One of the things we would love to have people in prayer about is what our next step should be in caring for the hearts and minds of our children at Seven Mile Road.
In our quest to become a Biblically-faithful community, raising our children well becomes an essential pursuit of ours. Scripture is replete with commands to do this, and Jesus modeled care for the “least of these” beautifully. With 41 children 10 and under and 7 or 8 pregnant moms, we can’t swing and miss on this.
For the last 1-2 years, Justin has headed up “children’s ministry” here. That has basically meant running a “Sunday-School-ish” program at 9AM on Sunday mornings for children 10 and under, breaking the kids up into 3 age groups. Maybe 5 to 7 families have taken advantage of this regularly.
As we transition into a new year, all 3 of our key leaders will not be able to continue in their roles… Myrriah (teaching our youngest) will become a mom herself in September, Justin will be transitioning to other pastoral responsibilities, and Jonathan Hicks (teaching our oldest) is right now driving to Dallas to begin a college ministry there. While many have volunteered to help teach, these three were committed weekly.
In addition, we are thinking through how the church could best come alongside parents in this endeavor to raise children rooted in the Gospel. Is that through every-Sunday-morning classes? Is there another time that we should be gathering our children and families for catechism and soulcare? Should we not be seperating our kids by age? Should we be putting resources in parents’ hands and letting them do teaching in the pace of their family life? Is there a curriculum we can be giving to parents? Recommended books to work through? And if we are running more intense weekly stuff that needs lots of leadership and planning and organization, who is leading? Who is teaching?
And of course, our vision for our kids involvement at Seven Mile needs to be broader than just a program. We involve them in our worship every week, laying hands on them in prayer. We run Seven Mile Moms so that moms can be shaped and equipped to thrive in their primary calling. We exhort dads to be engaged, leading, loving, sacrificing. We pray regularly for our kids. We are filled with hope that God will answer those prayers.
Anyway, be praying. And if loving our kids, teaching our kids, helping our parents know how to lead the Gospel charge at home, etc. is a passion of yours, it would be great if we knew that. Start a conversation with me on The City is that is the case.
And we’ll let everyone know when we are pulling together a vision meeting for this whole deal.
And be rocked by this teaching of Jesus: http://www.gnpcb.org/esv/search/?q=Mark+9%3A33-37