Serving local churches adjacent to cemeteries offer a great opportunity to take a walking field trip and learn the history of the church and the community. I’ve served at two local churches with cemeteries and oh the stories.

Every other year, on a Sunday afternoon before the time changes, we enlist the presence of a saint to meet our 3rd-5th graders at the cemetery ready to tell the stories of the people who have gone on to Glory. These folks gave money, prayed, and served on committees to make the decisions to provide the spaces the kids now call ‘my church.’ 

Most cemeteries have a caretaker who grew up in the community the cemetery and church serves. This saint knows the families and the history of the community more personally than anyone else. They know the founding families, what used to be where the drug store is now, why their school and roads are named after these folks, and how these folks made church-life part of their holy habits in following Jesus.

We invite parents/grandparents and the church-at-large so we never know who will meet us there.

Program
Supplies: 2 bunches of yellow carnations; hot apple cider (for our return to debrief)
Arrival: a short time of teaching at the beginning makes space for late arrivals (we taught on Baptism last week continuing our teaching curriculum for CLUB345) .
One of our leaders wears a bright-yellow vest so motorists see us as we walk to the cemetery.
Teaching: What can we learn about the person from the limited info and symbols provided on the grave marker/stone?
Response: a single yellow carnation is left on each grave if we stop to learn.
Allow time for wandering, chatting, and storytelling.

• Two brothers are buried head to head, yet their names are different by one letter. There was a family feud and they refused to be associated with one another in life, yet are buried head to head.
• The first youth leader was a new burial site when we visited. She sat in the front youth pew at 11am worship with her special-needs, adult, son up until the Sunday she passed away in her nineties.
• The wife moved to the area with her new husband as part of a Cobb County land grab, crossing the Chattahoochee River on the ferry. She desperately missed her family and told her new husband that when she died, we would not be buried in the field where their animals relieved themselves. Her daddy purchased the adjacent land for her to set up a family cemetery and a church for her to start for the community. Her husband is buried in the field. She is buried in the cemetery.
• The church I currently serve is named after a man who started an insurance company. His family trust now funds with the interest only the local high school (which was a 1st-12th grade school originally), facilities and missions for our church, and Young Harris college. But the history goes all the way back to the 1830s with the community’s priority of the local church and education. We heard of the unwed teacher’s home (dormitory) and the principal’s ‘parsonage’ of the A & M school. 
• One of our buildings is named to honor his incredible wife. She was an educator, business woman, and built the church on her husband’s donated land. She was elected president of the National Council of Federated Church Women and was a member of the World Council of Christian Education. 
• We learned about the only place to get gas, the hardware store which is no longer there, and so many young educators which came to the area for teaching jobs until they married.
• One of our students in attendance last Sunday had his own stories to share he’d heard from his mom, who joined us, and his grandmother. His family is part of the community’s history. He shared who were teachers, a dog story, a first mayor story, and was filled with delight to be sharing HIS family stories with us, too.

Learning the stories of real people who followed the Lord and have gone on to Glory is a gift only the local church can share and share well. How do your kids learn of the people who made your church the place it is today in your community? Enlisting the service of the saints of your local church is always a win-win!

“Let this be written for a future generation that a people not yet created may praise the Lord.” Psalm 102:18

We have been super intentional to equip and invite parents into the faith formation of their children. The scriptures outline this is God’s plan in Deuteronomy, Psalm 78, Isaiah 18, etc. 

When young adults who never strayed from the faith are asked the how and why, they speak to learning to read/listen to the Bible as a regular habit. First and by far, foremost. Followed by the family minutes, moments, and milestones which impressed the priority of their faith in Jesus in community: home first, then church.

Let’s be real. There are 168 hours in a given week. Even if we throw everything we have into that one hour of developmentally appropriate faith formation in a typical Sunday school setting, it will never be enough for a robust faith in Jesus in any culture. 

