Kids Alive Children's Ministry

Life Church sponsors a program for children ages 3-10 known as KIDS ALIVE. We meet every Sunday morning at 10:45 am during the Sunday Morning Celebration. Our desire is for every child to become involved with this exciting ministry and become an active part of the Kingdom of God.

Our goal is to teach the children how to have a personal relationship with Jesus. It is very important that they know and understand what they believe. We will not be babysitters for children while their parents are involved in a powerful church service, but rather, we will be having church geared for children at their level of understanding. The following information will serve as a guide to involving your children in our ministry and receiving the full benefit of each service. We desire for your children to attend Life Study, Kids Alive, Sunday Evening Worship services and Wednesday night's Girlz@Life or Boyz@Life. We give bonus points (as part of our activities) to children who attend these other services. We encourage faithful church attendance as instilling this practice now will benefit your children in adulthood.

We hope you will find the following information useful and that it will become an integral part of what you do as you go through your daily schedules at home. We want to partner with you. As part of our children’s ministry, we desire for the children to become active participants in all activities. We have tried to plan everything according to their ages, abilities, and interests. For these reasons, we have named the children's ministry “KIDS ALIVE.” We are active and full of life for Jesus and we want to extend this life to all children. Moms and Dads, Grandmas and Grandpas, friends, neighbors, Aunts and Uncles, please help us gather all the children together on Sunday for KIDS ALIVE. Together we can make a difference in your child's life.

PRAISE AND WORSHIP
Our praise and worship is designed to give every child the opportunity to enter into the presence of the Lord. Praise and worship is an individual expression of love towards God and the children may choose any way they desire to honor Him. We do ask that the children be respectful to God and to those around them, since this is the time we honor God together as a group. We are teaching them the songs and choruses that are used in our regular church services, so they will become familiar with them and be able to participate when they are in regular church. We also teach them many of the old favorite Sunday School songs that we learned as children. We have the children become praise and worship leaders and lead their peers in singing each week.

OFFERING
We do collect an offering (any amount), which is designed to teach children to be good stewards of their money. We want them to know what it means to tithe and that we can further the Kingdom of God by giving financially. They are taught the responsibility of handling money. We believe this is a very important part of your child's training. We want to teach children from a very young age to be a cheerful giver and to give back what belongs to God. Anything that you can do at home to reinforce what we are striving to teach the children at church will be greatly appreciated.

“BGMC” BOYS AND GIRLS MISSIONARY CRUSADE
We are actively involved with Missions and our missions program is called Boys and Girls Missionary Crusade. The children are on a mission - a crusade, if you will - to help our missionaries. The money raised through BGMC is used to provide our missionaries with the supplies they need to reach boys and girls around the world with the gospel. BGMC equips children to know, to care, to pray, to give, and to reach the lost. BGMC has a two fold purpose: to reach the children of the world for Jesus and to create a heart of compassion in children. We accomplish our goal of BGMC through saving our pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters, and dollar bills in our yellow BGMC barrels. These barrels, better known as Buddy Barrels, help your children remember what they are doing and why. It’s a fun way to save and to give. Our Buddy Barrel offerings are collected separately from our regular weekly offerings. Every other month, 6 times a year, we ask the children to bring their barrels to church. We empty the barrels, count the offering, and send it to the missionaries. We do not keep any of this money here at the church. The children are given back their barrels, so they can begin saving again. Missions Sunday is the 1st Sunday of every month. The collection months are January, March, May, July, September, and November. Please remind your children to bring their barrells on the 1st Sunday of each of these months.

PRAYER
Our prayer time is an extremely important portion of our ministry. We are teaching children about faith and how to exercise that faith. We believe the children need to be taught that no problem is too big or too small for God to handle. They need to understand and believe that God is the God of miracles and that He still performs miracles today. We are teaching the children to believe and trust in God just the way the Bible instructs us to. We are trying to spiritually arm the children to deal with the stresses of life today knowing that God will never leave them nor forsake them. He made them and will take care of them if they put their trust in Him.

MEMORY VERSES
We learn memory verses, so that the children will realize how important it is to store God’s Word in their hearts. We encourage you to reinforce this part of our ministry because we know that God will really bless the children when they commit His Word to memory.

MY TIME WITH GOD
The worksheets we send home every Sunday have been designed to help you assist your child in establishing their own personal time with God. Everyone, even the children, lead such busy lives and are caught up with the fast pace of life today. It seems that God is often left out or saved only for Sundays. In an effort to establish time with God at an early age, we prepare these worksheets on a weekly basis. In just a few minutes each day, your child can search the scriptures for answers to simple Bible questions, and a time to pause and thank God for all their blessings. Some children only know of prayer that comes just before a meal. We have a section for them to list their prayer requests and to thank God for answered prayer. This is designed so that parents can do this with their children or that children can do this on their own - whichever is appropriate. For the younger ones, if the parents will read the verse to the child and then ask them the question, usually the child can tell them the answer. The child can write it down or the parent can help them to write it. These habits, when started early, will last a lifetime. Children do get to share their praise reports and bring their prayer requests to church, so we can pray together. There is strength in people - even children! - uniting together for a common goal. We also know there is power in prayer and we could never encourage too much active participation in this area. The worksheets need to be returned every Sunday so that the students may receive a new one for the next week.

