A Children’s Ministry colleague working on her masters in ministry contacted me last week inviting me to answer several questions for her Family Ministry class. I was honored. She was patient to give me a couple of days so I thought I’d share my responses here:

1. How do you/your church support families today?
• We use a closed Facebook group to offer daily interaction for encouragement, resource, and information such as #mondaymantra (related to christian life) #tuesdaytruth (scripture) #wednesdaywisdom (Godly parenting) #thursdaythoughts (family blog about challenges & Sunday school lesson from previous week) #familyfriday (positive message/practical ideas of spending time together as a family to start the weekend) #saturdaysmiles (encouragement to gather together for church) #welovesundays (list of what’s happening all day and when at church).
• Parenting With A Purpose initiative – 1.5 hour dessert events for parents or parents & kids with the goal of providing practical tools as well as building tribes among our families to travel through life
* Sharing Your Faith With Your Family – practical ideas to live out Deuteronomy 6:4-9 (I facilitate) with book takeaway
* Parenting Technology & Cell Phone Safety – invited outside facilitator with book takeaway ‘Screens and Teens’ by Kathy Koch, PhD
* Parenting Relationships & Friendships – invite pastoral and counseling staff to facilitate practical communication tools and actions for critical and crucial conversations within the family using Holy Listening Stones, Counseling Center-led conversational role-play, and book takeaway Power of a Praying Parent by Stormie Omartian
• Faith Milestones for students and parents
*Kindergarten I Can Go To Sunday school on Sunday 7/28
*K5 & 1st Grade Bread & Juice Class 5:45-6:30pm on Wednesday 11/6
*1st & 2nd Grades I Can Pray on Wednesday 5:45-6:30pm on Wednesday 2/12
*2nd & 3rd Grades I Love My Church 5:45-6:30pm on Wednesday 3/18
*4th-5th Grades Camp Glisson Fall Retreat 9/6-8
*Ambassadors 5:45-6:30pm on Wednesday 10/9
*5th Grade Rock Solid Retreat 1/25-26, 2020
*5th & 6th Grades Wonderfully Made 2/27-29, 2020
• Weekly devotion emailed to all families involved in our Recreation Ministry. When kids tell the ‘Bible point of the week’ to the concession stand, kids receive a small treat or discount on concessions like popcorn or beverages

2. Families are busier than ever these days and find less time to come to church? Are you able to bring church outside the walls of the physical building?
• Closed Facebook Groups lets us reach out to families online daily (notes above) for Kids and Recreation Ministries
• Lead chapel assemblies to local home school co-ops.
• Backpack blessings of food for weekends with local Elementary School and Middle School with printed material through out Missions Team.
• Tutoring ministries with local Elementary School and Middle School.
• Postcards and note writing each week
• Ministry of presence to show up at their game, play, performance, concert, goes to the movies, activities in the community, etc.

3. What is the most successful thing or program that you have done in family ministry? Faith Field Trips and annual Promotion Sundays

4. Have you tried anything that was not successful? Oh yeah…movie nights. I’ve learned that if families can do things at home, they typically don’t want to go through the trouble of coming to church to do it.

5. Any insights or advice?
• Ask a lot of questions before trying things of the connectors in your church and those who are just as involved in the community as they are at church. Many years ago, I offered an Angel Breakfast on the first Saturday in Advent promoting it for two months ahead of time among our families and no one thought to tell me the local elementary school was doing the same thing on the same day at the same time. Ugh!
• Have lots of side conversations with parents all the time at events, meals (never plan to eat…work the room!), even Christmas Caroling: When do your kids have to get up in the morning to get on the bus? What time do your kids have to go to bed during the school year? What do y’all do in the summer? When do you have nothing going on in your calendar? How far do you live from the church? What do your family traditions looks like for Christmas? Easter? Thanksgiving? Mother’s Day? Father’s Day?
• Write 5 notes each week: 3 kids, 2 volunteers…and make 3 phone calls each week: 2 volunteers, 1 family or 2 families & 1 volunteer to check in and see how they’re doing in life. Build relationships and share life.

This was a good exercise to get my thoughts together on paper, and do some evaluating. What would your answers look like?

