Mid-Summer Blahs

It's mid-July and it's so easy to get caught up in the activities of summer and take a vacation from church.

Here are some reasons why parents of children and youth should make coming to church a priority even during the summer.

1) Consistency.  Where children are concerned, consistency of routine is critical to their learning regardless of their age.  Transitions are the hardest elements for parents to manage so keeping the routine helps children feel safe and secure.  Consistency also makes it easier for teens and limit the conflicts.  Most teens don't want to go where they don't have friends, want your kids to have a Christian peer group, then they need to make their primary friendships at church.  It's all about having a known and predictable schedule.

2) Community.  The Waumba Land and UpStreet teams work all year long at creating a community of friends within their small groups.  Community grows in importance as your kids get older.  We want our church community kids to be each others best friends, here and on the school grounds, where similar values are reflected in their friends and their families and ultimately in their choices.

3) Spiritual Formation.  Just like your children do not stop growing physically over the summer, their interest and need to know about God, Jesus, Holy Spirit, Bible and so on, does not stop either.  Without intentional time spent talking about things of spiritual significance in your family life, church is the best environment for those conversations to begin and make it easier for you to piggyback on to as you lead your child spiritually from the home.

4) Reinforcement.  In each environment for children and youth at Hillside have core values that we are teaching and reinforcing each week.  In Waumba Land, 1) God Made Me, 2) God Loves Me and 3) Jesus wants to be my forever friend.  In UpStreet, 1) Make wise choices, 2) Trust God, and 3) Treat others the way you want to be treated.  Our Youth Department is focused on giving life skills to our youth through helping them Discover faith for themeselves, Wonder about the whys and hows of faith, and ultimately grow in Passion about their faith.  Our goal is to have each of these environments in Family Ministry build up a child to the point that when they exit High School they own their own faith journey and walk closely with Christ the rest of their lives.

The truth is that these things don't happen if you are only exposing your children to our environments  four or even ten times a year.  The reality for us is that for ministry to have a positive effect in a child's everyday life, we need to have your kids in our environments 40, yes 40 Sundays a year to even keep the process moving in that direction.  That's three out of four Sundays a month.  It will also take you, as the parent, having faith-filled discussions with your kids during meals, while traveling together, and any other time you can find a window to talk about faith, and the church providing excellent environments, leadership, materials for this to happen.  That is why partnering with parents is one of our primary goals.

As a function of that partnership, we want to equip parents well.  To do this we have take home sheets in all our environments called Parent Cue. The purpose is to help you keep the discussions moving at home, to build on what was begun on Sundays.  Our new CUE BOX ($12) brings home the lesson in a way that appeals to today's elementary age kids using technology and games.

In Waumba Land and UpStreet there is a monthly theme and we take that theme and we teach it through 4 different lenses, one each week.  This is why consistency is so important.  By the end of the fourth Sunday, children are able to share with others what they have learned, recite bible verses, sing songs and tell four unique stories and how they fit into the theme.  It's more than a Bible Story and a coloring sheet - it's not the Sunday School that we grew up with - which is why we call it by the name of the environments.  No one wants to go to another day of school.  At the heart of it all, this is about your child's spiritual journey!  It's important to us and we want it to be important enough to you that you would be willing to make sacrificial changes to make and keep the commitment to attend the 9:30 service 3 out of 4 Sundays a month.  How will we know it's important to you...we'll see you and your children consistently, engaging community and growing spiritually!

More information on the Orange Strategy that we use in family ministry at Hillside can be found at www.whatisorange.org.  Check out the Orange Parent tab!

See you on Sunday!!!!