BIBLE LESSONS
Our Bible lessons are another important part of what we do. We do a number of activities together as a large group. We then divide the children by age groups for a message from the Word of God and for their craft or game time. This will allow more meaningful, age appropriate lessons geared towards the needs of the children. The younger ones won’t be involved with things that are over their heads and the older ones won’t be given things too elementary for their age level. The children will be divided as follows:

- Son Beams w/ Ms. Ruth (PreSchool - Kindergarten)
- Sparks w/ Ms. Robin (Grades 1 - 2)
- Live Wires w/ Mr. Robert (Grades 3 - 5)

Children above the ages of 10 must have special permission to attend and may serve as helpers. Otherwise all students should be attending. We try to emphasize the truths God shares with us in His Word through Bible stories. We also use object lessons that help the children deal with the challenges of everyday life. We share missionary stories that help the children see how God works around the world. We also stress how they can be missionaries right here in their own communities. Each month, we set aside some time that will be devoted to missions. We want children to be open to the call of God and what it means to be called into Christian service. We utilize puppets, dramas, flannel graph, pictures, story cards, and other similar means to reach the children at their level. Most important, we try to teach children how to apply God’s truths to their lives. Living the Christian life isn’t easy, but the rewards are great.

DISCIPLINE
We expect the children to come to church and behave appropriately. We do operate a school at our church and we do have gym facilities. Rules differ between the church and the school. Certainly when the children are in the gym, it is appropriate to run, jump, and play. When church programs are in session, the children need to understand that certain behavior is required. Disrespect for the House of God will not be tolerated. We do not expect to see any running or inappropriate behavior in the church sanctuary, halls, or in the classrooms. We want to bring honor and glory to the Lord by our behavior, but some forget where they are and need to be reminded. Please remind your children that appropriate behavior is to be displayed. We do not want to exclude any children, but we must require appropriate behavior and cannot allow the services to be disrupted. We are building the church of tomorrow, today. Please help us teach the children to be on their best behavior at church.

FUN AND FELLOWSHIP
We also build into our activities a time for fun and fellowship. Children can learn about God and the Bible and have fun at the same time. We are trying to encourage the children to make new friends and to develop Christian friendships that will support each another. This is a great time to teach children about making choices - good, Godly choices. We incorporate games, crafts, and treats throughout our time together. All of these are intended to enhance what we are teaching and to unite the children as workers together for the Kingdom of God. From time to time, the children will be eligible to go on outings and field trips as they work to earn their points. These special trips and activities are above and beyond what they can earn in order to purchase items from our store. These activities will be very special and the children will not want to miss out on what we will be doing. Please encourage your child to earn as many points as possible each month.

KIDS ALIVE STORE
The children will be able to earn points throughout the program each week. Points are earned by the following ways:

- Attendance participation in activities
- Know Memory Verse on-time
- Bring Bible
- Parents attending church
- Bring offering (any amount)
- Bring KIDS ALIVE back pack
- My Time With God
- Bring a visitor
- Attend Sunday Evening Worship
- Attend Girlz@Life or Boyz@Life
- Attend Life Study

As they earn the points, they can choose to save them from month to month or cash them in for some great prizes. We have some really neat prizes for the children or they can select some of the nice gift items for members of their family. We have selected items for everyone. This will be a very special part of our program and these incentives should help the children accomplish many goals, which we hope will develop into good habits. The store will be open once every six weeks for them to access.

INVITATION TO PARENTS
You are always welcome to come and visit any time. We welcome all suggestions and input that will help enhance our ministry. We welcome all volunteer help too. If you have not had the opportunity to meet the leaders in KIDS ALIVE, please take a few minutes to come and visit. We would love to meet you and talk with you. Please know that your children are very special to us and we want to partner with you to help them grow. Thank you for your support and for your constant prayers. The children have a lot to face everyday and we want to help prepare them to not only face those challenges, but to have the victory over every struggle that the world throws their way. We want them to feel the presence of the Lord and not to be afraid. The Bible teaches us that we can do all things through Christ, who gives us strength. As with any program, you can imagine that we have a lengthy list of needs. If you are interested in helping us by donating some supplies, store items, or treats, it would be greatly appreciated. If you have any questions or concerns regarding Kids Alive, please do not hesitate to contact us. We’re happy to assist anyway we can. You can reach us by phone at the Life Church office, 540-563-5151. We want to work together as a team to help make a difference in the lives of these children. Come join us this Sunday!

Welcome to Kids Alive!