Every Age and Stage

Our church loves having people of every age and stage together in church, actively participating and serving each other, to the glory of God.

At the same time, we’re also committed to teaching people in ways that most-effectively communicate according to their developmental stages.

To try and achieve both goals, we run kids’ programs during a part of our Sunday services, so that the younger people can have teaching that’s best for their learning.

Plus, now we’re introducing our all-new midweek kids’ program, Spark, we think it’s possible to keep the K to 6 kids in church a bit more than before, because they can now benefit from a 90-minute program each Friday from 4:30pm.

So, this year we’re trialling a change that sees the Joeys (babies to preschool) kids go out a little earlier (around the ten-minute mark) and have the Roos (Kindy to Year 6) kids stay in a little longer (around the 45-minute mark).

This will mean that the K to 6 kids can be in church to participate with the prayers, as well as hear the answers to the weekly questions—some of which they’ve been asking but not hearing the answers!

This will encourage our church to be even more intergenerational, as it will help us try and get older and younger people together to lead us in prayers, Bible readings, and other things upfront.

Of course, if younger kids want to stay in church with their parents or carers, we’re totally fine with that, and we’ll keep working hard to make the Bible talks as clear as possible for the widest audience.

When Paul wrote to the church in Ephesus, he directly addressed the children (Ephesians 6:1-2) so we know that what we’re trying to do is pretty normal, at least for the early church.

But above all, we just love the picture of all ages and stages together… a slice of heaven!

JODIE McNEILL 

(Photo credit: toptenalternatives.co)