Have you got a plan for ministry with kids in this season of lockdown? Here’s 3 things you and your team could give energy to:
Church Highlight: Narwee Baptist
“In lockdown, we are doing a kids spot in our livestream services. It goes for about 10 mins and focuses on kids, but our feedback is that the whole church really enjoys this time! It is light-hearted but has a main lesson from the Bible. Last lockdown I did the talks that went with the sermon series. This time I’m going through the Psalms. I make up an activity sheet to go with the talk for the kids and a colouring sheet with the key verse on it.
Last year I put together 15 min videos of a Bible lesson, fun quiz time and prayer ideas. It was uploaded every Friday afternoon at 4pm on our YouTube channel which is the usual time for our Kidz Club. I heard that parents got their children to watch this during church. This time I am doing a Zoom meeting with the kids during church, but after the kids spot. We read the Bible passage, work through the sheets with the kids and pray together. Some other leaders attend too, we have two break out rooms and we go through the activity sheets with the kids, sing a song, do a quiz using Kahoot and pray together.
I email the parents each week and attach a PDF of the activity sheets and provide the link and password for the Zoom meeting. In my email to the parents, I also try to encourage them in their discipleship role as a parent. I share different Bible reading ideas and prayer ideas. I also encourage them about what I am learning from my own devotional times. I’m just trying to help them see the big picture of God’s plan for the world and how to persevere in the broken world we live in – with a hope that is sure through Jesus.
We have had new families join us for online services and message us to receive the activity sheets and info for the kids. We pray that God will continue to work in families that we haven’t even met physically yet. Every week I receive emails, text messages, whatever other forums saying thank you for what we are doing. I find they don’t want too much because that is overwhelming, so we try to keep the focus on prayer and the word.”