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Category: Next Gen Ministry

Covers topics such as leading across children’s and student ministries, working with parents/families, family ministry, thinking beyond Sunday, strategy and systems, collaboration/non-siloed ministry

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

Kathie Phillips 7 Comments
Photo Credit: Our Daily Bread of Tennessee
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!

Summer Lovin’: Social Media, Video Games and Your Children

Kathie Phillips 2 Comments

The following post is the first in a series of summer-related posts.  

Today’s post is written by Jason Phillips (no relation).

Safeguarding Kids on Social Media/Video Games During the Summer Months

 

Okay, school is out, and the kids are ready to play! Play video games, that is. Gear up the couch, set up the snacks, and plop those kids on the couch – it’s summer! While you may not be excited that the kids are going to be couch potatoes, they sure are. Don’t forget…they are itching to get online and give your personal information out to complete strangers.

So here’s the bottom line: your children are targets. They are targets to corporate marketing companies, internet predators, and cyber bullies. Everyone wants a piece of your child, because they are young, impressionable and easy to manipulate.

You may be asking yourself – “Self, how do we raise children to live safely in a world with social networking? When are they old enough to drive around in that world on their own? What tools do they need to cope with that world? How can we help them to be successful and safe in that world?” Well, the answer is this: school your kids.

We all know that we need to protect children in the physical world; we also need to realize that there can be just as much danger in the online world. The risks of networking online are becoming well-known, in part, through media attention. Risks for children and teens include:

  • Sharing one’s personal information with the wrong crowd. Unsupervised online contact with adults and older or manipulative kids can potentially lead to personal physical danger.
  • Bullying. Harassment may occur online only (cyber bullying), or it may spill over to offline bullying committed by a schoolmate who has located his victim online.
  • The permanency of online profiles. Once information has been shared on the Internet, it’s out there — forever! Retrieving information that others have read and captured is nearly impossible. Sharing one’s personal profile, words, pictures and videos can potentially lead to future embarrassment, harassment and even discrimination in employment and school admissions (although the latter concern is being addressed).
  • Misinformation. Kids can find inaccurate and misleading information about a variety of topics.

By 2005, 91% of children had regular access to the Internet and online material, and the online world has brought forth a slew of new opportunities for social interactions for children and adolescents. The line between video games and online content has blurred in the past few years due to many games’ inclusion of online content, including options to share personal data, interact with other players in online competitions, and immerse oneself in the worlds of Massively Multi-player Online Role Playing Games (MMORPG).

As of 2010, 93% of teens (12-17) go online, and of the children (0-5) who use the Internet, 80% use it at least once a week.97% of teens (12-17) play computer, web, portable, or console games.

Here are a few tips to make sure your online gaming experience is okay for your child:

  • Teach your child to use voice chat wisely, make him or her aware of voice masking technology.
  • Make sure your child uses suitable screen names (aka gamer tags) that are appropriate for his or her age.
  • Make sure your child knows what a cyber-bully is and why it’s bad.

As a parent, you need to be educated on your child’s games.

  • Go ahead and use parental controls on all your gaming devices, and make sure you know about the games your child plays.
  • Make sure you know how the mechanics, social interactions, and online content work.
  • Make yourself knowledgeable of ALL of the games that he or she plays, and most of all, watch your child play.  You might just gain some insight into your child’s online habits.

Do you limit your child’s screen time during the summer?  What safety measures have you put in place?

Author Bio: The article is written by experienced writer Jason Phillips. He owns an online gaming website Tom and Jerry Games 365. Apart he is a loving father who spends his free time with his kids.

How We Brought Preteen Parents and Leaders Together

Kathie Phillips

This past Sunday, we hosted a Small Group Leader & Parent Breakfast for Route 45, our church’s Preteen Ministry.  I was inspired to plan this after I saw an idea on a great website, Stuff You Can Use.  The website offers a free, editable kit that will help you plan the entire event.  The event was originally designed for Middle School Ministry, but I found it easy to design it for our needs.

I described this event to our parents as the church version of “Back to School Night”.  This type of event is usually held in August or September.  Since things were extremely busy in the fall, we scheduled it for February, the mid-point for our ministry year.

