In Canada, the largest demographic population is Millennials (ages 25-35) with young children. This is an incredible opportunity for the church to reach out to families with children. Whether you’re a large or small church, you can make connections and build bridges to families with children.
I’m surprised when I see most of our activity with children focused on the Sunday morning gathering. We have Sunday school for church kids and call that a day. May I gently encourage you to spend some time and energy to create an outreach to families with children? Even if that means you have to have a “Sunday off” of Children’s Church, it would be a great benefit to families in your community to organize something that would serve them. I believe it would be a bridge-builder that may help some families become part of your church.
Outreaches to families with young children will help you connect with the largest demographic in Canada and allow you to have spiritual conversations and invite them to church. This would be an amazing opportunity for your church to grow by reaching young families. I believe that this is a focus that churches should take on in these next few years. Allocate time, budget, and energy into reaching young families and building bridges of relationships with them.
Here are 5 outreaches to families that you really should do (at least do one in the next 8 weeks):
One Day Day Camps. Pick a Professional Development Day or a day when there is no school and host a day camp for kids. Use registration and only make spots available for kids if you can accommodate them. For example, if you only have enough volunteers to host 30 kids, then only host 30 kids. You can charge a minimal fee to help you cover the costs of the program. Use VBS curriculum to host a day camp so exciting that kids go to school and brag about it to their friends. Pro Tip: Host a day camp every pro-D Day and advertise it. You will have a waiting list.
Treasure Hunt. Host a treasure hunt in the evening and invite families with kids to dress up like pirates and go on a treasure hunt throughout the church. They will get a treasure map and have to go through various stations to get prizes which will ultimately lead them to the treasure. If you’ve done a “fall festival” type event, this is the same thing but without it needing to be Halloween to do it. You can do different themes like “under the sea” or even “Santa’s workshop” if you wanted to create something for Christmas. The goal is a fun family evening with treats and prizes for completing the challenges and finding the ultimate treasure.
Family Movie Night. Pick a kids movie that kids actually want to watch (think Disney +) and invite the whole family to a movie night with pop, popcorn and goodies. This is a great activity to do on a Saturday night and literally invite the kids back to church on Sunday. Have your own church kids arrange sleepovers where they will go to the movie night and then to church on Sunday. Give your kids tools to invite and make it a fun and entertaining evening.
Parents Night/Day Out. Keeping in the same spirit of the “one-day day camps”, organize a 3-4 hour window where parents can drop their kids off and go shopping or on a date. This works great as Christmas approaches or on Valentine’s Day. An opportunity for parents to register their kids (and pay a small fee) so their kids will have a blast, is a great opportunity to build a bridge of connection with families of young children.
Skills Labs. Got people in your church that can teach stuff? Why not develop a “skills lab” where kids can sign up to learn stuff like woodworking, crafting, video making, robot building, baking and more. You can do a 5-week skills lab on a certain topic (like woodworking) or a 2-hour masterclass once a month (call it “Skills Lab presents Master Chef”). However you spin it, you can create opportunities to teach kids stuff, interact with their families, and make it fun. We used to call these “BG Clubs” back in the day, but this is a new way to teach kids stuff without making families feel like they have to commit to a 13-week program and possibly come to the church. This is a quick, one-off, tons of fun night of learning something cool. Bonus points for calling it “Skillz Labz”.
Homework Club. If you’ve got a youth/children’s pastor on staff, a homework club is a great way to connect with families and provide kids a few hours after school to get stuff done and make connections. Running a homework club from 3-5 PM once or twice a week could be the opportunity to reach families with children you’ve been waiting for. You could also charge a small fee for this and have parents register so that you would know who is coming and be able to provide some light snacks for the kids.
Do something in the next 8 weeks to reach out to families with children. Take your children’s workers, give them a Sunday off and have them do something for families who don’t yet come to your church. Find ways to build connections with families that have children. This will be an investment that will bring great returns.
Jeremiah works as an Effectiveness Coach with the ABNWT District of the PAOC. He is a passionate and creative leader who believes that the church is the hope of the world. He uses collaboration, innovation, and inspiration to challenge churches and their leadership to engage in the only mission Jesus ever sent his church on: making disciples.