“Without a good question, a good answer has no place to go.” Clayton Christensen

Collin Kartchner is a social media activist, TEDx talk presenter, husband and dad who travels around the country speaking to parents and kids through the organization Save The Kids. This generation of parents are dealing with a resource which no other generation has dealt with. The boundaries, the communication, the cell phone companies, the urgency to empower parents to be parents while dealing with social media is new, necessary, and frightening all at the same time. I remember having to purchase our daughter’s first cellphone when her high school removed all the pay phones on campus, but it was different. It was just a phone, not the world at her fingertips. How does the local church help parents navigate this entity that makes them the first parents to ever…..

The week our community struggled through another teen suicide, Collin came to speak at a local church youth group on Wednesday night, a local high school on Thursday morning, and with parents at a community event on Thursday evening. I discovered Collin’s TED talk in January and was thrilled he’d planned to come to our community. Several of the moms who serve in our children’s ministry joined me as well as two middle schoolers attended the parent event on Thursday evening. Another mom attended the youth group gathering on Wednesday evening and offered these notes as her take-aways. With her permission, these are her notes:

TAKE A BREAK FROM FAKE event by Collin Kartchner, notes by Cheryl Kischuk

The number of cases of teen suicide, self-harm, depression & anxiety has gone up in multiples since 2010… the same year social media was invented.

There are businesses that make money from making technology as addictive as possible. There are other companies that build secret apps into programs like YouTube to draw a user (child or adult) to other websites with adult content. We MUST be vigilant.

Collin’s THREE Goals For Tweens & Teens:

• Bring back all the self-love you might be giving away to a tiny machine in your pocket.
• Stop letting Satan use your phone to steal your happiness
• Get off screens. Get off social media a bit. Go be a kid and be free.

The “Collin Challenge” for the children with social media:

• 8 Hugs Every Day For 8 Seconds. Minimum.
• Start sharing more authenticity & positivity. Show others it’s okay to be real.
• Guess What? Earth already hit it’s quota of mean people. We don’t need anymore. Be cool to each other.
• Do something awesome, and DON’T SHARE IT.
• Fail at something, and SHARE IT. Proudly.
• ALL SOCIAL MEDIA – unfollow EVERY person or account that doesn’t make you happy. Cut the joy thieves out.

Challenge to the Parents:

• Absolutely no phones in the bedrooms at night. Children need unhindered sleep.
• Buy a central “command” charging station and ALL electronics get charged there at night.
• Predators LOVE apps like SnapChat, Fortnite, Instagram, TikTok, etc. They build in secret accounts to pull your child or adult into more explicit content sites (like Kik, Omegle, Yubo, and Live.Me).
• Make sure your kids get 8 hugs every day for 8 seconds. Minimum.
• Evaluate your own digital behaviors and make necessary changes. Grandparents – you too.
• Create a Family Tech Contract, signed and posted on the fridge by the end of the month. (Ask Google for a family tech contract. Sit together as a family to discuss it and sign it together.)
• No more phones out when you are dropping off or picking up kids from school.
• One night a week, commit to no phones out from 5pm – 9pm.
• Children who do play video games off the internet can play up to an hour a day.

What to say when your child comes and tells you they have seen or done something inappropriate…

• Say, “I am so sorry.” and give an 8 second hug.
• Say, “What can I do to help you?”
• Say “Tell me more.” and then BE QUIET and listen to them.

Your phone won’t feel bad if you don’t pay attention to it. It won’t care if you haven’t played with it in a while. It won’t mind if you don’t hold it.

Your cell phone will be small forever. Your children will not.

We have scheduled a Parenting With a Purpose dessert event entitled Parenting Technology & Cell Phone Safety next month. The goal is to facilitate conversations while building relationships among our parents as we lead families to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, strength AND love our neighbors as ourselves. How are you resourcing your families?