Here’s an overview of our event:

Purpose:  The primary purpose of this event was to bring parents and leaders together for a light breakfast and conversation.  Since our preteens are allowed to check themselves in and out on Sunday mornings, many of our parents and leaders had never met.  I didn’t want the school year to go by without this important face-to-face interaction.

Logistics:  We held our event on a Sunday morning during both of our morning services.  Parents were encouraged to attend during the hour that their child attends Route 45.  I recruited a few teens to help me teach the morning’s lesson and help with crowd control.  Leaders were provided with a timeline for the morning and a copy of conversation starters prior to the event so that they’d be familiar with how things would operate.

Promotion & Registration:  We began promoting the event through our weekly parent email approximately two months before the event.  It started as a “Save the Date” promotion and then moved to actual emails with more details.  We also promoted the event through announcements during our preteen Large Group time, our online church newsletter and the church bulletin.  Invitations were provided for each preteen to take home and give to their parents.  (We wanted to publicize in many different ways.)  Our invitations and other handouts were customized to be blue and white (to complement our color scheme) and include our logo.

Food:  We kept the menu pretty simple.  We served muffins, bagels and cream cheese, protein bars, fresh fruit, juice and bottled water.  We were able to keep the event to less than $60 for food and supplies.

Decor:  We set up three 9-foot tables parallel to each other with space to walk in-between.  We covered the tables with table cloths and placed an acrylic sign holder in the middle.  The sign holder held the names of each small group leader.  At each place setting, we placed a legal-sized place mat (with a section for notes); a two-sided post card – one side shared how we want to partner with parents and the other side listed our leaders and contact information; and a feedback card that parents and leaders could use in telling us if the event was beneficial, if we should offer it again and suggestions to make it better.  We also placed name tags, pens, markers and copies of Reggie Joiner and Carey Nieuwhof’s book, Parenting Beyond Your Capacity, for parents to peruse.

Here are a few pictures:

Flow for the morning:  At the beginning of the morning, I welcomed parents, shared the purpose of the gathering and brief overview for the morning as well as insight into our ministry year.  (We launched Route 45 in September, so the word for the year is “new”…new format, new curriculum, new leaders, new space, new programming, new, new, new!)  Then I turned things over to our leaders and let them facilitate the conversation.  Five minutes before the service ended, I wrapped up the time by giving a few announcements and a heartfelt “thank you” to our parents and leaders.

Overall, I am so glad that we held this event and I look forward to it again in the fall.  It warmed my heart to see parents and leaders talking about how we can best work together to help our precious children in their spiritual journey.

Leaders and volunteers:  How do you encourage a partnership between your ministry and parents?

Parents:  How can your church better partner with you as you guide your children spiritually?

The Beauty of Partnering With Parents

Kathie Phillips

“Partnering with parents” is a very popular phrase for those in children’s ministry and student ministry.  We realize that (or we should realize) that this is one of the key relationships that we should foster as ministry leaders.

I have always struggled somewhat with what it means to truly partner with parents.  Sure, we can send home a take-home page that reviews what was taught in class, knowing very well that these pages will either be left behind on Sunday mornings or serve as mats in the car.  Don’t get me wrong.  I think it’s very important to put resources into the hands of parents.  But we can’t stop there.

As I continue to wrap my brain around this concept, I am convinced more and more that true partnership is (1) each partner knowing what the common goals are, (2) knowing what role each partner plays in moving toward the common goals and (3) communicating effectively and regularly about the progress being made.

This weekend, I’ll wrap up teaching our three-week Communion class for 2nd-5th graders and their parents.  Having the parents attend with their child is great because they are able to not only hear what we’re teaching their child but it allows them to engage in dialogue about their own spiritual walk right on the spot.  (Parents are also provided a tool to use in continuing the conversation at home about what was provided in class.)

In my opinion, true partnership between the church and parents happens when there is conversation between them as well as resources being put into the hands of the parents.  There is also a responsibility for ministries to encourage and provide venues for conversation between parents and children.

For the past two weeks, I have witnessed parents and children talking at the tables and parents helping their children understand what it means to be loved by Christ, forgiven and welcomed at The Lord’s Table.  Parents were happy to share and children sat in awe of hearing their parents share with them.  It was  priceless exchange.  No take home page could replace that.

What are your thoughts?  How do you partner with parents in your ministry?  If you’re a parent, what ways does your church help you to be a better parent and spiritual leader?

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