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Create intentional space for children to serve their community. Read about ten ideas to include youngsters in your small church outreach and local neighborhood events. Through these events, you can teach your children a person is never too young or too old to impact someone’s life positively.
Create Space For Children To Serve
Picture a beautiful sunny day, you’re out for a drive, and on the corner, you spot a small church holding a Free Car Wash. As you pull your car in, you’re greeted by friendly folks of all ages. You’re invited to leave the car and wait in a seating area while your car is being washed. As you sit down, an elementary-aged child walks over with a tray of muffins and offers you one. Soon, another child approaches and asks if you’d like some coffee or a bottle of water; all are very polite and give genuine smiles!
You glance back at your car, which is now in the midst of a full-service washing. You spot two eager kindergarten-aged children with sponges and buckets of soapy water scrubbing down your tires! They look like they are having the time of their lives as they eagerly work alongside teens, parents, and older folks from their church family.
When your car is finished and gleaming in the sun, you return to the driver’s seat, and another child approaches your window, hands you an invitation to church, and bids you farewell with a hearty ‘thank you for coming- have a great day!’.
As you drive away from this small church on the corner, you feel as though you were just a VIP guest at a red-carpet event! Your heart has been touched by seeing children joyfully serving Jesus. Wouldn’t we all love to see this scenario in our own churches?
Involve Kids In Outreach Events
We can include children in our outreach events! Keep reading for strategies to create intentional space for kids to help at your outreach events. We’re confident if you do this, it can impact your entire church. We’re excited to see what God does in your small church!
- Help children feel special and valued in their church family
- Build intergenerational connections with people in the church
- Teach children the importance of showing God’s love to others
- Encourage responsibility and cooperation in working with others
- Show your community the value of church family
Design Tasks To Help Children Shine
Ask parents and some of your children’s ministry volunteers to help you come up with jobs children can do in your outreach event. Assess the skill levels and personality traits of the kids in your small church and design jobs that help them shine. Be practical, not every event is appropriate for children to be involved in. Consider safety issues and attention spans as well.
It’s important to personally invite youngsters to participate and be part of the team. Make sure they understand the purpose of the mission and their role in it. Read Sunday School Ideas: A Creative Concept For Summer for an idea to pair older students with younger students for service ideas that can be done during your Sunday School.
Always provide clear instructions and training where it’s needed so everyone can be a successful part of the outreach event. Children understand parameters and expectations and, when encouraged, can rise to the occasion!
Use your events as a teaching moment and discuss the significance of being a witness to the world around us. Encourage youngsters by talking about how God uses them to represent His love in your community!
Cover everything with prayer and involve your whole team, young and old alike, in dedicating every event to the Lord and asking for His blessing on it. This is a wonderful example for your small church’s children!
Looking for a step-by-step guide to starting or restarting your children’s ministry?
Check out the Children’s Ministry Bundle For Small Churches!
10 Events Where Kids Can Help
1. Make Muffins & Deliver Them
Have a crew of muffin makers at the church. Then put together gift baskets of muffins and take them to police or fire stations with thank you cards. Kids can bake in the kitchen, tie up baskets with decorative curling ribbons, make cards, and be the ones to deliver to the first responders.
2. Host A Children’s Story Hour
Provide a once-a-month opportunity for some of your older children to be reading helpers to younger ones. Make some fun reading areas. For example, set pillows on the floor or add a special rug. Make flyers and bring them to the local schools, post an ad on your town’s social media page, and post it on your church’s social media page. Host it at the church or at the school or public library. Parents stay and enjoy provided muffins, cookies, or fruit in an adjoining room or in the back.
This idea was adapted from #8 in Partner with Local Schools.
3. Involve Kids At Family Movie Night
Incorporate your kids in being greeters, giving out tickets, showing people to their seats, giving out popcorn boxes and drinks, and helping clean up after the event.
4. My First Pet Workshop Event
Invite a local vet or pet store owner to talk about owning your first pet. Ask your creative youngsters to decorate the space with drawings of animals and decide on other decorations. Children can be utilized as greeters, making name tags, introducing the speaker, leading in prayer, and even helping run an icebreaker or trivia game. Refreshment servers and cleaners are always needed. Children acting as exit greeters to thank people as they leave always make a lasting impression.
5. Used Toy & Book Give Away
Ask kids to bring in gently used toys and books (their own and ones they gather from others). Ask a child who loves to draw to make a flyer for promotion. (Or create a flyer with the printed information and then ask a child to illustrate it.) Have the children wipe down the donations and display them on the tables. Ask an elementary student to keep the refreshment table looking nice and others to help at a church literature table.
