Lockdown 2.0 - Creative ministry ideas for children and families

As I write this, Sydney has now been under a COVID-19 induced lockdown for seven weeks. Across the Greater Sydney Area, churches have once again found themselves in the unenviable position of seeking to serve their members, disciple the saints, and evangelise the not-yet-Christians in their midst without being able to gather in person.

As was the case in Sydney’s first lockdown in mid-2020, children’s ministry leaders have sought to be creative and wise in their approach, utilising technology while keeping the discipleship of children and families at the centre of their ministry.

Last year I wrote about six creative ideas  that children’s ministry leaders were adopting during the first COVID lockdown. My motivation here is the same again. In the following four snapshots, I want to share a variety of different ideas. My hope is not that you will necessarily copy any of these strategies exactly (though of course, you’re welcome to!), but that you will be inspired in your church to be equally thoughtful and creative in a way that is relevant to your ministry context.

‘Bible Stories With Suz’

Suz Mann from Emmanuel Anglican Church, Glenhaven has been using the live video feature on Facebook to read the Bible with children and families from her church.

“I was very passionate about ensuring that we reached all of our children and families during this current lockdown period. Doing ‘Bible Stories with Suz’ gave us the opportunity to reach our youngest children who would not be engaging in our Sunday Zoom classes. It was a creative and simple way to connect with all of our children and families. To be honest I love teaching these kids about Jesus and it gave me an opportunity to engage with them regularly.

I am reading every Monday, Wednesday & Friday at 4.00pm on Facebook live. On Mondays and Wednesdays I read out of the ‘Read Aloud Bible Stories’ and on Fridays I read from the ‘Jesus Storybook Bible’ to connect with our older kids. So much fun!

I have a lot of support from our kids and families, they love it. I have different children on different days so doing it over 3 days ensures everyone can jump on. I even have some Grandparents connecting, so we are also reaching our older members of our church family as well. One parent said that they were..

"Super excited for these stories. My child loves bible stories with pictures. She was mesmerised the whole time and pretty sure she was convinced you could see her".

Being in lockdown has given us the opportunity to connect with our church families in a different way than we normally would and it's so good.”

 One-On-One Family Discipleship

Meaghan Gates at St Michael’s, Wollongong has taken a similar approach to Suz, but with a large leadership team has been able to assign one leader per family to do a once-a-week video check in.

“Last year we put a lot of energy into producing digital content, but we found that in our context, it was quite tiring for leaders and there wasn’t significant uptake within families. So, this year we decided to change strategy and put our energy into individual discipleship for our kids. Part of the reason we settled on this was  it encompasses the simple basics of discipleship: God’s word, prayer and relationship. Last year the relationship is what we lacked, and when we returned to church (whilst still live-streaming as well) some families didn’t prioritise meeting in person. They’d gotten comfortable at home and didn’t see the value in it.

We’ve assigned each of our leaders to one family, who they video call once a week at an agreed time. The leaders spend time checking in with the kids and families and then read the Bible with them, following the curriculum that we had already planned for this term. We really wanted to emphasise the value of learning alongside your brother and sister in faith by modelling that relationship not only to the kids but also their families.

It also meant that every leader could be engaged during lockdown. If more than half of them were able to ‘opt out’ of serving (as happened last year), how does this demonstrate how valued they are as disciples and disciplers? Meeting with the same family each week meant that they could revel in the clear growth they see each week with those same children and take heart in the way that the Lord is using them for his good work.

I spent time with the leaders beforehand, providing guidance on the format of how each call should go. I also was able to drop around CEV Bibles to every leader to read with the families and Youthworks’ Kids Read cards  to stimulate discussion. We also made sure that there were simple Safe Ministry practices in place, like having to be in an open family space and not in bedrooms.

The parents have really valued this time, as well as the kids. Even though families are using technology constantly for school, we’ve found that they still value these calls and the relationships that are being fostered with the leaders. And the hope is that these relationships continue once lockdown is over. It’s not a matter of “oh we’re getting the same church experience at home as we would in person” but “hey, we want to go back to church to see how this leader is going because we value and care for him/her as a sibling in the faith.”

 Equipping Parents For Home Discipleship

Mel Bell from St Andrew’s, Roseville has used the lockdown period to complete a long-term project, providing a comprehensive list of resources that parents and caregivers could use to disciple the children in their homes.

“Our focus in lockdown has been equipping parents to get deeper in the Word with their kids and trying to encourage and inspire them to use the extra time at home purposefully for discipleship. So, we wanted to give them access to as many resources as we could - daily devotionals for every day of lockdown, a weekly, parent-led church experience and ideas of other resources that are easily accessible.

We have been conscious that we have a big range of families; some that feel really confident in their discipleship and would benefit from being stretched, but many that are brand new to Christianity and need simple resources for all ages and stages. Plus, we'd been wanting to build a resource page of our website  for a while, and lockdown has given us the perfect time to do it! 

We got in contact with as many of our networks and parents as we could and asked what they have found helpful and started to sift through it all.

It's been such a joy to be introduced to many new resources that are out there, and see what parents have loved getting into with their kids over the years. We are excited to keep adding more resources to this list in the future and a build rigorous resource platform for our parents.

The feedback has been awesome. We are slowly seeing more parents feeling more confident to have more discipleship conversations with their kids; so praise God! He is still very much at work, even in this time.”

 Kids Club TV

Lauren Dewhurst at Christ Church, St Ives has been utilising the creative skills of her Children’s Ministry Team to be producing a half hour kids program , specifically for their Friday afternoon group. These videos copy a Playschool-style aesthetic, with very basic backgrounds, dress ups and props, but are edited together to provide engaging Christian content for children and families.

“We made some videos like this last year for our mission during lockdown! Families loved watching them together, so we replicated it. We have people willing and able to serve, so that makes the whole thing achievable.

During term 2 we had about 100 kids coming each week on a Friday so we wanted to capture that audience and we were pretty sure the Sunday kids would follow.  We release the videos weekly 4pm Friday which is our kids club time. However, they can be watched on demand, so families can pick the best time for them and their kids. We are getting high interaction from our Friday kids and our Sunday kids love them too.  Families watch together and we get good feedback and get lots of views.

They have bite sized teaching moments so that everyone can watch, from creche to preschool and school kids!

We also know that people are sharing the videos with other families and friends, and they are accessible to kids all over Sydney, like my nieces and nephews!

The other thing we are doing this week that has gained lots of traction with our families is a virtual fireside which consists of songs, stories and prayers. It's targeted at kids but enjoyable for the whole family. We wanted to create memories and moments to speak truth into lives so we created the experience. Families are building a fire, fake fire, Netflix fire and coming to sing, be encouraged and pray. It's 1/2 hour and honestly has been a really easy invitation. We will replicate it every second week or so if it goes well.”