I’ve noticed that a lot of Sydney churches are doing an after school kids club and generally they are very sucessful at reaching unchurched kids.  My question is; does anyone have ideas on how to effectively witness to the parents of these kids and have them join some aspect of the church fellowship?

Thax <><

Hi Craig

We’re a small bible based evangelical church plant in a stupidly wealthy part of Perth [c’mon, you know you want to look at us - www.wscbc.org.au ], hence everyone is self made with more toys than are even contained in the monoply set.  Reaching those unchurched souls is exceptionally difficult, yet one of our main focuses (focii? who knows!) over the year has been to do one off “kids clubs”, which are laregly populatd by the kids from kids church and their friends from school (ie the self-made self-sufficient parents of said friends thereby come along also).  We have a dedicated very structured programme for the kids, and a more relaxed cafe style chat available for the parents.  We make sure there will be enough adults from the congregation that matches the demographics of the parents who will be there as much as possible.  There’s no structured witnessing to the parents at this stage, we just want them to come along first and feel comfortable with their kids doing “religious stuff”.  It’s going really well, as our youth worker Heather Clifton puts in enormous amounts of effort to run each kid’s club (currently we’re doing 2-3 a school term and one in the holidays on average).  I remain blissfully unaware of the detail of kids clubs and operation info required to stage one, but I shall speak to Heather on the weekend and get back to you with some practical measures.  I pray all goes well with any new ministry you might be starting up and that God will use it to reach many of the unchurched and seemingly unchurchable in your area.

Hi Kathryn
Thanks for the suggestions about the cafe for the parents, there might be something I can use in that.

Currently I’m running a kids club in Kensington each week, and I spend the last 1/2 hour of the 2 1/2 hour program chatting to parents.  Next year I’m moving to St John’s Park and I’ll be running two clubs each week.  I just want to make the most out of the contact we get with parents so that they feel church might be for their family and not just for their kids.

When I was at Christ Church Gladesville between 1996 and 2000 they were running multiple groups on a Friday afternoon, and didn’t have a strategy for welcoming parents though they desperately wanted one.  So I was just fishing to see if any strategies have been developed in the last 7 years.

Kathryn
I just looked at your link and noticed Matty G is your minister.  He discipled me at Gladesville for a couple of years when he was the assistant there.  Please say hi for me.

Thax <><

Hi Craig,

I’ve mentioned elsewhere on these forums that at Haberfield we ran an end-of-year dinner for all of the contacts that we had from kid’s club, CEBS (or whatever it was called at the time), youth group and ESL classes. The idea was to provide a relaxed setting for congregation members to mingle with the ‘contacts’ and we finished off the night with a short play on the meaning of Christmas.

It seemed to run well; we had over 100 turn up and we had some parents and grandparents start coming to church.

Thanks Andrew
The end of year dinner is a good idea.  We are currently putting on an item with the for carols night that will see alot of parents, but a dinner allows for more conversations and relationship building.

Cheers,
Thax <><

Not that I think Kids Clubs are not a good idea Groomsman, but I am uncertain to whether if a better move is to reach out to men who are Fathers.

I reckon if you reach a man for the Gospel, his family will come. More likely than trying to reach families through children alone?

Just some thoughts.

Hi Josh

Not that I think Kids Clubs are not a good idea Groomsman, but I am uncertain to whether if a better move is to reach out to men who are Fathers.

I totally agree, that is why I’m asking how to reach the Fathers of these kids in Kids Club because I’ll see many of the each week at pick up time.

Any suggestions how to positively encourage fathers to join the church?
At Kurrajong we had the Men’s shed fellowship, which was a real treat as some of those sheds were peoples homes for a few years while the bloke built his house in his spare time.  However in the suburbs I’m not sure.

My plan is to build postive relationships with parents and to encourage them to take an active role in raising Christ loving kids.  So first we need to make Christ attractive to the unbeliving parent, then provide a way to nurture that interest.  This is where team ministry is helpful in working together others to provide a family friendly church and not just a child friendly church.

Thax <><

Has anyone had anything to do with a Homework Club?

I don’t know where the idea has come from, I’m pretty sure it’s not original, but I am thinking of starting something where kids can come and do homework one afternoon a week, as well as have afternoon tea, play a game, do a memory verse or hear a short talk bible study and be introduced to church without the seemingly high labor demands of a kids club.

Does anybody know of a church that runs a Homework club?
Simon.

For our last three Holiday Club’s we’ve run ‘Parent Cafe’ with brewed coffee, homemade slice etc.  We’ve tried a few approaches to sharing the gospel including a ‘what are we teaching your kids’ bit (5 min two ways to live with poster sized versions of the pictures) and some parenting talks by members.  We have lots of different tracts and bits of advertising stuff around the Cafe area.

We’ll keep experimenting, but I am beginning to think that the most effective approach is to just have some of the gospel minded mums from church volunteer to sit around drinking coffee, looking to engage the visitors in conversation with the aim of saying how much they love this church and asking ‘do you go to church somewhere yourself’ and seeing where those conversations go.

It’s definitely a ‘mum’s gig’ because very few dads drop the kids off or pick them up.  I try to be around for the dads who do, especially to connect with dads who I might know as ‘fringe people’ or from up the shops or something.

The fruit of this ministry has been slim, but I would definetely say that for a couple of people it was part of the ‘web’ of contacts that got them coming along to church.

Hi Simon
The Home Work Help ministry haas been running for a few years by the people at Church in the Market Place run at Bondi Beach.  The Jamison family have been responsible for this ministry, if you want their contact number you can P.M. me.

Thax <><

We have also found having gospel minded people around who aren’t caught up in the program is useful for contact. Simon, if you are going to run the homework club, private message me, I know a guy who was going to run a reading program, bought huge amounts of material and then didn’t go through with it, I think he still has the material in storage