Orlando, FL 2008: Gifts under a tree mark long enduring highlights for children. In Ministry history, gifts routinely sprawled across three rooms and even to the great outdoors. Unbelievable and unforgettable!

From Trent Ling:

For the past twelve Christmas Eves, the Ministry has showcased its one-of-a-kind, gift-giving heart with an exuberant, one-night festival for its wonderfully honored children.  Annually showering its awestruck kids beneath a relentless onslaught of novel presents, the Ministry outdid itself year after year after year.  Cheerful and thoughtful, disciples of Jesus really gave from the heart to the smallest yet greatest among us—the children.  Those who partook for any portion or the whole of the twelve-year run will treasure Ministry Christmas Eves in their hearts for the remainder of their days.  Only severe understatements could ever be offered to describe the essence of those grand evenings.

And now, the party’s over.

Through both painful attrition and hard-earned maturity, and through both devastating pruning and doggedly determined repentance, the Ministry contains on this day no more needy people.  Though such a state stands as a Scriptural goal (Acts 4:34), it has come with wounds as deep as the sea and with indelible battle scars.

The presentable parts of the Ministry simply need no special treatment according to the Bible (1 Corinthians 12:24), and on this day, despite a great and continuing tumult at the disciple level, it appears certain that none of the children will lack this year.  We are loved and well cared for.  We are in need of nothing, nor are our children.  “Amply supplied” (Philippians 4:18) would be an understatement.

These dozen years mark yet another epoch in the annals of the Ministry juggernaut.  These high times will thusly be remembered in each of the lives so touched.  With great fondness and awe, our twelve nights of Christmas will forever remain inexplicable and unforgettable.  Too innumerable are the hands that made it happen as so many were joyfully swept up and blown into a frenzy by the empowering Spirit.

I believed across the years and still hope on this day that the exemplified giving would and will spur on the many witnesses to lifelong service and a demonstration of heart.  Perhaps it did or will; perhaps it did not or will not.  In any case, the annual enterprise received all of the heart and might of many, and shall stand as an example to be remembered and emulated at the individual, familial level.

The season ends, likely never to return.  Oh, perhaps a future generation of disciples will hear of the lore and resurrect the banner.  But going forward, this current crop of grizzled spiritual veterans will place this wonderful and sweet burden directly upon the shoulders of those parents who profess Christ’s holy name and want to know how they can prove themselves true.  For all in all, our calling is not to usurp any individual responsibilities of parents, but to let them prove their transformation genuine by them first loving their children at least as much as many strangers did across a great many years, seasons, occasions, and Christmases.

Here’s to the children!  And here’s to God inspiring parents to bowl over their own children lovingly—first, foremost, regularly, and routinely.

As the Ministry goes dark for Christmas Eve, may we all thank God for burying us in his loving kindness and in mountains of wrapping paper all at the same time!  We could all graze for a hundred years from the hazy recollections alone.

That was the season—a true precursor to Heaven itself!

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