Going To "Other" Church

Two weeks after we moved into our rental last April, we turned around and headed back south to the National New Church Conference in Florida. Awesome conference by the way! I strongly encourage anyone even entertaining the idea of planting to go. Anyway, I had signed up for the track geared toward spouses of planters and during one of the sessions, the speaker mentioned a book called “My Husband Wants to be a Church Planter…So What Does That Make Me?” Also, a great resource and a must read for all wives of church planters. As soon as we arrived back in northern Illinois, I logged onto their website and requested a copy of my own.

So I’m reading along one afternoon and get to the chapter about how church planting impacts your children. I’m immediately intrigued because I myself was a PK (preacher’s kid) and many of the principles I began reading about could easily apply to families in established ministries as well. But then I began to wonder about my family’s current situation. How will our planting this church affect my almost 2 year old daughter? Right now she has the friends that I choose for her, she goes where I go and she eats what I make for dinner. My thought was, she will probably just go along with it and know no different. But I was amazed at how quickly her toddler mind started understanding what has happening.

Early in June, our core group began meeting together on Wednesday evenings at the local township center. Without realizing it myself, Sarai figured out the difference between where we were going to church on Sunday mornings and where we went to “church” on Wednesday nights. The already established North Point Harbor Campus, where we were attending on Sundays, became know as “brown church” in her mind and the township center was now “other" church. And even now that we have launched the Warren Campus of North Point and are meeting in a local high school, Sarai will inform me enthusiastically on Sunday mornings, “Go to school, go to 'other' church, learn about Jesus.” Her little mind gets it!

Like a majority of plants, we have to set up our children’s area every Sunday morning. We are currently using the cafeteria of the high school for our children’s ministry. The tables are raised and arranged into rows to make classrooms and we bring in foam floor squares to brighten up the area and make it more kid friendly. Sarai and I arrive every Sunday morning at 8 to help get things set up and ready to welcome the children and their families. After just a few times of watching mommy set up and tear down the nursery and preschool classrooms, I noticed Sarai involving herself in the process. She will help me set out the squares and once they are together, she knows which bins have the toys in them. She will begin pulling toys out of them and arranging them on the brightly colored mat. Then when it’s time to clean up, she puts the toys in the bins I set out and pulls apart squares to be stacked in a pile and loaded onto the trailers. My mommy heart is overwhelmed with the pride I feel for Sarai and her willingness to help me every Sunday.

She may not fully understand why exactly we go to all this work on Sundays, but she does know this school is transformed into a church where she will learn about Jesus. And that’s all that really matters to me. Don’t underestimate how much your kids can be involved in this new body of Christ that your family is pouring their life into.