Jeff Nichols 0:00

Welcome to FellowshipOne:Seven™, a podcast from Child Evangelism Fellowship® for the Christian community. On this podcast, we conduct interviews and discuss various biblical topics, passages and true stories that have impacted the lives of people around the world. I’m your host. Jeff Nichols, Vice President of USA Ministries for CEF. Today we have a return guest, Sam Rejoy, to talk about CEF® around the world. We will learn more about what’s happening around the world and how God is moving through CEF workers. Welcome back, Sam.

Sam Rejoy 0:43
Thank you, Jeff. It’s good to be here.

Jeff Nichols 0:45
Yeah, it’s great having you here today. We’re excited to hear more about what God is doing around the world. You know, as we look about, look at CEF‘s ministry around the world, we have to be amazed and humbled at the same time, right?

Sam Rejoy 0:58
That’s very true with what God truly humbling.

Jeff Nichols 1:01
It is really I mean, our workers are taking seriously the Great Commission to go and make disciples of all nations, and it’s amazing to see and hear about what he is doing. Give us a little bit of the stats, like, what is the reach of CEF around the world? How’s it happening?

Sam Rejoy 1:18
Well, Jeff, I can tell you that this year in 2024 I mean, I’m still thinking. So it’s like we were, we had a goal of reaching about 30 point 5 million children. The stats are still coming in. I don’t know where we would reach that, but just hearing of how God is working with through our workers and able to reach children and even the remotest places. It is just truly amazing. We have so many stories of what God is doing in difficult countries and sensitive countries, and also in many of the open countries, and God is truly working among the children.

Jeff Nichols 2:01
That’s amazing. So out of all those countries around the world are being impacted by the gospel through these CEF workers. It’s absolutely amazing. Looking back over the years, CEF was started in 1937 so we’re an 80, plus year old ministry. I heard a number the other day that over the course of time, it estimated about 300 million children have been reached with the gospel by CEF over the years.

Sam Rejoy 2:27
That’s true. It’s a mind boggling number, right? And it is only God.

Jeff Nichols 2:31
Only God.

Sam Rejoy 2:32
It is God’s people following God’s commission, the Lord’s commission, to go and preach and teach and make disciples, and that is what CEF workers all over the world have just been faithfully following that ministry, that commission, risking their lives. We are stories of how people have gone, climbed snow capped mountains, or, you know, cross flooded rivers, crossed into desert land or jungles, just so that children can hear the Gospel.

Jeff Nichols 3:04
You’re talking about hard to reach places in the world, the really, really tough places in the world. I mean, here in the States, it’s easy. Other places in the world, it’s easy, we still have a chance…

Sam Rejoy 3:13
I wouldn’t say it’s easy every place has its own challenge. Yeah, I understand…

Jeff Nichols 3:18
It can be challenging here, but in some places of the world, literally, you’re taking your life in your hands to do this ministry.

Sam Rejoy 3:25
True.

Jeff Nichols 3:25
Tell us about a couple of those places, specifically like Mozambique and Congo. Have heard what is happening there? Is just absolutely mind boggling.

Sam Rejoy 3:33
Yeah, Mozambique is where one of our regional directors is based in and he has just been giving us these stories of what’s been happening there. This, I don’t know if you’ve been seeing in the news, there’s so much of political unrest. They currently have two presidents, two of them. And imagine a country where the elected president and the other so called, you know, like he’s self, what do you call elected or he is standing. But so the country has gone through so much of political turmoil, but God has blessed our workers in the midst of that. And we are talking about street riots, you know, trucks being put on fire, attacks by people chopping their hands legs in the midst of that, with all the curfew that was happening, our workers were going to schools or going to where children were and preaching the gospel and working so that children can hear the good news of Jesus Christ.

Jeff Nichols 4:33
Because it would be really easy for them to say, there’s too much going on. It’s too hard. We’ve got to suspend ministry. We can’t do it right now.

Sam Rejoy 4:39
True, and nobody would blame them, right, you know, but no, the Gospel, the desire to share the gospel, just motivates them. You mentioned about DRC, that’s terrible, the news that has come even recently. Yeah, it’s Democratic Republic of Congo, and that whole Congo, both the Congos, where. 70 people were beheaded recently, 70 Christians, and the attacks against Christians is really growing. But our workers, God’s grace, are safe. They continue to serve the gospel, even in the midst of this, churches have been ransacked. I mean, they were they were kidnapped from a church. They were handcuffed and just slain, but God has continued to bless our people to serve the gospel.

Jeff Nichols 5:26
Absolutely amazing. Speaking of blessing our people to spread the Gospel, let’s talk about Christmas Party Clubs. People new to our ministry may not be familiar with exactly what Christmas Party Club® ministry is about, so why don’t you just give a little little synopsis of what that is, and we’ll talk about what God has done through these Christmas Party Clubs around the world.

Sam Rejoy 5:47
You know, you touch a ministry that’s very close to my heart over the many years. Like you said, CEF is over 85 years we’ve had our mainstay businesses being Good News Clubs. There are children who have grown up in Good News Club®. They’ve come to know the Lord, but the ministry with Good News Club was not able to really grow as much. And God put it in the heart of our leaders to come up with a program that was specific during the season of Christmas, using that season, which is worldwide.

Jeff Nichols 6:21
Right.

