Kid Active Church Daycare – Saturday 3-5pm
Rebuilding an active Anglican Church in Canada requires reaching out to young parents. In today’s fast paced world, both parents are working. Rising before dawn, fighting with children to get them fed and dressed (ever tried organizing 3 kids before dawn ??), dragging them out the door with their coats half on, barely awake, struggling with traffic and increasing workloads. Exhausted from the ordeal of daycare from the age of 6 months old, both parents are working to pay the mortgage, property taxes, taxes and more taxes. Older children wait in the cold and dark for school buses to pick them up often before 7 a.m. What sane reasonable working parents would enforce Sunday Church, particularly at the brutal hour of 9:30 a.m. on their stressed out lives? Imposing any lack of weekend rest could precipitate deadly health issues, such as H1N1, on both parents and children.
Ministers should ask themselves ‘How can we help you?’, instead of ‘How you must help God by attending Sunday Church’, because there are obvious directions forward. Dropping off young children for Kid-Active Bible School on Saturday afternoon, so parents can get the shopping done and the house cleaned, would be a big helping hand, while children enjoy learning to bake cookies, and setting up the Church Hall for Sunday, sharing Christian fellowship. A small donation would cover the wages of a young college graduate recently qualified to provide child care, as well as a nation wide appeal to support Kid-Active Church Daycare.
What’s in it for the Church ?? Each building block is important, especially community foundations. If the Church reaches out to assist young stressed families, then they may be surprised to discover improved attendance at community events organized by the Church such as pancake breakfasts, Kid-Active Baseball BBQ’s, winterlude skating and snowman contests, bowling and other social activities popular with young families. Slowly Church attendance will improve as these families mature with the helping arm of a patient caring Church, learning to play together and pray together.
