So, an idea that has been running through my head since a couple weeks ago is this idea of students and parents in the same small group at church. I can only wonder how this could benefit families growing together in their faith.
This all has to do with trying to blur those lines. I have been extremely influenced by the book “Slow Fade,” which talks a lot about keeping students connected to the church past high school. When I start thinking of why students often fall away from the church after 12th grade, I know that one big reason is because they do not feel like they are connected to the church as a whole. One way we can fix that is through serving, but another way could be to include high school students in our adult classes, etc. That got me thinking about small groups. How cool would it be to provide an opportunity for students and their parents to learn about the Bible side by side (in addition to Sunday morning). This could be a great catalyst to taking that discussion throughout the week. If we purposely start the discussion with them all together, it seems like that would help.
One of the other ideas that I had was to provide parent groups. Once a month, usually the first week of our series, we have music at youth group and invite the parents for a family worship time. We think it might be a great idea to have an adult group(s) while all the students were in their small groups. During that time, we could discuss the topic of the series and how they can talk about it at home and work on it together as a family.
The main idea through is to be purposeful in getting families to discuss and grow in their faith together. Whatever we can do to help this along is a positive move in my book.
Have you done something similar to this at your church or ministry? If so, please share your ideas and thoughts. I would love to hear how this might or might not work. I know every setting is different, but it does benefit from hearing others’ stories.
Steve Cullum 