Out of the Box Volunteer Event
We had such an awesome time with our volunteers and staff. We had a blast playing Minute to Win It games, the breakfast bar was incredible and we all felt it was worth our time. We prayed, we learned, we fellowships. Cant’ wait for our next event in January.
Here are some of the things we learned:
Christiaan shared that The Zone has reached a critical milestone, becoming a solid, safe, secure and well-oiled ministry for children where kids love to come and where parents feel comfortable leaving their children. Our last Out of the Box Event helped cover a lot of that: Emergency Procedures and Policies. But, reaching this milestone only means that we celebrate our achievement and move on. We now have a renewed goal to be the most effective program to reach children with the Gospel, and the most effective at making true disciples for Christ. We will do that first by setting our focus. We will set our focus on God, we will focus on Children and we will focus on the Parents.
Adrian Tsingaris spoke about how we can renew our focus on God and his Word. His words were so encouraging as he gave several examples of how The Zone has impacted the spiritual lives of children at Cornerstone. He then explained how we can use the Prayer of Examen as a guide to develop habits to grow in our relationship with God. It’s only with this foundation that we can pour into the lives of children.
Ryan Bicker helped us to learn what it means to immerse ourselves in Kid Culture as we spent several minutes experiencing the world of children through video, audio, scents (no, not the Infant-room type!!), and touch. We also took time to brainstorm and white-board ways that we can touch children’s lives in the area of habits, language, clothes and ... We learned that in order to be effective communicators of the Gospel, we have to stay current with children’s culture.
Andrea Schullerts taught us the importance of including the parents in this process. When we add parents as the people who will repeat, enforce and review the lesson with their children throughout the week, this will cause synergy that we could not accomplish on our own as a Christian educational organization. This great video helped us to see the importance of leveraging parents.
Andrea gave us several ways to do this: through email communication, through intentional conversation here at church and through involvement of parents in the ministry.