Sam Rejoy 6:21
You know, where even sensitive countries, or where anti-Christian countries, they are celebrating Christmas for the sake of Christmas, and we are able to go in there and preach the Christ of Christmas, preach the true message of salvation. And this has been such a wonderful ministry. Over the last couple of years, we are growing in double digit numbers and reaching millions of children. In 2024 Can you guess how many children we reached?

Jeff Nichols 6:50
It’s gotta be in the millions, right?

Sam Rejoy 6:51
It’s 10 point 3 million children last year in 2023 it was nine point think it was 9.1 million, so it was like about more than a million that we reached over and above the previous year. So God has worked amazingly. That’s a lot of hard work. It’s many teams coming together, from those who are developing the literature to printing it, distributing it, and then actually getting these books to remote spots of the world so that our workers, they can take it and go to new areas, train new volunteers. We trained over 300,000 volunteers and conducted about 350,000 Christmas Party Clubs. It is an amazing ministry. And you know, even where I’m living in, it’s a sensitive country, we were able to do three Christmas Party Clubs, and we got kids from many different religions coming in and listening to the gospel. It is truly heart touching what God is doing through this.

Jeff Nichols 8:01
We’re really seeing some exponential growth because of that. And we’re not trying to pat ourselves on the back or put a big number on the wall that for CEF. We just want as many kids to hear about Jesus and the and the true meaning of Christmas than ever before. Now, you’ve been really involved in this over the years. What’s, what’s some of your first hand experiences that you’ve had with Christmas Party Club?

Sam Rejoy 8:21
Like I said, it is all God. You’re perfectly right. It’s not us, it’s not what we do. It is just God using weak vessels that he can honor and glorify His name and add more children to the kingdom of God. I’ve had some amazing experiences of you know, I live in a sensitive country, and it’s primarily a religion that does not tolerate Christianity. But we’ve had many clubs over the years that we’ve run. We’ve had people from those religious backgrounds who have come in and their children ask the next year because it’s vacation time and you know, they want to plan their travel, saying, Oh no, we need to first find out when is Christmas Party Club so that we want to attend and then we can travel. We have had them coming in with their traditional dresses. We’ve had some coming in fully decked out so that they can participate in a Christmas party. And over the years, these children, many of them have then joined our Good News Clubs. Last year, in 2024 we have had almost 40,000 commitments of new Good News Clubs. And that is amazing, because these children now not only hear the Gospel once, but they have the opportunity to come week on week and learn and grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. That is what God has commanded us. That is what the disciple making is all about.

Jeff Nichols 9:50
And we’re going to have another opportunity just in a few months, with another Christmas Party Club coming up this year. Plans are already in place. The material is already being printed. Plans are already in place for it to be distributed around the world, so we can’t wait to see what God is going to do this coming Christmas, right?

Sam Rejoy 10:07
You’re right. And on that note, if there is anyone listening to us who really wants to join, it is open for anyone. You can just open your home. And I’ve been just saying that you know, like all you need is a willing heart, a home that’s opened, and a couple of children, your neighborhood invite them in, and, boom, you’re part of this ministry of fulfilling God’s commission.

Jeff Nichols 10:32
That’s right. We want to train people to do those clubs, teach them how to evangelize children, disciple them into the Word of God, and that’s what we’re here for. That’s what CEF is all about. Sam, one of the things I love about this is every time we have a guest that shares amazing things like this, it just blows us away. Some people may think we have our commas in the wrong position, like, you can’t really be reporting 10 million kids at Christmas Party Clubs. We really do report that many kids. We have a great reporting system. It always leads us to, how can we pray? How can we pray for more children to hear how can we be praying for the workers that we have around the world to give be given even more opportunities to share Christ with the kids around them? So what are some of the prayers that we can specifically be praying for the CEF ministry around the world?

Sam Rejoy 11:20
Yeah, Jeff, what you mentioned is right. So 10 point million, 10 point 3 million children, sounds like a big number, but when you look at the total population of children globally, it’s almost 2 billion. So we are still talking about a drop in the bucket. And the desire of CEF and even around the world the nations, is that we can have more to partner with us, to join us. We are willing to train to provide the necessary literature, but we’re looking for volunteers. We’re looking for those who can, as they say in the military terminology, boots on the ground. We’re really praying that God would bring more churches to partner with us, more brothers and sisters who can join us so that we can reach every child of every nation every day. That is really what the mission of CEF is. And so we’re praying that God will provide for these workers of ours, protect them because they are in some sensitive areas, as well as also just encourage them. Many of them are working all alone. They don’t have a support structure. They probably are in areas where there aren’t even churches. Do you know we have a few workers in one country of the world for five years, churches have been closed. They have not had a Christian Fellowship in physically, they meet online for the last five years. Can you even imagine that?

Jeff Nichols 12:45
I can’t imagine.

Sam Rejoy 12:47
And so just pray that they would be encouraged, and they would be motivated to continue to serve the Lord

Jeff Nichols 12:54
That’s amazing. Well, Sam, thank you for sharing those amazing stories with us. Thank you for joining us today, here on fellowship one seven. Thank you for having me. Yeah. If you would like to know more about who CEF is and what we believe, you can visit CEFonline.com/about, this will also be linked in the show notes. Be sure to check out our U-nite platforms, where we unite kids with the gospel through adventures and foundational biblical truths. This will also be linked in the show notes. Give us a like and subscribe to keep up to date on both this podcast and our kids programs. Thanks for listening to Fellowship One:Seven™ today.