In our desire to equip parents as they “train their children up in the way they should go,” we have created a blog series to communicate the lessons our kids will be learning each Sunday, family verses to memorize together, and resources to help you as the parent to disciple your children.

Renew Kids

The word “disciple” means to intentionally impact the life of someone in the direction of being more like Jesus.

Disciples follow Jesus and help others follow Him too.

Every week faithful servants enter into this discipleship process with the children in Renew Kids. There are two classes this Sunday: Nursery (ages birth-3), Primary (ages 3-6), while older kids will remain in the main worship gathering. (Next week we launch a new four-fold class plan.) All of us begin the gathering together to sing, listen, and pray as a whole church family.

These are the three simple rules we introduced for the whole church family. While we had kids in mind in the wording, these are really for everyone! You likely have varied rules in your home, yet in this shared space, as a church family, our rules are simply a three-fold invitation:

Let’s …

  1. Honor & obey our leaders
  2. Listen respectfully to God & others
  3. Keep our bodies to ourselves

 This Week’s Story Catechism

We finish our Summer adventure with the Story Catechism, by recapping and rehearsing the final chapters we’ve focused on for the last six weeks (11, 13, 15, 17, 19, 20).

The twentieth (and final) chapter of the Story Catechism is about the consummation of all things and the return of Jesus:

Through Jesus, God is re-establishing peace.
Through Jesus, God is bringing freedom.
Through Jesus, God is renewing His Creation.
Through Jesus, God is putting everything back in its right and proper place.
And through Jesus, once again it is very good.

Primary Class 

Our curriculum for the Primary class comes from The Gospel Project for Kids and will immerse our kids in the gospel through every story, theological concept, and call to mission from Genesis to Revelation. Ultimately, the gospel message changes everything; heart transformation can only take place when our children experience the gospel. Through The Gospel Project for Kids, our kids will understand the Bible is not just a collection of stories, but one unified story—God’s story of redemption.

 Unit Focus: Jesus the Anointed One

As people began to turn against Jesus, He journeyed toward Jerusalem where He knew He would be arrested and crucified. Jesus continued to tell people that they needed to repent, and He prepared His true followers for His death.

Unit Key Passage:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed,”

—Luke 4:18

Session Focus: Jesus was Anointed

Bible Passage: Matthew 26:6-13; John 12:1-8

Main Point: Mary anointed Jesus.

Big Picture Question:  Why do believers share the Lord’s Supper? Believers share the Lord’s Supper to remember Jesus’ life and death.

Christ Connection: Mary did the right thing by pouring oil on Jesus. She worshiped Him. Jesus is most important, and He deserves to be worshiped. Jesus knew that He was going to die to rescue people from sin. He would be buried and then rise from the dead.

Challenge Class

The Challenge Class go back to their regularly scheduled class starting on September 10th

This week the Challenge class will be joining us in our regular Sunday gathering and will be continuing their study of the Psalms at home. The book of Psalms is filled with songs and prayers offered to God by the nation of Israel. The Psalms are very diverse, some of them explode with praise to God, while others reveal the troubled heart of a mourner. They are unified in the fact that they are centered upon the one and only Living God. Over the summer we will be challenging the kids to read the first 41 Psalms and memorize one of the Psalms.

 Mission in Uganda

Working with Paul Hunter from Next Generation Ministries, he has found the Challenge Class a new mission in Uganda.

David is a young boy that is 12 years old who lives in Uganda and had his leg amputated as an infant. The Challenge Class is working on helping David buy a prosthetic leg in a couple of years when he is ready.  How will they do this? Every week the kids in the Challenge Class have the opportunity to earn marbles to fill up a jar and every marble they earn will be worth $2 a piece to go towards David’s new leg. How do they earn marbles?

The kids in Challenge Class can earn marbles in these ways:

  1. Memorize the scripture verse for their Challenge Class
  2. Study the Bible at home
  3. Draw a picture of something they learned in the bible
  4. Learn a new story from the Bible
  5. Draw or Write in their prayer/thankfulness journal
  6. Pray or Read a Psalm during the week
  7. Bring their Bible to class