Ministry to Families
Every child is part of a family. We want to :-
- encourage you as you and your family journey together.
- to help you create the place where families want to be.
- support families reach out to other families in your community.
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It's a powerful thing to see families SERVING together to do God's work. Let us know what's happening at your place, feel free to comment.
Morning Tea time @ Church
I love morning tea time at church, everyone is chatting, generations are all together enjoying each other.
What a great opportunity to have some God conversations. Here are some templates of labels (14 per page) with suggestions of questions. These can be printed off and stuck onto the kids or adults.
Ask me what I did in Church today?
Ask me what I did in Kid's Church today?
What happened today to remind you of God?
24-7 prayer
To download ideas for your 24-7 prayer room, please click here Create a prayer room where families can pray together
Great gift Ideas
The Thank You Prayer book will help you and your child start to explore all the things you can thank God for. A great gift for pre-scho
olers and families involved in First Steps, playgroup, 'mainly music' or other ministries, The Thank You Prayer is a 20-page book of full-page, full-colour illustrations with a modern variation on a traditional children's prayer.
The Thank You Prayer is a wonderful presnet for birthdays, Christmas or children's celebrations at church, or can be used to introduce families to prayer and the practise of thanking God for all he's given us.
To order The Thank You Prayer at only $3.50 per copy (plus postage), contact Salvationists Supplies on 1800 634 209 or at www.salvosuppliessyd.com
To download please click here Great gift for your pre-schoolers
To read article on Building Bridges with Parents, please click here
Family Values
Download this page on Family Values Family Values
Family Friendly Worship
Activity Bags during worship
Post-it-notes, stickers, crayons in ziplock bag, small activity pad, small clipboard to put the colouring pages, word searches on. Plastic animals or figures, small hand puppets or small animals, duplo lego blocks.
Pipe cleaners are amazing, fun for little ones and open ended enough for older kids, inexpensive and reusable.
www.sermons4kids.com have puzzles and children's bulletin to tie in with most scripture themes.
Include children in worship
Recently I was at a corps where each week the worship leader intentionally includes the children (especially the younger ones) in worship, the children bring along their toy guitars and come out the front and dance as the whole congregations sings their worship songs.
What I notice happening is:-
- The children are natural, free, spontaneous and open in their worship.
- The adults relax and seem comfortable as they sing.
- Everyone is smiling and enjoying God.
- I’m sure God is smiling.
It’s important for children to see adults worshipping. There are times when all generations are to stand before God together. 2 Chronicles 20v 13 “And all Judah stood before the LORD, with their little ones, their wives, and their children.”
Allowing children to praise Jesus and to be able to hear from God themselves is a wonderful sign of their developing spiritual maturity.
Sometimes by our attitudes, we say, “If you come to worship with us, you must sit quietly and stop talking. One day you will be able to join us fully, when you can understand what the officer says and when you can behave exactly like us”.
However, Jesus said “unless we change and become like little children we cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven” Matthew 18 v 12-14
God wants every child to be saved, He doesn’t want any of these little ones to be lost.
He wants children to be part of the church family, sharing the fun and helping with the responsibilities. Children are active members of your corps.
There are plenty of opportunities in our corps where children can serve Jesus. All they need is encouragement and training. Encourage children to pray. They can lead games, discussions, worship. They can give their testimony and share the Gospel with others.