JumpStart is a 30-minute presentation for both kids and parents where we teach children what it means to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. This is an important part of our strategy to lead children and parents into a growing relationship with Jesus Christ. You can find out more about JumpStart here.
We invite our kids and parents to attend JumpStart in several different ways.
· We have a printed information cards that we give to kids and parents when they ask us about JumpStart.
· We create a special piece to talk to the kids about JumpStart whenever we are sharing the gospel in our curriculum.
· We advertise the dates and times in the bulletin.
· We talk about JumpStart during KidStuf.
· We send out an e-blasts several times a year to all of our UpStreet Parents to keep them aware of upcoming dates.
Here is an example of the email that we sent last week:
UpStreet Parents,
Have your kids been asking questions about faith or how to have a relationship with Christ? If so, JumpStart is a great place to start. JumpStart is a unique 30-minute presentation where parents and children (grades K-5th) can learn what it means to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. JumpStart is a prerequisite for a child to participate in Family Birthday Celebration, a special baptism service for children who have made the decision to trust Christ.
Here is a glimpse of what JumpStart and Family Birthday Celebration are all about:
We would love for you and your child to have the opportunity to participate in these special events with us. Here are our upcoming dates for both events:
JumpStart
March 21
May 16
May 16
For more information or if you have any questions, please contact us at jumpstart@northpoint.org.
UpStreet Staff
We believe that it’s important to include parents in the most important decision that their child will ever make.
March 10th, 2010 at 5:56 pm
I love that you guys do this class. Do you have any resources for it?
March 11th, 2010 at 12:32 pm
Hi Kevin,
We don’t have any official resources that we produce for other churches. Maybe someday! We’ve talked about it plenty of times.
K
March 24th, 2010 at 2:33 pm
How many times per year do you do offer Jump Start and Family B-day Celebration?
March 24th, 2010 at 4:02 pm
We offer 2 JumpStarts in the months leading up to a Family Birthday Celebration. We basically offer as many as we need. 2 to 4 Family Birthday Celebrations a year….4 to 8 JumpStarts a year.
May 11th, 2010 at 5:13 pm
We have our own version of Jumpstart, but I just love the metal signs you use as visuals. I’ve done a little on line searching and haven’t been too successful finding the sign boards you used. I was keenly interested in the John 3:16 board. Did you find that already made or did someone fabricate it for you? I know the whole thing is magnetic so the little signs can be moved, but where oh were did you find the actual pieces you put the verbage on? We have a graphics guy ready to go, but need the metal signs first. Thanks for helping us out with this one!
May 16th, 2010 at 4:22 pm
Hi Lynn,
The artwork and presentation of JumpStart are all copyrighted materials. But we are working on a way to get them out there for all who would like to use them. I’ll post that information here as soon as we figure it out!
Our resource for the material that we used is Sonya Beam at the pop shop. You can find out more about them here. http://www.thepopshop.com/
Hope that helps.
k
June 2nd, 2010 at 11:46 am
We’ve been doing a program at our church that models JumpStart, and it has been going very well! We also use the 252 curriculum, and as you know, the gospel message is given throughout the ministry year. After we’ve presented the message to the kids in LG, we encourage them to talk to their SGL &/or parents if they would like to know more about starting a relationship with Jesus. We have prepared our SGLs to know exactly what to do when a child wants to begin their relationship, and we send all of our kids home with information letting the parents know what they have heard and how to help their child begin their relationship w/Jesus (in case they need assistance). However, we’ve been wondering if we shouldn’t prepare a “Next Steps” type of form for parents to guide them in growing their child’s faith now that they’ve become Christians. Do you all do something similar? Do you have tips or resources that you can share?
Thanks!!
June 2nd, 2010 at 11:57 am
Hi Sunny,
We don’t have a next step hand out for parents mainly because we have KidStuf and several other resources that we send home to parents to help coach them as they lead their kids. We feel like these tools are more successful because they give parents and families a little bit at a time and focus then on one topic at a time.
We also have parents in the room when we do the JumpStart presentation, so this gives us a chance to talk to them about KidStuf and any other resources they can watch for.
You might want to check out or GodTime Card too.
Thanks for sharing what you do!
K