Kids

Having a hard time engaging parents in your family environment?

Have you tried family-style seating (parents and kids sitting together)?

Here’s why KidStuf families sat together in September and why it’s created so much synergy that we’ll be doing it all year round!

1.  It makes parents participate. Parents will do almost anything when their kids are standing next to them. Imagine grown men, serious, business-types who used to stand in the back of the room with their coffee and Blackberrys, now busting a move like total “spazzes” because their kids are watching them.

2.  It sets up what happens at home. Imagine a family receiving their application tool (we call it the KidStuf Take-Out) when they walk in the room instead of when they walk out and they are able to open it, play with it, and use it during the show. The chances of them continuing that game when they get home rises exponentially.

3.  It allows for conversation. At every show we ask families the “Question of the Day” where they turn to each other and answer a question relating to the application of the Big Idea.  You can’t leave the show without starting a family conversation.

Last month, the Big Idea was Faith – trusting in what you can’t see because of what you can see. And we asked families to write down in their “clue notebooks” (their Take-Out) one thing their  family needs to have faith in God for. Something they couldn’t see working out in their current circumstance . . . like a loss of a job, a sick grandma, a fight with a best friend.  And they had to talk it out together in the show.  Now, as a parent, I already have a conversation to build off of when I leave. I have something to talk to my kids about when I tuck them in at night.  And that might not have happened if we hadn’t been sitting together in the show and given a directed moment of conversation.

That’s why KidStuf has gone “family-style” – what are you doing to engage parents in your ministry?

Post written by:  Holly Delich - Creative Director - KidStuf