A multi-level plan (developmentally appropriate), over time (habits), in community (home, car, extracurricular, church) is the best strategy. That’s a big elephant to eat. We can eat that thing one bite at a time and over a period of time, but we need permission for accountability.

We can’t tap into the accountability of ‘if you’re not here for practice, you can’t play.’ We can’t lay out expectations to parents like a teacher can at a parent-teacher conference of ‘Sue is lost and I would suggest a faith tutor to meet with her every week, sometimes twice a week, to get her up to speed.’ We can’t send a note home with ‘Joe has already been absent 9 days. One more day absent and he’ll be held back to be sure he gets the material to be successful.’ None of these options are reasonable for the local church.

So what do we have? 

Side note: Our parents have more than enough guilt. They lay awake at night questioning their parenting skills already. I’m not adding to that. Every parent I’ve ever met wants the best for their kids. The very best! They have dreams and hopes for their children and want desperately to make available every opportunity for success. Christian parents want their kids to have a robust faith in Jesus. An hour a week, even if they come every week, is not gonna cut it for a robust faith in Jesus.

So what can we do?

We can equip and train parents and grandparents (the greatest untapped faith formation resource in any family) and offer space to make all their minutes, moments, and milestones count for Jesus. Everything we do must point to Jesus. Everything!

We offer Parenting With a Purpose classes each fall and spring. Last week it looked like this with a PowerPoint and a Ziploc bag of 167 M&Ms + 1 jumbo gold gumball (representing the weekly Sunday school class): Parenting With A Purpose – A Blueprint.

6pm-6:30pm Kids had pizza dinner (+water, fruit) with 3 kid’s Bible study leaders wearing candy corn flashing headbands (a visual that this is a special night); greeted and checked in by an Ambassador (relationship with an older kid); eat and check in with friends (relationships; food; table life).

Parents set up in another room to get a chance to breathe, get water and cookies, take a bio break, chat with who they sit beside. Hospitality time for me to work the room saying, “Hey ___, do you know ___? She goes to the 11am service and has a 3rd grader” to intentionally introduce the commonalities of participants. Then give time for them to chat before the program starts at 6:15pm.

6:30pm-7:30pm Kids bring in buckets of building toys they chose from the Children’s Welcome Center and sit together at the feet of their parents to play. The visual for parents and children was intentional.

Program: Though six Biblical holy habits are important only one, the research tells us, bears the greatest weight, so we will focus on Bible Reading.

Read the Bible, not a devotional, not a study Bible. Read the Bible. Listen to it in the car on a Bible app. Use Breath prayers to remember phrases and words from the scriptures. Begin with a book with a narrative like the Gospel of Luke. Introduce the author as Dr. Luke and the gospel is his letter to his friend Theophilus. I wonder if Theo was short, tall, quiet, or his loud friend? Dr. Luke investigated and determined these events to be true, historical, and worthy of defense.  

The Next Generation Ministries suggests the narratives of the New Testament first. Then the Old Testament. Then a Chronological Bible. Several of our kidmin leadership team took an online conference of Discipleship Begins at Home sponsored by Women In Apologetics last summer which taught and offered the Blueprint resource to all participants to share with our families in their local churches. 

They reminded us that if a kid can read a chapter book, they can read the Bible as a family and in Christian community.  “This is what Christians do and we are a Christian family.” At middle school, purchase a study Bible. Invite the grandparents to purchase it and make notes in the margins of their favorite passages. The kids can read. The parents can read aloud. A Bible app can read it aloud for you.

Each participant received a children’s book on a hard faith subject (the Trinity) and what I think is the best Bible Handbook in print (which is hard to find) published by Gospel Light (I miss them) which is child, youth, adult-friendly to give context to the family Bible reading.

Parents are front-line disciple-makers and the saints the local church is supposed to equip. This is one very intentional way we are living into Ephesians 4:12.

At the end of class, I gave them each a heads-up. By walking out with all those resources, they are inviting me and everyone else in the room to hold them accountable. 

