Share your children’s ministry ideas for a ‘new normal’ amid COVID-19 by collaborating with others. What has worked? More importantly, what didn’t work? Leave a comment below, reply to a comment, and come together with your fellow M2P Members.
Share your children’s ministry ideas for a ‘new normal’ amid COVID-19 by collaborating with others. What has worked? More importantly, what didn’t work? Leave a comment below, reply to a comment, and come together with your fellow M2P Members.
We can’t wait to learn from what you are doing! Our team has really focused on equipping mom and dad with resources to use with the kids not just to entertain the kids. We this as a huge chance to empower parents. Right now our team gathers resources and emails parents with them on Fridays. We are keeping it very simple…
Would love to hear what is working and not working with your church?
Hey– I was talking to a minister today who shared with me stats from Lifeway released on April 2nd :
“As members have lost income, churches are struggling as a result. Half of pastors (52%) say giving has decreased compared to earlier this year. One in 5 (18%) say giving has continued at similar levels, while 2% say it has increased. Around a quarter of pastors (28%) aren’t sure.
Among those who say giving is down at their church, 60% say it has decreased by 25% or more, including 30% who say it has dropped by at least 50%.”
I’m curious how this has affected the giving in your church?
To respond to Jeremy’s question first, our giving has remained steady. Praise the Lord! We’re still doing a lot of planning to cut budget areas to be as frugal as we can since we don’t know when/if giving will decrease. Some people in our body have done their giving “ahead” so things may look different as the months go on.
As far as ministry stuff, we have felt a great freedom to use this time to transfer responsibility to parents. We are continually encouraging our families to include their kids of all ages as they worship with us online. We send kid-friend sermon note sheets for kids to use. We also send a weekly “Sunday School at Home” email on Fridays with preschool and elementary lessons, color pages, ideas to use throughout the week, etc. Since our kids are all having a lot more screen time with online school and simply being stuck at home, my ministry partner and I (both former elementary teachers) have chosen to not stream a separate children’s service online for the time being. That helps to shift responsibility for at-home discipleship plus, as teachers, we like kids having meaningful things to do outside of technology.
We have started a bi-weekly online event for parents, grandparents and kids of all ages called Family Connect – Home Edition. We do it via Zoom for 90 minutes. We give the families fun challenges to do together in certain time limits…scavenger hunt, silly art projects, etc. They send in pictures. We give out points and prizes. We have a short devotional thought, a time of guided prayer and end with one of the Skit Guys Bedtime Bible Stories. One of our team members contacted the Skit Guys, and Tommy and Eddie recorded a special video just for us! It’s been so much fun that we’re thinking about continuing to do these online events even when we get back to “normal”. It won’t be as frequently, but we think it’s a unique way to impact our families.
I’ve been helping to moderate social media comments during our Sun AM streaming services. It feels like a luxury for me since when we’re in church, I’m almost always with a group of kids or coming in to service late/leaving early to help with something. We working to expand our social media team so when staff goes back to our regular Sun AM responsibilities, we can continue interacting online. Although this is another connection point for people, I worry that people will get used to online “church” so much that they’ll drop out of gathering together even more than they already have. We’ve seen declining attendance, especially in families with children, over the past few years. Weekly attendance is so far from the norm anymore, so I have concerns that this will create a new habit that isn’t necessarily healthy in the long-term.
I guess I had a LOT to say! I’m an introvert, but I am missing the daily contact with my co-workers to bounce these kinds of ideas around! Haha!
Thanks Amy…that is so helpful!