RELEVANT CHILDREN'S MINISTRY: family discipleship

Showing posts with label family discipleship. Show all posts

How Parents Can Maximize Family Dinner Time

7:13 AM Dale Hudson

One of the best times parents can invest in and disciple their children is at dinner time.

The first way parents can maximize dinner time is to actually sit down together for dinner.

In a day when families are very busy and rushing from one activity to another, one sport to another, one karate lesson to another, it can be challenging to sit down together as a family for dinner.

Parents have to be intentional about sitting down with their children and eating dinner together. Going through the drive-thru and eating in the car together on the way to a game is not what we are referring to. To maximize the time, families need to be sitting together at home around the dinner table. For many families, it's the only time everyone is in the same room at the same time, so seize the opportunity.

Here are some tips to pass along to the parents in your church.

A goal should be to get everyone talking. Ask the children questions like these:

What was the best part of your day?

What was the most challenging part of your day?

What movie do you want to see?

What video game is your favorite?

How is school going?

It's also important for the kids to see dad and mom interacting with each other and sharing about their day. Parents must lead by example.

Make it fun. Let Friday or Saturday night be pizza night or taco night or special dessert night. Let kids decide what they'd like to have for dinner on these nights.

Put away the phones. The average parent only looks into the eyes of his or her child about 15 seconds a day. Dinner time is one if the best opportunities to put down the phones and have heart-to-heart interactions. Our phones are an important part of our lives. It's like they are an extension of us. Don't think so? Try going a day without knowing where your phone is. That would cause some major anxiety for most people.

When you put down your phones during dinner time, it shows the members of your family that they are more important than what's going on with your phone.

Disciple your children. This is a good time to go over a take home paper or other discipleship tools from the past weekend. Read a Bible verse and talk about it. Let kids ask any questions they may have about the Bible and the lesson.

Pray together. I remember when I was a child, my parents had a small box that was full of missionary prayer cards. At the end of each meal, we would pull out one of those cards and pray together for the missionary. That time of prayer impacting me then and still does to this day.

Obviously you want to pray and thank God for the food He has provided. But you should also close the dinner time with prayer. Keep a list of prayer requests. Pray over the list and share praise reports of answered prayer.

Share these tips with the families in your ministry. Our goal is to equip parents so they in return can disciple and equip their children. Dinner time is a key time when parents can invest in their children and grow together as a family.

Dinner Time Discipleship

8:25 AM Dale Hudson

63% of fathers who live at home with a child that is ages 0 to 18, say they eat dinner with their child every day. 27% say they eat dinner with their child several times a week. Only 8% said they shared dinner with their kids once a week or less.

Bottom line - many fathers eat the evening meal with their children. And if you strategically encourage fathers to make the most of this time, they can have of a great family discipleship opportunity.

As a children's ministry leader who is trying to empower parents to be the spiritual leader of their home, you can help them leverage this time for family discipleship.

Here are some tips to pass along to parents about not just eating with their kids, but also facilitating "dinner table discipleship."

Pray for the meal. Pause to thank God for His provision. Go around and have family members share something they are thankful for before you pray.

Provide parents with key questions from the past weekend's lesson at church. Here are some ways you can do this.

Hard copy take home paper. Rather than handing your take home paper to the kids, hand them to parents as they are leaving church. If you do this, you have a better chance of seeing them actually being used as opposed to seeing them on the ground in the church parking lot.

Text message. Send parents a text message with a few key questions from the weekend lesson. Send it a few minutes before dinner time.

Place mat. I was recently at a church that does this. They create a place mat with questions and activities from the weekend lesson for parents and kids to do together.

Online family devotions. Create a web page or Facebook page that has questions and activities from the previous weekend lesson. Everyone can pull up the site on their smart phones and go through the follow up questions and activities together.

Here are some other things you can do for dinner table discipleship:

Ask open-ended questions that will get conversation started.

Take prayer requests from each family member and then pray for the needs.

Don't make it too long. Keep it at 10 to 15 minutes max. If you go longer, they may start checking out on you. Some of the things mentioned above can be done while the family is eating vs. after they are done eating.

Turn off the TV. In many homes, the TV isn't turned off until bed time. Families watch TV even during dinner time. Turn it off during dinner time. This will help kids (and parents) focus on conversation rather than what's on TV.

One of the places that is mentioned in Deuteronomy 6 for family discipleship is when you are sitting at home. One of best opportunities to do this, is when you are sitting at home around the dinner table.

We live in busy, busy times. Someone quickly prays and thanks God for the food. Then families rush through dinner and as soon as their plates are clean, they head their separate ways.

If you want to see the families in your church start engaging in dinner table discipleship, then emphasize it. Provide some simple tools they can use. Talk about it at church. Show parents the great opportunity they have to help their family grow in their faith.

We've heard the statement that says, "Families that pray together stay together." It is so true. Better yet, I think we can expand on that by saying,

"Families who do discipleship together, grow in their faith together."

Your turn. Share with us more ideas about discipleship at home. What have you seen be effective for this? What are some other tools or resources you recommend for seeing kids discipled around the dinner table? We look forward to reading your ideas and input in the comment section below.

Don't Overlook This Big Influence in a Child's Life

9:35 AM Dale Hudson

We often talk about what an important influence parents are in their child's life. And it's true. Parents are the biggest influence in a child's life.

But...hang onto that thought for a minute. There may be someone else who we are overlooking when it comes to influencing children.

In fact, some researchers say this person welds even more influence than parents in a child's life.

Who is it? Their pastor? No. Their grandparents? No. Their teacher? No. A sports coach? No.

Okay...here's the big reveal. It's their siblings. Yes, you read it correctly. When it comes to our development, brothers and sisters can be even more influential than parents. This includes when the sibling is "older and cooler" or "younger and bothersome."

82% of kids live with a sibling. That's a higher number than kids who live with their father. Think about it. Our sibling will be in our life longer than even our parents. Siblings affect a child's life as they are growing up together. This is true in both positive and negative relationships.

When a child's relationship with their sibling is harmful, it can lead to increased use of drugs and alcohol. And when a sibling bullies his or her brother or sister, it can cause the child to become depressed, anxious and even engage in self-harm.

However, when the relationship is good, the sibling benefits greatly. Research suggests that as kids' relationship with their parents grows different over time, their relationship with their brothers and sisters becomes stronger.

Older siblings can also influence younger siblings to engage in risky behavior. Younger children want to be like their older siblings and usually admire them. This makes them more susceptible to trying things that are harmful. Why? Because their older brother or sister is doing it.

An example is pregnancies. Girls are more likely to get pregnant outside of wedlock if an older sibling did so first.

Sibling influence is for a life-time. A survey was done of more than 1 million Swedes and the results found that the risk of having a heart attack spikes after a sibling dies from having a heart attack.

We spend the majority of our time, resources and strategy trying to help parents be the primary spiritual influence in their children's lives. And we should.

But...this may fall short if we don't also influence siblings.

I believe we need to go to the drawing board and come up with a new strategy that includes influencing siblings and helping them discover how they can make a positive difference in the lives of their younger brothers and sisters.
I don't know of anyone who is including a strategy to influence siblings. And that means we are missing a key element in raising kids to love Jesus.

What if...

We taught pre-teens how to influence their younger siblings for Christ?

We showed elementary children how to read Bible stories to their younger siblings?

We encouraged teenagers to be intentional about helping disciple their younger brothers and sisters?

We had teens participate in their brother's and/or sister's milestones.

Your turn. The floor is yours. How much influence do you think a sibling has? What are some ways we an influence and partner with brothers and sisters?