Don't Miss the D6 Conference Live Stream

Hey, I wanted to share some great news.

If you'd love to attend a family ministry conference but just can't work it out with your schedule or budget, this week the D6 Conference will be live-streaming several of their general sessions.

It will be great content focused around generational discipleship and strategies to bring the home and church together. 

Also I'll be tweeting highlights during the general sessions @jasondbyerly and posting on the Simple Kidmin blog all week long.

Check out the live stream schedule below.

The Best Way to Connect with Parents

How do you get a parent's attention?  It's one of the biggest challenges in building a vibrant family ministry.  In a recent workshop I led, I was sharing some of the take-home resources we use at my church when a woman in the crowd commented, "These tools are great, but how do I get my parents to actually use them?"

I totally understand where she's coming from.

21st century parents are busier than ever, and many of our efforts to support the family fall on deaf ears.

It's not that parents are trying to ignore the church.  It's just that there is only so much information they can process in a given day.

As a dad myself I can tell you that some weeks it's all my wife and I can do to keep up with the steady stream of information flowing from our kids' school and extracurricular activities.  Anything else becomes white noise, lost in the whirlwind of information rushing through our home.

And we are one of the least busy families I know.

So how can the church reach parents?.  How can we cast vision and provide tools that actually get used by the families in our ministry?

By taking advantage of strategic launch windows to build bridges between the church and the home.  

What are launch windows?  They are the seasons of opportunities when parents come into our orbit, looking for answers or help.

Photo Credit: Stuck in Customs via Compfight cc 

Let me explain.  If NASA is going to launch a probe to Mars, they don't just launch a ship any time they want.  They wait for an opportune moment, a launch window.  During the launch window Mars is closer to our orbit than at any other time.  That means we can connect with it using much less energy and effort than it would normally require.

The same thing is true for bridging the gap between the church and the home.  There are times when families come closer to our orbit.  That's when it's easiest to reach them.  

So what do these launch windows look like?

When do parents come to us looking for answers?  When are they confused or need help? When do we have the chance to draw alongside them, love them, serve them, give them direction and share a little vision?  When are they open and when do they need us most?

Here are a few suggestions:

1. When kids have questions parents don’t feel equipped to answer.  
In our church when kids start asking questions about salvation and baptism, parents come to us for help, so we created a special experience called KidSplash to help answer those questions. It's the best thing I've ever been a part of in Children's Ministry.  We've had over 2,000 kids and parents experience the message of John 3:16 together because we capitalized on meeting a real need for families.

2. When families are new.
First time guests are a huge opportunity for your ministry. When families are brand new, parents have to talk to us to get their kids checked in so they can go to service. That's a great time to serve and communicate value to the family. Make first time check-in as easy and simple as possible and slip in a little vision about how you want to partner with parents in their children's spiritual growth.

3. When families have pastoral care needs.
When families are in crisis, it's a great chance to show that you love them and are there to offer support. Hospital and funeral visits are huge, but so is walking with families through divorce and other major life crises.

For us we rely on our Life Group Leaders (leaders over small groups of kids) to be aware of what's going on in the lives of the kids in their groups and provide that personal touch that our staff could never make to hundreds of kids.

We also have recommended resources we point parents to during difficult seasons like these.

4. When parents have children with special needs.  
One of the most untapped opportunities in the church is ministering with families with special needs. This is an area we're really trying to figure out because our heart goes to out to families who hurting, tired and have found their children unwelcome or misunderstood because of developmental or healthy challenges.  Any effort you can make to serve, include and reach out to these families is a fantastic step to building bridges between church and home.  Ryan Frank led a fantastic breakout on special needs ministry at this year's D6 Conference.  You can check out my notes here. 

5. When parents are upset or have an issue with the Children's Ministry.
It's always fun when parents are angry or complaining about something going on in our ministry, right?  Well, actually, this could be one of the best seasons to build a bridge between their home and the church.  

