.
  • At GCF 2009 (May - Florida) we focused our thinking around four Action Groups in order to generate momentum and action:
    • Empowering children
    • Training
    • Resources
    • Advocacy.
  • At GCF 2010 (March - Lebanon) we spent most of our time in the Action Groups working on some major projects. Work on these projects continued after the conference with several outcomes:
    • In September 2010 the 1for50 initiative was launched and key leaders from around the world were equipped to lead training in their own regions.
    • In October 2010 GCF members were heavily involved in the Children's Team which led several presentations at the Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization in Cape Town
    • In September and October the 2fish5bread open source disc was also launched and over 10,000 discs were distributed. This distribution effort continues with a goal of providing 1 million discs to churches around the globe.
    • KidsHubs and Kids' Forums have been trialed in several countries.
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