You may have heard some variation of the following statements: parents are the primary disciples in a kid’s life or even parents have the most influence in a kid’s life. Here at Foothills we believe that’s true. Further, we believe it’s true in particular for parents who have young children. How many of us have heard young kids say, “I wanna be just like Dad or Mom when I grow up!” or “when I grow up I want to be as strong as Daddy!” (only to find out years later that Daddy’s really not all that strong – shh, don’t tell anyone). To that end, we want to make the most of the spiritual influence that adults can have on their kids.
Currently, the 1st – 5th grade kids leave just before the sermon is preached. Think about this: if a boy or girl grew up at Foothills and worked their way through elementary school and then onto middle school they would potentially have never participated in the entire duration of a worship service until they were a 9th grader – we believe this is too long to wait to begin integrating our kids into our service.
As a result, starting on September 4th we’re going to have our 1st – 5th grade kids join us for the whole worship service. This will happen on the 1st Sunday of each subsequent month. We really believe in the principle that so much of life is “caught not taught” and there’s truly nothing more important than teaching our kids about worshipping Jesus? On the first Sunday of the month we’ll still have our Kids Sermon moment, but they’ll simply stay in the “big room” for the whole service where they can see and participate in singing, giving, praying and hearing the Word preached. We know this probably raises some questions. To that end, over the next couple weeks our team is going to answer some of those questions, while also equipping you with some tools so we can make this the best possible transition we can.
I appreciate you taking the time to read this and look forward to seeing our 1st – 5th grade kids in service as they hear and see you and me make much of Jesus.
More Jesus, Less…
Pastor Nate Millican
