KidMin Families Archives - Page 10 of 14

Praying for Romeo (or Juliet)

01/17/201401/17/2014 Kathie Phillips 2 Comments

My daughter’s 9th Grade class just finished reading Romeo & Juliet. In a recent class assignment, my daughter and her classmates were given this question: What are the top five qualities you are looking for in a ‘perfect’ mate? I’m sure getting her students to think ‘mushy’ feelings was a little challenging for my daughter’s English teacher!

They were then given a second question: What are the top five qualities you think your parents would want for your ‘perfect’ mate? Again, probably challenging for the young minds, especially since we don’t want them dating at a young age let alone thinking about marriage at age 14!

The students were then given homework: Ask your parents the following questions:

List the top five qualities that you think your son or daughter would want in a ‘perfect’ mate.
List the top five qualities you want in a ‘perfect’ mate for your son or daughter.

When my daughter got in the car after school that day, she was excited that Mom & Dad had homework. But as she described the assignment, I knew that those questions would make for excellent dinner table conversation.

Fast forward a few hours…

We’re seated at the table (my husband, our 17-yr old son, our daughter and I) and my daughter pulls out her questionnaire. Mind you, I had a slight advantage over my husband – I had a few hours to ponder the questions while my husband had 2 minutes. I wish you could have seen his facial expression. 🙂

Question #1: List the top five qualities that you think your son or daughter would want in a ‘perfect’ mate.

Hmm…what would Kennedy want in a perfect mate? Knowing our daughter’s personality, it was surprisingly easy for both my husband and I to answer this question. My husband gave his top five and I followed with mine. We know our daughter pretty well – we both scored 4 out of 5. Not bad!

Question #2: List the top five qualities you want in a ‘perfect’ mate for your son or daughter.

This question was a little more personal as this would reveal more of our heart. Again, my husband went first and I followed. What i found interesting was that my husband’s responses were more ‘selfish’ – meaning that he listed qualities for someone who HE’D like to get along with. My responses, on the other hand, were more for the man my daughter (and Lord-willing, grandchildren) would love and live with.

I love that this assignment provided us with some good table talk but it also got me thinking – How often do I pray for my children’s future spouses? Honestly, not often enough. And that was convicting for me.

As a mom, I pray many things for my children..

…that they would love God first and most

…that they would live God-honoring lives and make wise choices

…that they would have friends with similar values

…for their overall safety in an unsafe, dangerous world

…that they would treat others the way that they want to be treated

…and many other things too numerous for me to mention.

But praying for their future spouse? Not something that I regularly prayed for – until recently.

If you feel so led, do this exercise with your family and see what conversation emerges as a result. You’ll get to know your child’s heart a little better and they’ll get a peek inside of yours. And you might have a few good laughs like we did!

*Disclaimer: My daughter attends a Christian school, so that’s the angle that the assignment was taken from.

What about you? Do you pray regularly for your child’s future spouse? What do you pray for?

Encourage & Equip Families to Worship Together

08/21/201308/21/2013 Kathie Phillips 2 Comments

Photo Credit: Central Presbyterian Church

This month, our church has encouraged families with elementary, middle, and high school students to worship together in lieu of their regular Sunday morning programming. It was an idea that surfaced at the end of last summer and again this past April at a staff meeting. It wasn’t really a hard decision for us to make because of two observations: (1) last summer it was almost impossible to recruit volunteers to serve because of August travel schedules and (2) summer is a good time to try something different. We had also been asked by several families to promote this type of initiative.

After a number of collaborative brainstorming sessions between Children’s Ministry, Student Ministry, Worship Arts, invested parents and Senior Leadership, we decided to go for it. But we wanted to be strategic about our approach.

We wanted to give advance notice to our congregation, so we began announcing this change a few weeks out. Our first announcement fell on our VBS Celebration Sunday (when there were many families – regular attenders and visitors – were in attendance.) Our Family Pastor even gave the children a bit of a teaser by announcing that a special ticket book might show up at their house. *See below for more info about this.

