Open an Unexpected Gift

By April 3, 2020

For all of the struggles, anxieties, and challenges of this season, it has offered a lot to us at home and here at First Church, an unexpected gift: family time.

“Our church’s normal Sunday morning rhythm consisted of age-segregated ministries and staff — children, youth, and adults all experienced faith formation in unique ways — which is good! It allowed us to create specialized content and focus on the uniqueness of each of those life-stages.” Reflects Kat Bair, director of Youth Ministries. “Now, our Sunday mornings look a little different. Many of our families are in their pajamas, on the couch, worshipping together. Which is something we didn’t always do before.”

You’re still going to be getting plenty of age-level-based content from youth and children’s ministries. We’ve pulled Mister Mark out of retirement temporarily to create daily Together Time videos for young children, and our Youth Ministries are active on social media and online, producing new content and ways to connect every day. Adult Sunday school classes are now being hosted on Zoom!

But also, in this season where we are worshipping together more than usual, we wanted to create a quick guide for talking about your faith together!

While we are in this season, you’ll be receiving simple “Family Sunday School” guides each week. These aren’t geared for children, or teenagers, or adults, they are for whole families to talk about faith together, maybe in a way we didn’t have a chance to before.

There are different questions aimed at different age levels, including ones for adults. “Don’t worry,” reminds Kat, “There won’t be printable worksheets or puppets or songs or object lessons (since Mister Mark and Dr. Mike have got that under control), and there won’t be over-the-top games or Instagram challenges, it will just be a few simple questions to talk through together. You can pull them up on your phone and yell them at each other from across the kitchen while you clean up breakfast.”

Keep your eyes out for Family Sunday School creator, Kat Bair’s weekly blogs to accompany each week’s Family Sunday School lesson and an email from us with each week’s lesson included.

And know that we are thinking about you, praying for you, and here to help resource and support you in any way we can!