Last Sunday, we watched many of our kids and youth being brave and embracing our church’s focus on “give it a go!” One of the privileges of my role in Kids Church over the past year has been watching our children being brave at family services, speaking, singing and presenting publicly about faith in Jesus.
As we look to refresh and revitalise our children’s ministry program, we have been using four key ‘pillars’ of our new framework “The Jesus Way”. These are:
- Knowing Him – “I am getting to know God for myself.”
- Welcoming Others – “I help others feel like they belong.”
- Helping Out – “I help others and make wise choices.”
- Being Brave – “I am brave enough to share my Jesus story.”
This term, we have been particularly focusing on “Knowing Him”, trying to move past facts to memorise and facilitating opportunities for children to truly get to know God and build a relationship with Him. One way we have been doing this is through our new ‘journal time’, an opportunity for the kids to look at what they have learnt, what this means for their relationship with God and how they can apply this in their lives.
In the past, our goals for Kids Church have been very similar to the first three pillars. We have added “Being Brave” because we see an evangelism focus as a key priority to strengthen and grow our ministry. While family services are already a great example of this, we are hoping to extend our kids by encouraging them to be brave with their friends.
Next Sunday (29th March) we are holding a special Kids Quest as a bridge between our Kids Church and our community contacts. We are encouraging our children and their families to be brave in inviting others to come and join us for this new and exciting opportunity! If you know someone between the ages of 3-12 who would like to come, please register at https://upbc.org.au/kidsquest/. We look forward to seeing what God will do in this space!
In Him,
Ashleigh Pirie
Kids and Youth Associate
Photo by Matthias Gellissen on Unsplash