How (not to) engage in mission with young children

Image: jannoon028 / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I have a vivid memory from 2007.

It is etched on my brain because it became a “kairos” moment for me and my husband, Rich. At the time we were living on an inner-city estate. Part of our “missional activity” involved weekly door knocking to various houses .We would often be invited in to chat, pray, and read the bible with people. I would take our eldest son, Josiah, who was at the time around 18 months old. On this particular day we were in one home praying for one of the women who had broken her leg. I had left Josiah to amuse himself. Mid-way-through-prayer-for healing I became distracted by a loud unceasing banging. I peeked through my closed eyes to see my adorable toddler whacking the woman’s washing machine with one of her crutches. I guess maybe he wasn’t so enamoured with the “missional activity” as I was.

That moment confirmed what I was beginning to already conclude: mission with families is a different ballgame. We had moved specifically to the area because we wanted to reach out to the local community, but with a toddler and another baby on the way we needed to re-think. Being missional couldn’t look the same for us as it did to most of the other young adults who were part of our team.

So I swopped the door-knocking with trips to the park, the library, and the local baby groups. Having a baby (or a dog) instantly opens up relationships. We invited people into our family activity. We had one woman who would turn up on-the-dot- at 5.30 every evening. She would come in, put the kettle on for us all, help bath Josiah, and then sit down and read the bible with us as a family. Our friendship with her developed from a simple act of inviting her to choose a Christmas tree with us.

When we miscarried a baby we invited people in the community to join with us in a ceremony to plant a tree in remembrance. Allowing others to minister to us in times of sorrow is a powerful thing, and we found relationships deepened so much in doing this.

Some other things we have tried:

• Litter-picking and prayer-walking in our local area as a family.
• An alpha-course in our front room with another mum who was keen to learn more of Jesus.
• Opportunities to pray for other mums just by being present at toddler groups.
• Just this morning we simply took the kids with us to a few of our neighbours to give out small Christmas gifts, and a card with a little prayer for the family inside.
• Kids parties
• “Hanging-out” with other families and mums

These are ‘normal’ things we can do as a family, not additional missional-add-ons. They are small, simple acts of engaging with those who don’t yet know Jesus. And they are completely accessible as a family. We haven’t always seen much visible fruit from the things we’ve done, and we’ve made many mistakes along the way, but it’s a journey God is taking us on. We are constantly re-thinking what it looks like to reach out to those God gives us; we now have three children and with each season of life our approach needs to adapt according to the demands and needs of family life. What worked 5 years ago with one child no longer works with three children. I know that as we offer ourselves and our family to God even in the simplest of ways he can use it for His glory – because that’s the kind of amazing God we have.

How have you engaged in mission with children – we’d love to hear your stories and testimonies to encourage and inspire one another.

Written by Anna Robinson

Picture from http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/view_photog.php?photogid=2337

Missional Communities with Youth, Kids and Families.

This week we begin a new series exploring developing missional communities with Youth, Kids and Families.  As I write I honestly don't feel like I have lots of tips and ideas for how to make this work.  In fact in our context this is one of the key questions that we are trying to crack.

What I do have is conviction backed up by story.  My conviction is this:  the best missional communities are the ones that start to function as family and family includes more than one generation.

A little bit of our story:

A few years ago we were sat with some now-very-good friends talking about our lives.  We were both couples about to start families and both recognised we needed some back up going into that new phase of life.  So we started meeting once a week and having dinner then doing the pub quiz.  Time went on,  babies came and so did new members, some who were also young married couples about to have kids others who were young adults.  We were never an exclusively family focussed community; we were just a family.

Community life began to change a little to accommodate the arrival of little people. We couldn't just meet on nights any more,  so we set up a weekend brunch.   Babysitting rotas and plans had to be co-ordinated and plans for worship or mission had to accommodate the potential risk of loud crying,  cold children or the need for feeding.  All of this I think humanized the community,  made it more real.

We had lots of picnics and barbecues,  we did a few dedications or baptisms,  we planned some family fun days and somehow the boundaries between the community life and just family life began to get very blurred.  Young adults came to take our young kids out for trips and give us a break.  Community members became lifelong friends and god-parents.   We took little faith-risks together, and involved our kids.  We went and served our community together,  with our kids.  And all this seems to have been attractive,  other people joined us and we grew.

Our kids knew they were part of that family,  their closest friends were from the community,  they got to experience being raised by a group and so the faith of the community started to become their faith too.

We've moved on to a different place now,  God called us there to work specifically with Children,  Youth and Young Adults.  We're trying to figure out how to connect them up with missional communities.  We don't really have a set of ten easy steps to do that yet,  just a desire to try it out and a personal experience that it can work,  can be a lot of fun,  can be beautiful.

Maybe there are some readers out there who have stories similar to this.  If so I'd love to hear your thoughts: How do you include kids and youth in your missional community?