EMAIL 1
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Subject Line: Moments That Matter
Dear Parents,
We wanted to take a moment to acknowledge something: There is a lot happening in your world right now. We know you’re busy and juggling so much with your child as they grow and experience new things. Between school, activities, and everything in between, it can sometimes feel like a lot to manage. As they continue to grow, they’re reaching different milestones and moments that will one day hold special meaning in their lives.
In the midst of it all, we want to encourage you not to miss the moments that will matter the most in the long run. While those natural, everyday milestones are important, it’s even more vital for your child to experience spiritual milestones that will help build their faith. These are the moments that will shape their relationship with God and help them see how He’s been guiding their steps all along the way. We want to help you recognize and embrace those moments, so we’ve put together resources in our Online Parenting Class this month that are designed to support you on that journey.
Be sure to check out the resource called Creating and Celebrating Spiritual Milestones. This resource will help parents think through what spiritual milestones are and how to celebrate them. These are special moments in the life of your child and family!
To watch this month’s video or download the Toolbox Resource, click on the links below.
[ INSERT LINK TO ONLINE PARENTING CLASS VIDEO ]
[ INSERT LINK TO TOOLBOX RESOURCE ]
We are praying for you!
[INSERT LEADER’S SIGNATURE HERE]
EMAIL 2
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Subject Line: Spiritual Milestones – The Foundation of Faith
Dear Parents,
As a parent, you know your child is already involved in so many things in life—school, activities, friends, and family. There’s always something going on, and they’re constantly experiencing new things that will shape who they are as they continue to grow. These moments will no doubt create memories that will stay with them for years to come.
But we know that you want more for your child than just fun experiences and good memories. You want them to have meaningful moments that will shape their faith—spiritual milestones that will become the foundation for a lifelong relationship with God. Part of helping them experience these milestones is making sure they’re in environments where their faith can grow, like church.
This month, we are offering resources to help our parents in celebrating spiritual milestones. These are huge moments in the life of your child and family and we want you to embrace them. Be sure to check out our Parent Toolbox resource for the month called Creating and Celebrating Spiritual Milestones. We’ve also got a helpful article titled, Faith Milestones Matter. There’s some simple but meaningful things you can do as parents to celebrate these monumental moments.
We hope you know that we’re here to support you in guiding your child toward these significant spiritual moments. We want to partner with you on this journey of leading your child into a deeper, lasting faith. Let us know how we can help along the way!
To see this month’s parent video, click on the link below.
To watch this month’s video, download the Toolbox Resource, or read the article, click on the links below.
[ INSERT LINK TO M2P PARENTING ARTICLE ]
[ INSERT LINK TO M2P ONLINE PARENTING CLASS VIDEO ]
[ INSERT LINK TO TOOLBOX RESOURCE ]
Don’t ever hesitate to reach out if we can do anything for you!
[INSERT LEADER’S SIGNATURE HERE]
M2P KIDS November Parent Video Script
So, you’re the parent of a child. They might be a baby or toddler, or maybe your former toddler is in elementary school and plowing towards their teenage years. In reality, your child has a lot more life ahead of them than they do behind them. They already have a lot of great memories, but they have so much ahead of them.
Here’s my encouragement to you today. As you go through the next few seasons of life with your child … don’t miss it! Now, you may have heard some version of that before, some encouragement to make sure you stay present, and you take it all in along the way. That’s not what I mean. You see, your child is going to have a lot of great moments like birthdays and things they accomplish. They’re going to leave elementary school and go to middle school. They’re eventually going to make it to high school and get their driver’s license and then they’ll graduate high school and be off into the world. And all along the way you’ll be there to celebrate them and take pictures and hopefully be really proud. If you get to experience all of that, you likely won’t miss it.
But, if you’re not paying attention, if you’re not intentional in a different kind of way, not only might you miss some things, but your child will too. As the parent of two college students, we have a lot of those memories (along with some memories that aren’t so great). But, if you’re watching this, you likely don’t just want for your kids to get to their young adult years and have a bunch of “good” memories. You want more for them. You likely want them to be able to point to some spiritual milestones that have helped them begin to develop a real relationship with God and grow in their faith in a real way. You don’t want them to just remember going to church, but you want them to develop a faith in Jesus that makes a real difference in their life.
So I would encourage you, as their parent, to position them in a way that leads them to some spiritual milestones. Spiritual milestones are simply significant moments in a child’s walk with God. In order for your child to experience these milestones, you might have to arrange your family life in such a way that fosters faith more than it fosters anything else. You can put your child in situations and environments that will lead them to experience God in a way that creates these milestones that are so important to their spiritual development. The first environment that really matters when it comes to all of this is your home. Make your home a place where faith in God is at the center of all you do. It can’t be an add on or an afterthought, because if it is, your kids will pick up on that. If you, as their parent, aren’t prioritizing your relationship with God and making your home a place where faith is real, your child is less likely to prioritize their faith and experience real spiritual milestones.
The next place your kids can experience spiritual milestones is in your church. My guess is that your church has some milestone moments like giving out Bibles at a certain age, a confirmation class or baptism moments. Your church might celebrate when your child moves from one grade to another. There are lots of opportunities for your child to participate in spiritual milestones at your church. But the only way that your child experiences these milestones at church is if your child is … at church. And I don’t just mean for the moments or events. In order for these milestones to have any real meaning, your child has to have relationships at church that make the moments meaningful. They have to know people who know them, and they have to feel like a part of the community. If you just parachute your kids in for these seemingly significant moments without them actually being a part of something bigger, these moments won’t mean anything to your kids. They may be present for an event, but it won’t really be a spiritual milestone. Make church involvement and participation a part of your family’s life and rhythm and help your kids feel like your faith community is a second home.
And then, when your kids experience spiritual milestones, recognize and celebrate them. Organize special family moments, write letters of encouragement, pray together and pray for your kids as they move from one phase of life to the next. Make a big deal out of the decisions they make and the steps they take and help them see that God is with them on their journey.
Part of what we are trying to do is help our kids develop a faith of their own, and a big part of that for them is going through spiritual milestones along the way. So don’t miss it. Don’t be so focused on celebrating and pushing your kids into the milestones that the world has to offer that you miss something much bigger. Lead them to a real faith in Jesus that is marked by significant milestone moments along the way that they can hold onto for a long time.