Empty Car Seats and Inspiring Outreach

I’ve always owned small cars: Ford Lazer, Ford Festiva, Mazda 121 (the old jelly-bean shape) and now a Hyundai i30. But last week, I found myself checking how much a mini van would cost me. Why would I, with petrol prices skyrocketing and set to go even higher with current trade embargos rolling out, seek to upsize rather than downsize my car?

The answer is a prayer I recently challenged the children in my church to pray.

I encouraged them to start praying for their spare car seat.

Of course, I don’t think inanimate objects require prayer. Nor do I want the children I lead to think this either! The prayer was in the context of re-launching our Kids’ Clubs after an almost 2-year COVID and building-project induced hiatus.

In the before times, the Kids’ Clubs at our church had about 20-30 kids – a really good turn out! The only problem was, almost all of the kids who attended were from church families. Somewhere along the line, the groups had lost their outward focus.

In order to address this, we decided on one simple concrete reminder for the children who were coming along to the new groups: think about who you can bring in your spare car seat on Friday, pray about them throughout the week, and get inviting.

The result wasn’t immediate, but it was growing. On the first week of Kids’ Club, there were three new children. On the second week there were 8. In total, we’ve connected with more than 15 new children in the first month of running the re-launched club.

And here is where I start thinking about upsizing my car – because last week I had to turn two of my sons’ friends away because we had run out of seats. Our two empty seats were already full! Another family in our church with 4 kids have asked their older two to get the bus home so that they can have more empty seats for friends! Other families are taking advantage of their multiple cars to transport more children to the group.

The ministry of the spare car seat is about utilising what you have for God’s kingdom. There are other ways to do it. A friend of mine told me about children in his church who choose to have Birthday parties with Kids’ Club in mind – inviting all their friends to join in Kids’ Club and then come over for Pizza afterwards. Other’s schedule catch-ups and playdates before church on a Saturday afternoon, so that it’s easier to invite friends and their parents to come along to church with them.

There are lots of ways we can take the ordinary and use them for extraordinary purposes – hopefully the example of the spare car seat can encourage you to think of other ways to encourage the children and families in your churches to grow God’s kingdom.