In addition, a number of promotional material was prepared. We contracted a designer to create a Worship Together logo that was used on promotional material through the Sunday bulletin, our weekly e-newsletter, a letter that was mailed home to parents, our website and video. Our promo videos included a rising 6th grader being ‘interviewed’ by one of our preachers; a skit by members of our Family Ministry team and one by me (gasp)!

We acknowledged that some parents & families might be a little apprehensive about worshiping with their younger elementary-aged children. We wanted to ease their fears a bit and supplied a “Worship Together Resource” handout for parents to download from our website. You can take a peek at that here. (I will also place a pdf copy under the “Parent Resources/Downloads” tab on this blog.)

Being very intentional about including children and students in the service is something we also desired. This included a special blessing that parents could over children and students on Communion Sunday; creatively telling the Bible story through skits (involving children & students); and using examples that kids could relate to. Our contracted designer also designed a pew card that explained the elements of the service and why we do them.

Supplying children’s worship bags was also a way for us to be intentional about including younger children in the service. Each bag (a small, bright yellow plastic bag that I had on hand from a previous event) was filled with crayons, a pencil and that week’s specially designed children’s bulletin. Our children’s bulletin was a one-page bi-fold which included a cover page; a place for older children to take notes (write down the scripture, who was preaching & what they learned); a place for children to circle corresponding pictures every time they sang a song, prayed, gave an offering, took Communion and read their Bible; and 2 activity pages (we varied the activities each week and chose crosswords, coloring pages, decoder puzzles, mazes, etc.) Remembering that we were catering to children in grades 2-5, we wanted to offer a balance of activities to suit the wide age span.

Earlier I mentioned a special ticket book for families. We mailed a ticket book to families with elementary-aged children so that the children could redeem tickets each week for a special small treat. We chose some items that corresponded with the scripture text as well as general items like pencils and bookmarks.

I am hearing pretty good feedback from parents and other adults about how much they’ve enjoyed worshiping together and seeing the children in worship. Our prayer is that Worship Together would become a regular practice among families at our church.

How to Help Your Child Have a Great Year – at Church

08/20/201308/20/2013 Kathie Phillips 7 Comments

Photo Credit: Our Daily Bread of Tennessee

At this time of year, parents are being inundated with “how to’s” regarding the new school year – how to find the best deal on school clothes, how to pack a healthy lunch, how to set up a well-organized homework area.

That got me thinking: what “how to’s” can we, as kidmin leaders, give to parents that might help their child have a great year in our ministries?

Here are a few ideas from my KidMin Mom perspective:

Prepare the night before. Lay out clothes and accessories, bathe the children, set Bibles and offering money near the door, set out non-perishable breakfast items…anything you can do to eliminate as many time-consuming items in the morning will help you get out the door on time.

Go to bed at a reasonable hour. Being well-rested will ensure that everyone will (1) get up and out the door and (2) help squash grumpy behavior – for parents AND kids.

Don’t forget breakfast. I mentioned setting out non-perishable breakfast items but don’t forget to eat them (non-sugary options are best). A full tummy will help kids focus better and again cut down on grumpy behavior.

Play up positives for church other than “fun”. If you tell your child something to the effect of, “I’ll bet you’ll have lots of fun today!” and they don’t, they will likely resist wanting to go back. Emphasize that worshiping and attending church is an important start to your week and that when we go to church, we can more about Jesus.

Here are a few additional ideas from my KidMin Leader perspective:

Commit to attending church regularly. There are so many things that vie for your attention on Sunday mornings (sports, work, custody arrangements, travel, exhaustion, overflowing laundry baskets, empty refrigerators just to name a few.) But as often as you can, make regular church attendance a priority for your family.

Arrive at church on time. By doing so, your child is able to get settled in and enjoy getting to know his/her classmates. Many churches allow for more relaxed, unstructured activities at the beginning of the class. This time is very important for building friendships.

