Dear friends
I thought I’d take the opportunity this week to give you a quick update on our kids and youth ministries. In a crazy year both of these areas have been hit with some pretty big challenges.
Those of you who watched our online services will remember our “Kids Zone” segments which we know were a big hit with our families and a lot of fun for all of us. Going back to physical church, however, has presented some challenges for kids ministry. For good reasons some of our leaders haven’t been able to jump back in. We’ve also had our spaces shuffled around and it’s challenging to work out how to meet COVID requirements in ministry to children.
Still I want to give a big thankyou to our kids leaders, both our regulars and those who’ve jumped into help as extras. Thanks to their willingness to adapt and give time and thought we’ve been able to put together something that, while basic and temporary, has been something that our kids have really loved. It’s really been a great example of individuals serving the body of Christ with their various gifts and abilities.
Going “back to normal” is going to take time with all this sort of stuff, and we may well find that as we keep trying to make our kids ministry better we don’t end up quite where we were before either. We’re always keen to keep hearing your thoughts and ideas on this, so don’t be afraid to keep the conversation going. I’m hoping to get our leaders as well as our parents together for some meetups at some point in the next couple of months too as we think about the way forward.
Even before COVID hit, 2020 was a year of change for our youth ministry as we started a fornightly network wide youth group for youth from across our network. Our youth members and leaders have done a great job adjusting to all the changes. It felt like we dealt with the expected changes for a few weeks, then got hit with massive changes as things went online, and now we’re sort of back to normal again with our network youth group resuming a few weeks ago. We’ve been doing fortnightly local gatherings too and those were able to go back a bit earlier, being smaller events.
At Trinity Church Brighton we love our kids, we love our youth, and we want them to know that church is a place for them too. Would you join me in praying for our young people, thanking God for our leaders who’ve done such a good job in both kids and youth this year, and praying that God would continue to bless these key ministries?
Matt Winter
Associate Pastor | Trinity Church Brighton
0406 124 006 | matt.winter@trinity.church | Day Off Thursdays