This is your opportunity to listen to a parent, connect on a personal level and help them see that you share a common goal, their child falling in love with Jesus and following Him.  It's a chance to communicate vision and to invite them to work with you to resolve the issue and help their child grow in their faith.  

Okay, so those a few launch windows our team has discovered. How about you? Are there are situations you can think of when parents come into your orbit?

Here's my challenge to you. Pick one of these seasons of opportunity and think about how you can:

• Serve families and provide real help.
• Build relationships and trust. 
• Cast vision about family discipleship and partnering with the church.

While you may not be able to get all of your parents using a Sunday School take-home sheet each week, I can promise you they will take advantage of whatever resources you offer for these special times when parents come looking to you for help.  

Each time that happens you build trust, credibility and relationship. Over time, that's what you'll need most to connect your church and the homes you serve.

6 Tools to Build Bridges Between the Church and the Home

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In my last post I talked about the fact that your church's family ministry will likely look very different from mine.  Why?  Because God has a unique plan for the families in your church.   

Because of this, the bridges you build between the church and the home will have their own distinctive feel.  But that doesn't mean you and I won't use some of the same building blocks to get there.  We might.  It's just that the way we combine and utilize them will reflect the individual identity of our church, families and leadership.  

Here are six bridge building blocks you might consider.  They're not an exhaustive list for sure, but they may be helpful in connecting with the families in your church.

Communication Pieces
This is anything you send home or pipe out digitally to families to get them having spiritual conversations at home.  

This can be everything from blog posts to family discussion cards, CDs or video links that prompt kids and parents to talk about faith together.

Sometimes you can tie these to special season like we did a few years ago for a fun series of family cards we did called the Monsters Who Stole Christmas.

Family Worship Services
Over the past several years we've created experiences to get kids and parents worshipping together. For many summers we did a big family production called Who's In the House that was half worship service, half Disney-style musical. We've also done simpler versions during our weekend services and special Christmas services, anything to get moms, dads and kids worshipping together.

Family Fun Nights
This could be a family carnivals, a holiday memory-making event, family skate night or drive-in movie night. Anything that's a fun excuse to get families to hang out together and experience community works here. It's also a great opportunity to encourage families to invite their unchurched friends to check out church in an easy, non-threatening environment.


Family Service Experiences
There's nothing that connects the bigger church to individual church families like serving together. A few weeks ago we had hundreds of kids, parents and grandparents who came together to pack a million meals in 24 hours for our friends in Haiti. You can check out the video here.

Teaching Experiences
Teaching experiences might be a sermon series on family discipleship, parenting workshops, baby dedication services or even environments that teach multiple generations at the same time. We do a cool event called KidSplash where we lay out John 3:16 in a way that both parents and kids can understand it. We've had more than 2,000 people go through KidSplash in the last five years, with lots of kids and parents getting baptized as a result of God working through this experience.

Special Touches
We encourage our Children's Ministry Life Group leaders to make a special effort to build bridges with the families they serve. Our leaders sometimes send e-mails or cards to parents introducing themselves, have face-to-face conversations to get to know parents and send kids special cards called "Fan Mail" to cheer kids on or celebrate them in some way.  

We also went the extra mile during promotion season this year and gave families some special themed photo ops as their kids promoted up to the next environment. This experience also included family open houses and a special video tour we made available to parents of children promoting up from the Nursery to our Preschool environment.


So there you go, six ideas that you can use in a ton of different ways to begin building bridges between your church and families. Use them, adapt them or throw them out. Hopefully if none of these are a good fit for your ministry, they will serve as a springboard helping you discover the unique D6 Destiny God has for your church.

Have you had success with any of these building blocks or are there others God is using in your church to get families talking about faith at home?

Building Bridges Between Church & Home, Part 2

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As leaders in the church one of our greatest responsibilities is building bridges between the church and the home. I talked more about why in Part 1 of this series. The bottom line is when we build these bridges, both families and churches grow stronger.

