Pity the youth ministry. It's a real struggle recruiting kids to your cause. You know who else struggled to recruit the young people? Life Savers Ministries of Opelika, Alabama, sure does.

Via the Columbus, Ga., Ledger-Enquirer:

A billboard at the Village Mall in Auburn, Ala., features five smiling kids beneath a quote from Adolf Hitler: "He alone, who owns the youth, gains the future."

According to Lamar Advertising's Montgomery office, the billboard was rented out by Life Savers Ministries, based in Opelika, Ala.

Worse still, the quote—with an attribution, in red, to der führer—sits just above the well-known Bible verse from Proverbs: "Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it."

To be fair, Life Savers Ministries—which boasts a KidzBoost leadership academy and cool buses instead of school buses—is not a neo-Nazi group. Just well-intentioned youth pastors filled with spirit and a little naïveté:

The billboard went up Friday and will be taken down Tuesday, per LSM's request.

"We are pulling the billboard and certainly never intended to cause confusion. ... Herbert Hoover would have been a far better one to quote when he said, 'Children are our most valuable resource,'" founder James Anderegg told the Ledger-Enquirer.

Whitney Houston also would have worked, probably.

Anderegg added: "We are a children's organization and had honorable intentions and nothing less."

You know who else had honorable intentions?

[Photo credit: Julie Burns/Ledger-Enquirer]