6. Host A Super Rock, Paper, Scissors Tournament
Set up 10 hula hoops laid on the ground/floor in a row. At the end of the row, set up a large circle (made from pool noodles taped together)
Ask guests to stand behind the hoops – 1 child per hoop.
Choose one child to be ‘It.’ They stand inside the first hoop. Have an RPS (rock, paper, scissors) challenge with the child standing behind the hoop. The winner of the challenge moves and stands in the second hoop, and so on, down the row.
The winner at the last hula hoop moves to the large circle and waits for the remaining children to play more rounds. Winners from each round go into the circle and have a showdown with the other winner. At the end of the rounds, you have one grand champion!
*If you don’t have 10 kids, just have them run to the next available hoop after each turn, if you have more than 10 kids, encourage them to cheer and be spectators. Once the first round is done, they move in to have their turn. Winners from each round do a grand champion playoff at the end.*
Invite your youth leader or pastor to do a devotional titled, Jesus is our Rock! Ask one of the children to read the scripture. Incorporate youngsters in being greeters, setting up the course, and handing out medals. Invite your elementary students to come to the front and lead a song with movements or play a game of Simon Says before your event starts. Kids can also help in making the trophy for the grand champion.
7. Plan A Birthday Party For Seniors
Arrange for your children’s ministry to go to a senior center or assisted living center to host an Everyone’s Birthday party, celebrating everyone’s birthday at one big event. Or commit to one year of parties and offer a Birthday Party of the Month club! Kids can make and decorate cupcakes to bring, fill party favor bags, and organize a group game like Same As Me Bingo. Practice ahead of time for the kids to perform a song or do a dance routine.
Seniors love spending time with younger children, and the children might learn that spending time with seniors can be fun too!
8. Clean Up Crews For Christ
Serve your community by gathering crews (adult and children mixed) to go out and clean up trash from parks, roadsides, or your local schoolyard. It’s a great idea to have church t-shirts for everyone to wear. This helps your kids be so excited to join the team, and it lets your community know where you are from.
9. Create Free Summer Activity Bags For Families
Over summer vacation, offer once-a-week (or at the beginning of the three summer months) Activity Bag Pick-Ups for parents. An Activity Bag is filled with items to help parents keep children from being bored. Fill it with craft projects and instructions, printable pages with puzzles or coloring pages, fun challenges, and small play items like bubbles, Wikki Stix, and recipes for making slime or playing dough.
Church kids can be great assistants in filling bags with the weekly components and handing out the bags when people come for pick up. If you have budding artists, ask them to add a verse card with a drawing for fun!
Place a limit on the number of bags available. Offer a sign-up online through your Facebook, or ask participants to call to register. Give details for pick up to those who register.
Need to restock your children’s ministry craft supplies? Take a look at the list below!
- 8 x 10 artist canvas
- Decoupage glue
- Foam brush
- Glitter
- Hot glue or craft glue
- Ribbon or Jute twine
- Acrylic paint and Paintbrushes
- Felt
- Sheets of 8 ½ x 11 White cardstock
- Wide popsicle sticks and standard Popsicle sticks
- Acrylic paint
- Brown craft gift bags
- Sharpie permanent markers
10. Family Meal & Fun Night
Try hosting a once-a-month (or once-a-quarter) Family Meal Night, followed by games and fun, concluding with a devotional time for all. Students can help in the kitchen prep, serve food and drinks, make centerpieces for tables, greet guests, and lead games. The devotional leader could also incorporate children into leading the prayer, reading scripture, and leading a song.
Top Tips For Small Church Outreach Events
- Understand and work with children’s anxiety levels, attention spans, and abilities. Be patient and calm if something seems to go awry.
- Create a culture of ministry feedback and do evaluations after each event. Ask for the opinions of all who were involved, including the kids. Ask what they liked, what they would change, and if they want to be involved again.
- Thank your volunteers, young and old. Whether it’s acknowledgment in the church bulletin, handwritten notes, or gifts, it’s important to say thanks! Find some great ideas for thank-you notes in the VBS Volunteer Appreciation blog post.
- Remember the purpose of your event. You may get there differently than you envisioned it, but if you fulfill your purpose, the event is a success.
So, as you can see, there are a myriad of ways to include the younger generations in small church outreach ministries. As we take the time to involve them and encourage them on their spiritual journey, we are nurturing their joy in serving Jesus! What a wonderful thing for your small church family to do.
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