Ways Your Child Can Serve the Church

Ways Your Child Can Serve the Church - Parenting Like HannahPerhaps the most underused resource in the Church is our children and teens. Oh, many churches sink tons of money and people resources into keeping them entertained or from “disturbing” adult activities or if you are blessed, helping them learn more about God. Yet, hardly any church is actually tapping into children and teens as a meaningful part of the body – a resource that will benefit both God’s Kingdom and the young people.

Whether or not your church recognizes your child as a valuable, contributing member, you can find ways for your child to serve the church. The ideas below are ways your child can serve without having to go to leaders and plead your child’s cause. If you are able and willing to do that on behalf of all of the young people, that is wonderful and may God bless you as their advocate. If not, that’s fine, too. Just go to that one person who can allow your child to help them and see how God works through the situation.

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Why Your Child Should Be Serving Your Church

Why Your Chidlren Need to Serve at Church - Parenting Like HannahAttend many churches and you would think the old adage “children should be seen and not heard” is still in effect. Often children are hustled out for children’s worship as soon as possible or aren’t even really welcomed into corporate worship at all. You may see a couple of kids picking up attendance cards or used communion cups and even an occasional teen participating in worship leading activities. In general though, children are kept out of the way and either entertained or merely prevented from “disrupting” adults and their activities.

Sadly, it’s these very attitudes and ways of interacting with children that will make it easier for them to leave the church when they are older. Studies are beginning to show one of the worst things you can do for young people is to focus on making sure they are entertained. Young people need to be considered a vital part of the church family in part by encouraging them to serve the church in a variety of ways.

Tomorrow, I will share with you some creative ways your children can serve the church. In the meantime, here are a few of the benefits your children will receive from taking the time and effort to serve their congregation.

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Great Resource on Why Young People Abandon Their Faith

Great Resource on Why Young People Abandon Their Faith - Parenting Like HannahPerhaps, the scariest thing to me about parenting is the fear of my daughter rejecting God. Many of my parenting decisions were made because I wanted to be able to honestly say I did everything I knew how to do to help her be strong spiritually. And yet there are no guarantees your child will be a faithful, productive Christian as an adult. Or are there?

The new book Abandoned Faith by Alex McFarland and Jason Jimenez examines why many young people are abandoning their faith and what parents can do about it. I won’t lie. This is one scary book. If your children are still at home, it will scare the pants off of you – and it should. As someone who works with kids and teens on a regular basis, I can tell you very few parents are doing what they need to do to prepare their children to live an active, productive Christian faith as an adult.

Most of you will lose your kids – watch them reject God and His teachings – because you aren’t doing what you could do now to greatly lessen the chances it will happen. This book does a great job at pointing out the main mistakes parents make when helping their kids develop a strong spiritual life.

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Fun Ways to Teach Your Kids the Parables of Jesus

Fun Ways to Teach Your Kids the Parables of Jesus - Parenting Like HannahHave you ever thought about why Jesus used parables at times to teach people? Perhaps it was because he was trying to help the people understand concepts that were difficult to understand or entirely new to them. Jesus knew that by comparing them to relatable things and circumstances, they could better understand the lessons he wanted them to learn.

For your children, many of the common every day things Jesus talks about in his parables have little if any emotional connection to your kids. Adults can process them intellectually, but kids and teens may not have the life experience or empathy to do so. Yet these are vital lessons Jesus wants your kids to understand.

Thankfully, there are some fun ways to help your kids experience and better understand those parables. You can do them as a family devotional or just a little life lesson during your day. There are probably a lot of things you can do, but here are some ideas to get you started.

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Christian Kids and Movies

Christian Kids and Movies - Parenting Like HannahThere has been a lot of back and forth on social media lately regarding a couple of the new movies hitting theaters. Various Christians have posted their opinions about whether or not Christians should support the movies by buying tickets and/or whether children should be allowed to see them. This is one of those areas where God didn’t give us hard and fast rules, but general principles we can apply.

If you are trying to dedicate your kids to God, how can you know what movies you should allow your child to see? Are there issues besides glorified sin that should make you think twice before taking your child? (Ask my daughter about her first movie – rated “G”, but it absolutely terrified her. She practically crawled over her dad’s head so she could get out of there.) Are there any hard and fast rules for Christians to follow about movies?

I can’t make those ultimate decisions for you, but I can guide you as to which questions you should ask yourself before allowing your kids to see a movie.

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