That accountability might sound like a hallway conversation, “How are you doing with your family Bible reading?”, or “Have you started with your family Bible reading yet?” That’s what partnership looks like. A life coach does that. A pitching coach does that. A personal trainer does that. A math tutor does that. 

Let me ask you, “How did you do last week in your Bible reading?”

Nehemiah 6:3 “I’m carrying on a great project and cannot go down.”

It’s Fall Break in the school systems of North Georgia. While others are headed out of town or enjoying a staycation, it’s the week I set aside to get organized for the fall and advent season. Everything was calendared months ago, published on July 1st. Now it’s time to put some details on the Advent google docs to be shared with the lead teams for each event and campaign when they return.

Parenting With A Purpose – with a focus on Apologetics (giving God our minds to defend our faith in Jesus) we will share a Blueprint for Discipleship at Home for the fall and a teaching of what God teaches us about work in a world that only wants to play for the spring.

Grandparenting With A Purpose – with a focus on engaging in sacred conversations we’ll have a table chat in both the fall and spring with other grandparents who have navigated the hardest conversations with their grands.

New Faith Milestones
I Can Tell the Story (one for Advent, one for Lent) which will be Messy Church events using images to tell the birth story of Jesus and the resurrection story of Jesus. For Advent: soup & bread, activity themes from Matt Rawle’s new advent study, The Heart That Grew Three Sizes: Finding Faith in the Story of the Grinch. It’s a post-pandemic look at the Grinch taking the redemption story to a whole new level. The adult videos, only around 10 minutes in length are so rich I was able to write the Children’s Moments, the event stations, and a lot of the Christmas Eve service from Rev. Rawle’s materials speaking of phrases kids get like hate, words and people redeemed by Jesus, truth vs lying, and the power of music and memory.

I Can Worship With My Family – interactive, intergenerational worship service for kids with adults in the room. We bring our teaching services from the summer parking lot to Big Mac (the sanctuary). It’s a teaching service at 11am in Big Mac for worship, prayer, giving, singing, Apostle’s Creed, doxology and more when the whole family learns together why we do what we do and what makes Big Mac, Big Mac. Opening a registration link for kids and families who want to take a lead lets us communicate expectations to families and not just kids. Clarity and communication builds trust. All of the other Faith Milestones we teach separately will be now be lived out in community with our church family, not only the Children’s spaces.

Part of that organization is also getting some shopping done so the resources are on hand and we’re not scrambling hoping to find what we need.  The complete details are not on the google doc yet, but today I placed orders for….
Advent Blocks (purchased in summer at deep discount/added another church to order for even more discounts)
Red squishy hearts imprinted with “Jesus loves me”
Red, green, white, lime chenille sticks
What the Bible Is All About Handbook for Kids
Discipling Your Grandchildren: Great Ideas to Help Them Know, Love and Serve God
Prayer buddies in pompoms
God Is Three Persons
Family Advent Pop-up Calendar

Let’s not forget to be clear of the goals and the why of each experience. Every experience must be a developmentally appropriate faith formation experience. Ministry leaders are not event planners, but disciple-makers who take every opportunity and effectively use what’s in our hands to give testimony to God’s goodness and His faithfulness to His people. Determine when, where, how, who, and the discipleship follow-up for sharing the good news of Jesus and His plan of redemption and restoration in truth as the priority not the add-on or side-note. Write it down so not to be distracted by a negative comment or an expectation expressed after-the-fact. Measurable goals offer clarity, purpose, and let you set priorities to filter the could-haves and should-haves. The experience is part of your over-all strategy for faith formation, not a one-and-done.

Partnering with families means they can trust that we will be prepared to be a blessing as their calendar begins to turn into fall. Partnering well with our leadership team means they will not be overwhelmed and will have on hand the tools to be successful.

How do you get organized for the next season?

“Let the peace of Christ rule in your heart and be thankful.” Colossians 3:15