Re-Visioning Ministry to Children — Windsor District Baptist Church

Dear Church family

Our church vision statement is “to see men, women and children transformed, by Word and Spirit, for faith in Jesus Christ”. We are firmly committed to children being an integral part of the journey of faith for our church community.

Opportunity for Re-Visioning

The Family Service on Sundays was started in October 2021 due to difficulties of resuming Kids Church with the Covid restrictions at that time. However, shortly after that, as reported at our AGM in November, Kathy Johnson, Jo Kean and Robyn Douglas all decided to step down from their current roles. We are extremely grateful to these three ladies for their faithful, loving ministry to the children of WDBC for so many years.

We also believe that the timing of these changes is a God given opportunity to “Re-Vision” our ministry to children. Much has changed in our culture in the years since many of us went to Sunday School. Rather than rushing out to find new leaders for Kids Church we want to be intentional in designing ministry to children that is suitable for 2022 and beyond. The message of the Gospel does not change. So it is our responsibility to communicate it in the most effective way so that those who hear may respond in faith.

The continuation of the Family Service into 2022 allows us to take some time to make wise decisions for the sake of the children of our church. We are continually evaluating the Family Service and making changes to try to ensure that it is a gathering that is valuable for everyone in our church, particularly thinking of those with school age children. As decisions are made regarding ministry to children these will also impact what happens with Sunday morning services moving forward. We appreciate the graciousness of the church in coming along the journey with us throughout this period that has required a lot of changes to our regular Sunday routines. Please be assured that our heart in this process is to see children given every opportunity to choose to follow Jesus and to grow in discipleship.

Roadmap

Following discussions by the Ministry Staff and with Louise Bartlett (Co-ordinator of Children and Family Ministries, Baptist Church of NSW & ACT) we have developed the following Roadmap for Re-Visioning Ministry to Children.

We encourage all members to please engage with this process so that we can clearly discern God’s direction for the future of our ministry to children. We welcome your input and thoughts. Please reach out to any of our Ministry Staff (Jonathan, Stephen, Joanna or Chris) if you have any questions or would like to contribute to the discussion.