“Follow God’s example, therefore, as dearly loved children.” Ephesians 5:1

Without a vocal nap or recovery time, my voice only lasts so long. This last weekend was the perfectly awesome and glorious storm: 3rd-5th grade SPARK retreat at Camp Glisson shared with 350 of our North Georgia best friends laughing, singing, talking, and more; CLUB345 gathering two hours after our return from retreat; Acolyte Training class for the fabulous 3rd graders who want to serve in worship. Our leaders are amazing and they do most of the talking, driving, small-grouping, game-coaching, retrieving flashlights and all. I just can’t be quiet and I LOVE their company. So I woke up on Monday with absolutely no voice. Nothing. Nada. With only a whisper, I spent the day online and texting. I missed my small group as well as our monthly children’s ministry networking lunch on Monday because I didn’t have the self-control to stay quiet.

So the day was filled with random thoughts and sweet memories like these:

Borrowing two catapults and a 10-foot-tall cardboard Goliath, both girls and boys are all-in to try new things. We are better together to share ministry tools and hearts partnering with other churches. The catapults and slingshots shooting dog food in the parking lot are sticky memories when teaching the life of David and how God can and will use a kid if that kid is willing and all-in. So grateful we tell kids, “Your home church wants to help you GROW in your all-in-faith.”

Acolyte training has been led by this amazing couple for more than 15 years and they are still at it. Giving fire to little people to carry in and fire to little people to carry out of worship takes huge levels of trust. It tells our kids, “Your church trusts you. Your church believes in you. Your church invites you to be an active part of the Body of Christ here in your home church.” So grateful we tell kids, “Your home church invites you to SERVE.”

Watching our students carry yellow fabric up to the stage area on the first night of worship at retreat (provided by our Tucker First UMC friends’ church closet), they walked and worked together to accomplish a task with no other direction than, “Take this upfront together and set it as an offering to the space.” I also saw them dance, sign language, pray, cheer, motions, sing, jump, “AMEN” the speaker, all in full-participation-worship. So grateful we let our kids WORSHIP the God of all creation in developmentally appropriate ways.

On the ride home from retreat, the children wrote down on paper and role-played how they would answer their parents when asked, “How was the retreat?” I got a glimpse of what they were thinking and what they took away from their experiences. Their response to share with their parents should include (1) Who did you meet and what did you learn about them? (2) What did you do that you’ve never done before? (3) What did you learn? So grateful we let our kids TELL their stories.

Walks through the creek, scones and devotions at the falls (provided by our Acworth UMC friends), platform jumps into the lake, flashlight-sharing, star-gazing, hikes to the cabin, stories read at night (girls cabin), talks through the first-night-home-sickness (boys cabin), seat mates, bunk mates, family style meals, and cheering one another on and overcoming our fears at the big swing make for deeper friendships, shared sacred memories, and tons of stories. So grateful these friendships impress on the hearts of our kids, “We are family and we are in this life together, fearfully and wonderfully made. This is where you BELONG.”

Lord, let me always look for ways to intentionally invite your kids to grow, serve, worship, tell, and belong. Thank you for the memories filled with YOUR voice and not my own. Thank you, Lord!

Last summer I attended a parenting class offered by a church down the street. The free class was led by one of my favorite youtube-kidmin-leaders and he did not disappoint. At the intermission, I was approached by the Children’s Ministry lead. We chatted for a bit in small talk, then she asked me who I was and what I did. She was a delight! Before we returned to the program, we made plans to meet for lunch at a nearby restaurant in the next couple of weeks.

When we met at the restaurant we chatted how we came to be at our local churches, how we came to be on staff, and how we can partner in the community. I brought my calendar and she checked her calendar so we wouldn’t have VBS on the same week nor plan our fall festivals at the same time. We planned to share a cemetery tour in October with our 3rd-5th graders. I invited her 3rd-5th graders to come to the Winter Ball Invitational in January and I will wait for her to invite us to something they are doing.

We share a common goal that every single child in our community has a growing and personal relationship with Jesus and belongs to a family of faith. My local church teaches children to love Jesus. Her local church teaches children to love Jesus. Together we can share our resources, our passions, and our Jesus in community with one another.  We are indeed better together!

Have you met your ministry counterparts at the local church down the street? How can you partner with other local churches in your community to more effectively make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world? Who will you call this week to share some chips & salsa, have a cup of coffee/tea, make an invitation?

“As God’s co-workers we urge you not to receive God’s grace in vain. For he says, “In the time of my favor I heard you, and in the day of salvation I helped you.'” 2 Corinthians 6:1-2 NIV