Friday September 27th - Valley Christian Fellowship hosted it's first official, "Family Friday." Hosting 28 children from the community with 11 adult volunteers! This comes as one of several steps to move from a, "Children's Ministry" to a, "Family Ministry." Directly living out our mission as a church to, "build strong families."
The vision of the night was two fold: (1)To give parents an evening to themselves by providing free child care with someone they could trust. (2) To build healthy and meaningful relationships between children and adults within the church.
We know that marriage is foundational to family and that couples sometimes need to be able to have time for themselves. That's why we started this. Imagine this:
A seven year old begins to build a relationship with a trusted adult. Fast forward five years when that child is now 12 years old and now begins to push back on parental guidance. It's common that students seek guidance and approval from adults outside of the family. The hope now is that we, as a community, can come along side the family to be voices in their child's life. Always pointing back to Jesus. As a church, we want to position our selves to not replace parents, but to come along side them.
That is why the ratio of children to adults from this past Friday was so amazing. For every one adult there were three children. Children getting the love and attention the desire. At each station adults and children were engaged in legos, playdough, origami and many other games. This night has been counted as a success.
The sanctuary was completely cleaned out to setup games of tag and gaga ball. While craft stations were setup in the fellowship hall. This allowed for children to freely jump in and out of different activities.
Hotdogs and chips were served for dinner and gallons of ice cream were passed out.
Parents were happy to share that they took advantage of the event and were able to do things like go bowling and have a quiet dinner.
Valley plans on hosting many more Family Fridays. The current plan is that they will happen throughout the school year on the last Friday of each month. We'd love to give a special shout out to all of the adults who gave up their time to minister to families and children! Ben Bauder
Joey Caddel
Dan Castle
Jackson Gillihan
Judy Kilde
Mike Lipford
Alex Nguyen
Tim Randolph
Tammy Randolph
Jacob Willisamson
Thank you all so much!