What does your church do for young families?

[SummatAnNowt]

I'm looking for ideas to suggest for our church now there are more of us "younger" people attending. The vicar wants ideas! So I thought I'd see about what has worked in other places.

Oh we have a brill church for young families..!!

We have a creche and Sunday Club during the service (birth up to 12)...

Monday we have our Toddler group (birth to school)

We have a Women's group on a wednesday - during the time that is one there is a creche for the under 3s and a "Music and Dance" type group (really just jumping around a lot) for 3 - 5 year olds.

Friday we have a Bible Study for the Mums where there is a creche running too..

There is a community cafe on Wednesday - Friday all day serving healthy food and treats for anyone in the community that children are welcome at - the NCT branch has a fortnightly "anta natal class reunion" at that on a Friday so the palce is full of babies and new parents then.

During the Easter and October holidays there is a week long Holiday Club for Primary School age children for 2 hours a morning for a week.

All of that, and the church in general has a very family friendly ethos - children are welomed at all times in the services and in the building.

Our church does similar stuff for kids:

Creche and 5 or 6 age-specific Sunday school classes on Sunday morning. Once a month we have Children's Church where the primary-school aged kids go out for most of the service, and have their own full-on service (with worship band etc) in a separate building (1 min away).

Under 1s group once a week (which local HVs also come to).

Toddlers / messy play group once a week.

Primary school kids' club once a week. (We do various youth clubs as well for older kids.)

Summer Holiday club (3-4 days, 2-3 hours a day).

Easter / Christmas activity mornings - we hire a bouncy castle, have various games and craft stuff, refreshments, easter egg hunt etc.

Have to say though - it does tend to be stuff for kids rather than stuff for young families. Did feel somewhat ejected from the 20s / 30s group once we had DS. Really must do something about organising some young family meetups.

Thanks for the ideas

The church is family friendly as in they love to have kids there but there hasn't always been many so most activities and stuff are geared for the older people. But there are more of us with little kids, even in the year and a half I've been going.

Have you come across the Messy Church concept? It seems to be working well in lots of places as a way of being church for families with young children - and a great way to draw in people on the fringes of church life. Have a look here.

Our local Parish church also does a Time for Tea service on a Sunday afternoon. Specifically for pre-school children with their parents - half an hour of songs/prayers/Bible story, including a simple craft, followed by a slap-up afternoon tea, provided by one of the families. It's great for families with lively toddlers who can't face a regular service and the afternoon tea is a good way to build relationships between families.

We have over 200 children in our church.

For the very youngest, we have a creche up to age 2y6m. This then feeds into our various children's groups. We have a group for each school-year group.

Children are welcome in our services and we have activities if they get through the service quicker than the adults. If people come into church with prams or car seats, we can move around our seating to accommodate them - they don't have to be stuck at the back if they don't want to.

We have family services in all school holidays as well as Christian festivals. We have agape-style 'communion' during some of these services.

Midweek, we have a pre-school, mother and toddler group, and children's service. We also support three guiding units. We have adult activities for mostly mums, where we provide a creche, or make it toddler friendly.

We have a holiday club in the summer, and various activities throughout the year for visiting school-aged children (eg craft clubs). We employ a youth pastor and a children's worker who go into schools for assemblies, etc.

Our Sunday evening service is targeted at 14 - 20ish, and is extrememly vibrant. Our 14+ young people do not have Sunday groups - they meet during the week in small groups.

We are CofE, btw.

Wow Scienceteacher - sounds like a fun place!

Just out of interest, are you mainly a young congregation, or are there lots of older people as well? I've recently started working part time as Family and Children's Worker for our church and am getting to grips with the balance between catering really well for younger adults and children while also providing for the "more mature" churchgoer!

I like the idea of activities for the grown-ups with creche. Have been thinking about trying to cater more for the adults that bring their toddlers to our messy play group. What sort of things do you do?

We are all all-age church - a standard parish church. Our eldest is 100, and we have lots of elderly people and empty nesters too. We also have lots of students.

We have four services on a Sunday - 1662, formal (robes, organ, choir), informal (unrobed, music group, praise songs), and fresh expressions. Most of our families come to the informal service as that is when we run children's groups.

When I was a SAHM, I was heavily involved in women's ministry during the week. One of the things we provided a creche for was our women's bible study - it was great to do something intellectual without having to worry about small children. Another good thing to do during the week is Daytime Alpha (or an equivalent course), with a creche. These attract all ages, especially SAHMs and retired people.

Read that as "do to young families" - was picturing ritual sacrifice of teen mums

ok

Smallish congregation.

Has family parade service once a month -w hich is aimed at - ermm families

The other sundays there's Sunday school in the hall for nursery/school age upwards, and a creche in the choir vestry for under 5's. You can either go in with your child, or leave them in there.

Tuesday mornings we've just started a "Coffee Cup" - basically church is open from 8.45 until 10am fo parents to have a cup of coffee (or tea ) before they head home/into town/whatever. It's a CoE school and is right opposite the church and I think the vicar got fed up of parents sitting on her wall chatting so decided to open the church up and offer them a proper seat

Wednesday afternoons straight after school once a month we have "Leapfrog" our after school service - aimed at Infant/Junior school age, but have lots of parents coming with the younger siblings too.

Wednesday evenings "Quinonia" (sp) for YR9 (?) upwards - sort youth/fellowship group for older senior school pupils

Thursday afternoons "Toddler Church" - we have a little 20 minute service aimed at pre-schoolers (0-5) , lots of action songs, little story, marching round church with drums etc. then tea/coffee/squash/biscuits toys in the hall.

