The #1 Key to an Effective Literacy Ministry

By Harry Wilson

Anyone for a Game of Minutes?

Jesus is the true and only HOPE of the world.

If we really want to help people excel in life, we need to be more closely walking with Jesus. If we want our students to experience something so special when they step into our classes that they walk away saying, “That was a wonderful time of learning and growth,” we need Jesus.

Frank Laubach, known as the “apostle of literacy,” taught millions to read and write through his efforts. In the pamphlet, “The Game With Minutes,” he shares the secret of his effectiveness, prayerfully abiding in Christ:

“Disillusioned by all our other efforts, we now see that the only hope left for the human race is to become like Christ.” That is the statement of a famous scientist, and is being repeated among even more educators, statesmen, and philosophers. Yet Christ has not saved the world from its present terrifying dilemma. The reason is obvious: Few people are getting enough of Christ to save either themselves or the world. Take the United States, for example. Only a third of the population belongs to the Christian church. Less than half of this third attend service regularly. Preachers speak about Christ in perhaps one service in four —thirty minutes a month! Good sermons, many of them excellent, but too infrequent in presenting Christ.

Less than ten minutes a week given to thinking about Christ by one-sixth of the people is not saving our country or our world; for selfishness, greed, and hate are getting a thousand times that much thought. What a nation thinks about, that it is. We shall not become like Christ until we give Him more time. A teachers’ college requires students to attend classes for twenty-five hours a week for three years. Could it prepare competent teachers or a law school prepare competent lawyers if they studied only ten minutes a week?

Neither can Christ, and he never pretended that he could. To his disciples he said: “Come with me, walk with me, talk and listen to me, work and rest with me, eat and sleep with me, twenty-four hours a day for three years.” That was their college course — “He chose them,” the Bible says, “that they might be with him,” 168 hours a week!

All who have tried that kind of abiding for a month know the power of it….It absolutely changes every person who does it. And it will change the world that does it.

Laubuch applied this practically by keeping a daily time reading words of Jesus, the Bible, and being in continuous prayer on behalf of our students and teachers. He called it “The Game With Minutes.” His goal was to bring God to mind at least once in every minute.

Would you like to join me in the Game?