Since my husband Reggie is a teacher who takes summers off from work, we get to spend more time together as a family. We are also much more active in our church during the summer months.
If you have been reading this blog for a while, then you know that my family moved from the Manhattan ministry of our church (which I had been a part of for 21 years) to our local Queens ministry last August. Change is challenging but we have settled into the Queens ministry quite nicely.
In Manhattan, Reggie and I led a small Bible discussion group and led the large Singles Ministry. Now that we are in Queens, we have joined a Bible discussion group but our main focus is working with the campus ministry. That works great for us because we love the energy and enthusiasm of young people.
Taking on a “shepherding” role has been a mental adjustment. It seems like we’re so old! Some of the campus students call me “Ms. Kim”. While we have our kids call adults who are old enough to be their parents “Mr.” or “Ms.”, it just seems weird that college students are addressing me in that same manner.
While I “feel” like a peer because I became a Christian 22 years ago as a college student, I am old enough to be these campus students’ mom (as my own kids are so happy to remind me)! Time, please slow down.
Anyway, this summer I found myself pulling together a variety of fun church games for all ages. Reggie and I oversaw an eight-week “Finding Jesus” series with the teens and campus so that they could get to know Jesus more accurately from the Bible in addition to getting to know one another better.
We worked with the campus and teen leaders to come up with the curriculum and taught a couple of the sessions. Since people have short attention spans, we split each session into (3) 15-minute sections (an ice breaker that tied into the lesson, a message and time for food and fellowship).
I especially enjoyed coming up with the ice breakers. One of my favorites was the Chair Game that we used as the ice breaker for “The Humility of Jesus” session. It was hilarious to see how the participants were trying to sabotage each other (laying down on chairs, knocking each other off the chairs, etc.) until they realized that all three teams could meet their goals if they worked together. The series ended last week and went really well overall. 😊
The teen and campus series was on Wednesdays during our midweeks but we also taught the 3rd & 4th graders along with a third teacher on Sundays. We love teaching that age group. The kids are mature enough to have meaningful conversations but not “too grown”.
It was really easy for me because I was actually working with two actual teachers (my husband and the third teacher) and an established curriculum. I just did what I do best – bring the food (snacks) and the fun.
The Sunday school curriculum was good overall. The included games just weren’t especially fun to the kids so we switched them out with our own games. For instance, Ellen’s app, ‘Heads Up’ is very popular with the kids so we did a version of that game for our “fruits of the spirit” class. It was super fun and all of the kids (even visiting ones) were eager to participate.
Now that the school year has started back up, we still plan on being active (working with the small group and helping out with campus). However, we’re finished with teaching and coming up with new series until next summer.
If you’re active in your church (or other volunteer organizations) how do you “juggle” your service with your other life commitments? Do you adjust your level of involvement seasonally or based on your family’s schedule? (On a related note…do you have any really fun church games for all ages?)
As I tell the campus students that we work with…
[clickToTweet tweet=”Jesus did everything well BUT Jesus didn’t do everything!” quote=”Jesus did everything well BUT Jesus didn’t do everything!” theme=”style6″]
As someone who likes to “juggle” a lot of things at once, I’m really reminding myself of that truth.