So how do you do that? What exactly do these bridges look like?  

Well, the truth is there are a lot of different types of bridges. Here are a few examples from the bridge experts over at Wikipedia:

• arch bridges
• beam bridges
• cantilever bridges
• suspension bridges
• cable-stayed bridges
• covered bridges
• pontoon bridges
• girder bridges
• log bridges
• step-stone bridges
• draw bridges

Even in that list there are many variations in design, materials and construction. Why? Because each bridge is built by a specific group of people to serve a specific function within a specific place.

The same is true for the church. If you look at churches who are successfully building bridges between the church and the home, you will see a wide variety of models. Why? Because each bridge is built by a specific group of leaders to serve a specific congregation within a specific local church setting.

Building Bridges Between Church & Home, Part 1

Photo Credit: Joel Neild Photography via Compfight cc

Bridges are a big deal.  Take the Sherman Minton bridge in Louisville, Ky, for instance.  It spans the Ohio River carrying thousands of drivers on I-64 from Indiana to Louisville and back every day. 

Back in 2011, inspectors discovered cracks in the structure, shut down the bridge and threw Louisville traffic into chaos for five grueling months.  $20 million later the bridge reopened and people cheered like it was the fall of the Berlin Wall.  Why?

Because without the right bridges in place, life becomes a lot harder than it needs to be.  True for commuters, but also true, and with much greater stakes, for families and the church.

Being a parent is hard.  Raising kids to love and follow Jesus is hard.  Helping your kids to be a light in a dark world is hard.   Inspiring your kids to become the people God made them to be?  Hard!

But all of this is much harder without a church that empowers and supports you.  What parents need is a bridge, a bridge that connects the church and the home, a bridge that provides you as a parent with vision, community, encouragement, and helfpul tools to make the tough journey of parenting a journey of joy and victory.  

Sure, parenting kids to follow Jesus is still hard, but when the church and families work together, amazing things can happen.  

As I tell the parents in our church, "You are the experts on your kids, but sometimes, even the experts need a little help."  

One of our greatest challenges as leaders in the church is providing that help by building bridges between church and the home.  

That's why I'm so excited that the theme of this year's D6 Conference is "Connect."  It's going to be two days focused on building these bridges between church and the home.  I'm going to be leading two breakouts to help people figure out what those bridges might look like in their church.  Here's a sneak peek:

Easy First Steps to Creating a D6 Culture
How can you build a D6 culture in your church in the midst of all of your other responsibilities?  The good news is that you don’t have to reinvent the wheel.  In this session, you will learn how to retool what you’re already doing to empower parents and ignite a passion for families in your church.  

Kid-Speak: Giving Parents the Language to Talk About Faith at Home
Spiritual conversations can be intimidating for parents. They may understand their own relationship with God but don’t have the words to talk about it with their kids. In this session, we’ll look at simple techniques that will give parents confidence to have faith conversations at home.

I'd love for you to join me there so that we can dive into bridge building together.  

For those of you who can't attend, I'll be unpacking some of the big pieces of bridge building over the next week right here on the blog.  We'll look at six tools for building bridges between church and home and how to take advantage of special seasons of opportunity to connect with parents.  

Check out Part 2 of this post here.

How about you?  What are you doing right now to build bridges between church and the home?

6 Reasons You Need to Go to the D6 Conference

Last year I attended my first D6 Conference and wasn't really sure what to expect.  I was excited when I signed up in the spring but by the time the conference rolled around I was having second thoughts.   All I could think about was the work that was waiting for me back at church piling up while I was gone.

Then the conference started, and about twenty minutes into the first session I texted my wife and told her how dumb I was for second guessing it.  It was awesome.  It was fantastic for me as a ministry leader and even better for me as a husband and a dad.  D6 gave me a much-needed jolt of new ideas and inspiration to help the families I love follow Jesus together.