Every Tuesday a team of 15-25 people from Calvary Bible Church show up at the downtown park to eat dinner with locals, play music, preach the Word, and talk to people.

One day I shared the gospel with a homeless guy named Mark. He wanted to believe but he just couldn't give up his sin. Then along came Will, a former homeless guy who now lived for Jesus. He started witnessing to Mark and in seconds Mark was on his knees crying out to God for forgiveness.

Since that day, Will started discipling Mark in the Word.

I later discovered that Will was a poet. As a father of four, I was moved by one of his works, a poem that rightly observes that delinquent children is often the product of delinquent parenthood.

Are the Kids Really to Blame

We hear in the news, and hear on the air
Of killing and stealing, and crime everywhere.
We sigh and say, as we notice the trend
“This young generation…where will it all end?"
But can we be sure that it’s their fault alone.
That maybe a part of it isn’t our own?

Are we less guilty, who put in their way,
Too many things that lead them astray?
Too much money, too much idle time,
Too many movies of passion and crime.
Too many books not fit to be read,
Too much violence, and evil in what they hear
Too many of our young children, are encouraged to roam,
By neglectful parents, who seldom stay home.

Kids don’t make the movies, they don’t write the books,
They don’t paint heroic pictures of gangsters and crooks.
They don’t make the liquor, they don’t run the bars.
They don’t make the laws, and they don’t make the cars.
They don’t smuggle in the drugs, that addle the brain.
That’s all done by older folks – greedy for gain.

“DELINQUENT TEENAGERS’ OH HOW WE CONDEMN”
The sins of a nation, we blame it on them.
But by the law of the blameless the Savior made known.
Who is there amongst us to cast the first stone?
For in so many cases – It’s sad but it’s true.
The title DELINQUENT fits OLDER FOLKS too!

Copyright © B. Carpenter