Connected in Christ

Here's a neat way to help the kids in your class or program feel connected to the larger church community:

1) Create a weekly routine of introducing and praying for a member (or family) from your church

• Start with yourself, and then spotlight one child a week until your whole small group (or program) has been introduced and prayed for. Then move on to a new member (or family) of your church each week.


• Since other members of the church probably can't meet you in class each week, use questionnaires to learn more about them.


• If your kids are old enough, brainstorm a set of questions together, then choose 3 or 4 favorite questions. Tip: Include a question about hobbies or interests that your kids can easily follow up on if they are curious.


• Send the questions via email (or snail mail) to church people that your kids frequently see on a Sunday morning or during a midweek program. Include teachers, pastors, elders, worship leaders, children's church leaders, greeters, helpers, and the parents of their classmates.


• If your church is HUGE stick with the kids and/or leaders of your children's ministry, or the main leaders of your church. Or, consider adopting another Sunday school class or small group to focus on for the year. Encourage that group to reciprocate by praying for someone in your class each week as well!

2) Collect questionnaires and photos from church members

• If you're using paper questionnaires, have your kids distribute and collect them before and after a church service. For email, request digital photos along with replies. Create a special folder in your inbox for replies as they come in.


• If you have a photo directory, check with the church administrator to see if you can use the digital images for your project. Otherwise use a digital camera to snap shots of your church family. Set up a photo corner in a visible area where people will be passing through, and encourage your kids to flag people down and help take the photos.

3) Create a photo display that fits your group's personality

• Design a scrapbook of photos with enough space to add one per week.


• Use butcher paper to draw a mural of your church with large open windows. Cut the photos around the edges to fashion heads peeking out windows or people waving and standing in front of the church. Tip: for this option try to be consistent about how close people stand to the camera. If individuals submit photos you may need to use a program like Adobe Photoshop to make the people in the pictures a consistent size.


• Decorate your room, a wall, or a bulletin board with paper chain people, adding photo faces of the real people from your congregation. Include the heading "Faith Family" or "Connected by Christ" to remind kids that the church is a very special community.


• Keep it simple by printing 4x6 photos and taping them to rectangles of colorful construction paper or cardstock. Then stick them on the wall with a little poster putty. Tip: arrange the photos to form a shape, like the outline of a church, a cross, the letters in your church name (if it's short). You can even build the shape in advance with the construction paper rectangles, and then watch the shape fill with people as the weeks go on!

4) Encourage your kids to build community

As kids "meet" a new person or family each week by seeing their picture, learning a little about them, and praying for them, encourage the kids to look for that person or family on Sunday morning.

• Let kids know where they might see the person of the week (greeting at the door, preaching, passing around the offering plate, or checking kids into the nursery), and encourage them to introduce themselves.


• If the individual, couple, or family is familiar to someone in your group, ask that child to tell something that they like about the featured person/family.


• Check in each week to see if anyone has seen or met one of the people or families you've been praying for, and make a game out of reviewing names as the weeks go on ("This morning I was greeted with a smile by one of the people on our prayer wall--can anyone guess who that was?").


• Remind kids that prayer is an important ministry that they can be part of--we pray for people because we care about their lives and we trust God to take care of them.

As your kids become more familiar with the faces they see from week to week, they'll feel more at home in the congregation and more comfortable reaching out to help others feel welcome as well!