Back in 1937, Jesse Overholtzer founded Child Evangelism Fellowship, an organization that focuses on evangelizing children between the ages of 4 and 14 years. The "4-14 window" is believed to be "the most receptive and often the most effective agents for mission in evangelizing their peer group".
A 2003 Barna research showed that children are "the most population segment to minister due to their spiritual 'teachability'
and 'developmental vulnerability'".
"The implication of these findings is clear," claims Barna. "Anyone who wishes to have significant influence on the development of a persons moral and spiritual foundations had better exert that influence while the person is still open-minded and impressionable
in other words, while the person is still young."
Bryant Myers and Dan Brewster also argue that "global evangelism programs should target younger children for conversion because the clay is still soft and children need our attention more urgently than any other group of people".
However, scientists point that children's "teachability and vulnerability" may be attributed to their brain development condition. Humans' brains are in fact still developing, even until ages 11-14, their brains are not steady enough for high level reasoning and decision making.
Introducing salvation to the premature without teaching its significance in Christian faith is nothing short of oversimplifying.
Teaching the uncritical to accept a genuine depiction of salvation has proven to be indoctrination and "mythification" (causing to become a myth).
While it is obvious that 4-14 window proves to be the golden window for evangelism and every other ism, it also poses the greatest risks of superficial conversions and false understanding of the faith. Not to mention manipulating children into confessing faith in ideas they're clueless about.
Not surprisingly, it was found that vast majority of those making decisions for Christ at a young age were falling away from the faith.
Rev. Ray Comfort revealed that in 1991, the first year of the "Decade of Harvest", a major denomination with 11,500 churches in the US managed to harvest 294,000 decisions for Christ.
At the end of the day, the churches could only find 14,000 in fellowship and simply couldn't account for 280,000 of their decisions.
Data from the Southern Baptist Convention in 2001 indicates that they are currently losing 70%-88% of their youth after their freshman year in college.