Get to know your child’s teacher. Your child’s teacher has committed to building a relationship with your child and sharing Jesus with him/her. This relationship is a very important one to nurture.

If your kidmin provides a calendar of events for the year, plug-in those dates on your calendar. While you won’t be able to attend every event, try to attend what you can.

Ask the right questions. Instead of asking, “Did you have fun today?” when you pick up your child, ask more specific questions such as:

“Tell me about your day.”
What did you do today?”
What did you like best?”

Extend learning by taking advantage of provided take-home resources. Not only will this help your child reinforce what is being taught in class, it will help you as a parent stay connected. It will also show your child that learning and talking about God doesn’t only happen at church.

Find ways that you can serve together as a family. Participate in collecting and delivering canned goods, serve as ushers/greeters, or bake cookies for church events. This will help your child feel ownership and part of a larger community.

Worship together as a family. Again, this will help your child feel part of a larger community. Our church is wrapping up a ‘Worship Together’ emphasis in a few weeks. Tomorrow I’ll share what that looked like for us and how we equipped families to worship together.

What would you add to the list? Share your ideas with me in the space below!

Athens VBS: How One Family Was Impacted

07/17/201307/17/2013 Kathie Phillips 2 Comments

Photo Credit: Group Publishing

Last week, our VBS (or Summer Bible Camp as it’s known in our church) wrapped up. (You can read about our VBS in earlier posts.) The end of camp was very bittersweet for me because of the amazing stories of how God was working not only in the hearts of children but of volunteers, too. I didn’t want the enthusiasm to end.

One of those stories was shared with me after camp on Day 2. The mom of a camper, who also served as a volunteer, granted her permission to share their story with all of you. Enjoy!

This week has been unbelievable and transforming as Central Presbyterian has been turned into Athens and we have been learning about Paul’s bold journey to share his faith! It has been life changing and unbelievable.

On Monday night, I was putting [my son] to bed and reading the devotional, Jesus Calling Bible Storybook, with him. We were looking for stories about Paul and came upon the story where Lydia believes from Acts 16. The storybook bible had John 14:6 “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me”. It then went on to say that as hard as you try, you cannot get to heaven on our own. Everyone does some bad things – mommies, daddies, teachers and boys and girls. There is no place in heaven for sin, and this is why you need Jesus in your heart. I am your only way to heaven says Jesus. I am the one who washes away your sins and opens the way to God the Father. This started the most amazing conversation with me and [my son]. The door was opened because he has been fascinated by the daily Summer Bible Camp skits with Paul and Timothy and how brave Paul is, and how Paul wants to tell EVERYONE he meets about the one true God (Yes! It’s true!). The devotional we read paired up so beautifully with the teachings in SBC this week.The Greeks worshiped so many false gods and statues that it has been such a privilege and a gift to talk about our living God and how He LOVES us. Each day keeps getting better and better. Anyways, [my son] went on to say that he believes in Jesus and wants to have him in his heart. So, we prayed together and then he wrote in his Bible the sweetest note. I have attached a picture so you could see his spelling and handwriting: “Dear Jeses, Plaes come in my heart bcuaes I Love You. Love [boy’s name] July 8 2013

Actual letter written by the writer's son — Actual letter written by the writer’s son

It melts my heart thinking about it. It has been so fun and easy to boldly tell these children about Jesus and God’s love and what eternity means (forever). We heard today about how Paul had been Saul and how we truly need Jesus to save us. The verse on the back of our tee shirts was John 3:16 which has all new meaning to me now. It’s so exciting.

My verses to share with you today are two:

1 John 4:4 You are of God, little children, and have overcome them, because He who is in you is greater then he who is in the world.

1 John 4:15-16 Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. And we have known and believed the love that God has for us, God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him.

This story gives me goosebumps! I’m so thankful for the opportunity to see this unfold and walk with this family long after camp is over.

How did this story impact you? Do you have a similar story of transformation as a result of VBS? Share below!