Staying on Track for Summer: Creating a Take-Home Box

Summer is one of my favourite times of year, hands-down.

The weather, the family time, the space just to sit back and breathe, and the abundance of iced coffee makes it such a wonderful season.

However, in children’s ministry, the wonders of summer often come partnered with frustration.

The summer season often brings with it disconnect, lack of volunteers, and the struggle to connect with families regularly – even more true this year amidst our recovery from COVID-19.

Many pastors and leaders I talk to express their frustrations and discontent with the way ministry happens over the summer months.

Thankfully, I believe that while summer will be a different time in kids’ ministry, it doesn’t have to be wasted time.

Summer can be a time of intentional and fruitful ministry to families if we approach it in the right way.

The reality of summer is that many families are travelling, vacationing and missing church on Sundays. Instead of griping and complaining about it, we need to find a way to work with it!

One of the ways we can do this is by finding intentional ways to follow up outside of Sundays – by providing a tangible take-home kit for the summer months.

Choose a theme.

When you’re creating a take-home box, one of the best things you can do is choose a theme for the kit!

This makes selecting items to include so much easier.

When I’ve prepared take-home boxes over the past few years, I have asked questions like these:

As I answer those questions, I brainstorm some fun theme ideas! This summer, our whole church is working through the book of Exodus in a “Camping with God” series, so we made our take home kits camping themed.

Decide on a devotional element.

The devotionals from our Camping with God series!

For me, the main goal of a take-home box is to keep families connected to God during the summer months.

One of the easiest ways to do that is to provide a simple, engaging devotional that families can use together.

Devotionals can allow kids to stay connected to what’s happening at church, even if they aren’t there! It also provides a simple way for parents to keep faith at the forefront, even when they aren’t at church every weekend.

You can create a devotional, find one that accompanies a theme, encourage families to use the Bible App, or find a downloadable one. Over the past few years, we have used these devotionals for our take-home kits:

Include activity ideas.

Including simple, engaging activity ideas that make faith tangible is one of my favourite things about take-home boxes.

I always try to include activity ideas that families will actually use that are centered around my theme inside the box.

The Camping with God kit I designed this year includes 12 Family Challenges – one for each week – that is fun and intended to drive home the weekly devotional point.

In the past, I’ve included simple recipes, rainy day game ideas, and even YouTube playlists for families to watch.

Including activities that are fun for kids, easy for parents, and faith-filled is a win for everyone.

Fill it with fun stuff!

While connecting families to God is the goal of a take-home kit, kids will be more excited to open and use it if the kit is filled with fun stuff!

Each year, depending on my budget, I fill my take-home kits with goodies for families to enjoy.

When we used the Fruit of the Spirit Take-home kit, I included bubbles and plastic fruit skewer sticks for families to make their own fruit kabobs!

This year, we included a frisbee, sidewalk chalk for one of our challenges, and some yummy snacks!

Here is a list of simple ideas:

That’s all there is to it!

Creating a Take-Home kit is a simple, effective way to stay on track for the summer months.

It helps families feel seen, keeps them connected to God, and gives you a real, intentional way to stay connected – outside of a screen.

Next week, I’ll be sharing another way to stay on track for summer.

Looking for more creative ways to serve families in your church? Register today for our Creative Family Ministry Ideas course, launching August 2020.

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