Good Friday - always have a children's activity thing in the hall at the same time as the Good Friday meditation is on in the church.

First week of Summer Holidays have a holiday club for YR3+ ages. Last year ours was highly rated on lots of different aspects and this week 3 men are going to pick up and award for having most men involved in the children's work that week

Also the "social committee" - often organise things like "sing-a-along" evenings - we had Grease last year, and Mama Mia this year - ver very popular with the families. In fact the Mama Mia was "advertised" at teh school and they had so many people coming they had to go into the church as the hall couldn't cope with the numbers.

ermm I'm sure there must be more that I've forgotten/

oh and my vicar keeps hinting to me that I should host a house group during the day aimed at parents with young children (as I've said to her several times the one aspect of church life that I feel I miss out on being a single SAHM is being part of a house group) . So wouldn't be so "formal" as the other house groups........she assures me I wouldn't have to lead it..........but I'm not convinced

hi, hijacking this thread slightly but I'd like to get our church to do more in the family service that the children can access - I've had an idea of doing a children friendly service sheet (we're CofE btw) but am relatively new to the church (only confirmed recently) and I have no idea where to start, done a google search to start with but thats it - there seems to be loads of resources about sunday schools and sermons but I was looking more for something the children could follow as part of the main communion. We are having a general worship meeting with the vicar on Tuesday concentrating on music and I'd like to take some ideas with me... does anyones church do something similar now? what kind of thing works? most of the children are pre-school and primary age but to be honest it would be nice to have something for non-church families who visit occasionally too as I know what it feels like to no understand what is going on!

insywinsy - if they are following communion, I would imagine that the words would have to be the same as the ones said by the rest of the congregation.

Are you looking for something that gives a bit of explanation to the various bits? I work in a Catholic school and we have something called the 'Young persons mass book' and it has notes in the margin saying what the various parts of the liturgy mean.

My church is not of a particularly sacramental tradition - when we have family communion (approx. twice a year), we tend to have an agape meal, rather than the children as mere onlookers. I know that many churches have found success in Godly Play, where the children's work mirrors what is going on in the main service, ie by following the lectionary and observing communion.

We have:

Sunday School

MIdweek Kids Club

Summer CLub ( 1 week, including family BBQ)

Family Alpha (Alpha for parents with provided childcare for kids, run at teatime on Friday)

Toddlers Group (called "Playbreak" - mums/carers have cofee/tea in lounge, and church "aunties" (mostly retired women) look after the kids in the hall)

6 weekly "family" services

family visitors

Family "cell" groups - housegroups which include children as well as as the rest of the family

HTH

Weegiemum - how do family cell groups work?

Cornflake girl - I am not in one but I will get in touch the friend who used to be our family pastor and ask her about it for you if you like - she invented them and set them up, she "Mrs All-Age-Worship"

As far as I know they meet at teatime, on Saturday I think. They eat together, do some sung worship together, and try to make bible study accessible to the kids, who sometimes stay with the adults and sometimes have a seperate activity. Older children/teens sometimes lead.

Weegiemum - they sound cool. I assume that it tends to be families with school-age rather than pre-school kids?

scieneteacher - yes it would be part of the main service so would need to contain some of the responses but I was thinking of something the children could follow, with maybe some key symbols or pictures rather than too muh text, just to understand the order of everything rather than the meaning (which would be covered in sunday club) we have an A5 order of service sheet which they don't look at

what is an agape meal?
We did godly play at easter to give more understanding of the last summer and communion too (ribena and biscuits tho!)

spider - you just reminded me of a cool thing that our pastor did recently. Alongside the regular bread and wine, he provided some (black) grapes so that kids (and others) who don't normally take communion could join in too. It was really nice.

lol realised I just put last summer - obviously meant supper

ornflakegirl - thats a good idea, all are invited for a blessing at altar, we take boys with us, ds1 (almost 3) is at the 'why' stage so this sunday we had, 'what are you eating mummy?' 'whats that drink?' 'can I have juice too?' etc

our church has a weekly "pram service"/toddler group marching down the aisle singing and waving flags, a welcome song, a bible story, more singing, jumping and musical instruments, then juice biscuits, toys and roaming around the church while the mums chat and drink tea (Iused to take DS1 when he was tiny and have just started to take DS3)

we have "messy church"/all-age family servie once a month, I think it's in the afternoon on a Sunday. There is a Sunday School type group once a month in the Church Hall (but DS1 is "too old" for that now he's over 10), there are 2 youth groups which run alternate weeks one for 11-15s (but there are some 10yos go) and one for older teens.

I find it sad there isn't more for DS1 to do (he is 12), he was a "junior helper" for a couple of weeks but that had to stop apparently. He loves the youth group he goes to.

one of the Mums has set up a Cafe Tots session on a Monday morning in the church cafe, she runs an actvity for preschoolers while the mums chat.

we also have this, which is all-age, but attracts families. (My DS2 is in the pic)

It is CofE, but the childrens provisions are "churches together" and include the families from the Methodist church too, for their family sevices they provide colouring at the back of the church.

TBH I get confused with which service is when, so we don't go very much

oh, and the lovely lady in that article also started a film group, it was mainly mums/grannies of pre-schoolers. We watched a film the first week and then went over bits of it for a few weeks, discussing in terms of faith. Lots of tea and biscuits! We did Chocolat first and finished the sessions with a chocolate themed dinner party.

Thanks again, and thanks for the cafe church link Rialentless (cute ds btw!)

Apparently the vicar has decided I am to be on the mission committee! So these are going to be great ideas to put forward

thanks