"Children's Crusade"

Jayne Senior is passionate about children.  Her crusade for the children started in 1999. She was a “bored stay-at-home mother” who was mentoring girls in her home town. So she sought and obtained grant from her hometown to start a youth organization which she named “Risky Business”, after the then popular Tom Cruise movie her charges enjoyed.  What started out as this partnership with the Town of Rotherham, England soon began to unravel.  Ms. Senior was much more passionate and persistent than the town officials had ever bargained for.  Over the course of the next decade and more, Ms. Senior was able to identify at least 1,400 girls who had been victims of sexual abuse in her hometown. Stop and read that number slowly. “One-thousand-four-hundred.” Girls. Sexually abused girls.  The more Ms. Senior reported the news about the victims the more she was turned away by the town officials. In fact, eventually the town reacted by simply cutting off the funding for her youth organization.  The police pretty much ignored her findings. But, year after year after year, Ms. Senior persisted.  Her passion for the children never waned. (Source: WSJ, May 2015, Margaret Coker and Alexis Flynn)

It took an independent investigator’s report and a national investigation to finally bring the town officials actions to light.  When exposed they resigned. But along the way, the injustice suffered by the victims of rape and prostitution was explained only by what can be termed somewhere between calculated ignorance and being in league with the devil.  And, if it wasn’t for the work of a Mom who cared for the children; who was passionate for children; one can only guess how many more thousands would be future victims of the sexual abuse criminals in Rotherham.

What if Ms. Senior had said instead, the fight is too big for me?  I have a home to take care of. I have to plan for my retirement.  I have fought long enough for others, now I need some “me-time.” Thank God that the Spirit sometimes finds a heart that is willing to burn with passion for “others.”  If the church wants to become “relevant” to a lost and dying world, it will need ten thousand “Jayne Seniors” who will become passionately persistent about what the world needs now, overcoming evil with justice.  To those of you who read this and are already are engaged in such a crusade for the voiceless, thank you. For the rest of us, it’s time to ask ourselves, is there nothing I am passionate about more than myself? For whom am I willing to engage in a crusade?  To whom am I called to be the voice of God? May the Spirit burn in your heart a passionate vision.