05 October 2012 St. Albans, United Kingdom [Heather Haworth] ‘Reflecting Jesus’, a 32-lesson interactive Bible study series for teens and their parents, was launched at the TED Kids in Discipleship Refresher Weekend, 28 – 30 September. KID leaders from Croatia, Norway, Hungary, Poland, Netherlands, Scotland and England met at the Trans-European Division Headquarters of the Adventist Church in St Albans, to evaluate the KID ministry and be resourced with the latest materials.
Leading out were Mrs Clair Sanches-Shutte, Trans-European Division of the Seventh-day Adventist (TED) Children’s, Family and Women’s Ministries Director, and her husband Dr John Sanches, the TED Family Ministries Consultant. His Sabbath sermon motivated his listeners to be more vocal in helping parents and church leaders recognise the eternal value of ministering to families.
During the weekend programme, everyone’s learning styles were catered for by using quieter Biblical reflective activities, discussions, the sermon, seminars and even a lively debate that centred on the effectiveness, or not, of the KID ministry.
Pastor Leslie Ackie, now the South England Conference (SEC) Family Ministries director, was the first British Union Conference (BUC) Kids in Discipleship (KID) trained pastor to experience the effectiveness of running KID in the local church. At the end of the weekend, he decided to find out the facts about the impact of KID in the other churches of his Conference. He commented, “We have heard anecdotal evidence but have not done an in-depth survey.”
Judith Martin, a longstanding KID trainer and coach, shared her observation on how KID, even musically, positively impacted the Glasgow church as now the children also take part in that aspect of the service. It is not surprising that Glasgow’s church plant, Paisley, also decided to run KID.
Michelle Sancho, of the Reading church, spent an inspiring twenty minutes talking about the way families in her KID group bonded more closely with one another. Even after a couple of years it is still positively spiritually impacting the parents and children. A majority of the children involved have desired to be baptised. It was for churches such as this that the KID Teen lessons were created as families want to continue Bible studies with their teens after completing the original KID lessons.
Thanks were expressed to Mrs Valerie Fidelia for her presentation on how to use the Teen lessons and for the editorial work she did on Karen Holford’s excellent rewriting of Dr Gavin Anthony’s Teen lessons. She also explained how they were written in such a way that those who have not done the original KID 7 to13-year-olds lesson can, after attending the KID ministry training, go straight into the teen set.
The title ‘Reflecting Jesus’ was chosen because the series is a scriptural guide for families living in the twenty-first century who want to follow Jesus and share their faith in Him. There are 32 lessons but they can also be enjoyed as four blocks of eight lessons. As parents are equally involved in the Bible studies, they become more familiar with the challenges to modern teenage Christians and learn how to support them. A typical KID small group meeting includes fun learning activities such as the word search, family discussion cards, a Bible exploration time, prayer activities and take home family and private worship ideas called ‘Jesus and Me’.
The weekend ended with each Union putting together ideas for guiding the future of their KID ministry. While listening to the Union representatives sharing their plans, Heather Haworth, BUC Children’s and Family Ministries director, was pleased that the local church ‘KID taster’ idea she shared was going to be useful to others too.
Zofia, from the Polish Union, who this year organised the training of 30 churches to implement KID, expressed a sentiment felt by the rest of the attendees: “This weekend has been inspirational and also practical. My team and I are leaving better equipped to help parents and children have a closer walk with God.” [tedNEWS]
tedNEWS Staff: Miroslav Pujic, director; Deana Stojkovic, editor
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