Progressive Faith Resources for the Church & Home
As you’re preparing for Palm Sunday, Holy Week, and Easter, don’t forget to download our free Palm Frond Coloring Page!
Palm Frond Coloring PageWe are offering this downloadable palm frond coloring page that you could send out to your church or post on your church’s website.
You could also send it home with families the week before Palm Sunday and have everyone bring their colored-in Palm Frond on Palm Sunday.
We are excited to announce the launch of our newest family Advent devotional resource: An Illustrated Advent for Families: In Light & Darkness! It’s not just an Advent devotional for kids, but for people of all ages.
It’s hard to believe, but this is our fifth year of publishing our annual Advent resource for families. An Illustrated Advent for Families provides families with a resource for engaging their children in faith formation during the Advent season. This Advent devotional for kids and families, along with An Illustrated Lent for Families, has been used by thousands of families around the world, and we can’t wait for you to check out this new edition.
Order your copy of An Illustrated Advent for Families: In Light & Darkness by visiting our store today!
It’s no secret that families today are busy, and rather than make a family Advent devotional that feels burdensome, we wanted to create an Advent devotional for kids and families that would be simple but meaningful. Accessible for all ages, but also thought-provoking.
An Illustrated Advent for Families: In Light & Darkness will help you slow down, ask questions, have fun, be intentional about how you spend your family time and get creative! There are simple but meaningful devotions for all ages, a fantastic craft that includes coloring and will be fun to create throughout Advent, and an Advent Calendar that is more than just opening up chocolates every day before Christmas.
Keep reading to learn a bit more about the activities in this year’s edition, and to hear testimonials from people who have used our previous versions of An Illustrated Advent for Families.
This year’s theme is In Light & Darkness. The weekly devotions explore the theme of light and darkness in Advent scriptures. How we understand these ideas affect the way we view God, our faith, and our world. Inspired by Barbara Brown Taylor’s book, Learning to Walk in the Dark, we re-frame traditional understandings of light as good and darkness as bad or evil.
Each week, there is a suggested scripture to read, a short reflection, discussion questions, an activity (with lots of coloring opportunities), and a prayer to explore the theme of light and darkness working in balance in our lives.
These weekly devotionals are written so they can be used by children of all ages (and adults as well), and we believe you’ll find questions and discussion topics in each of the devotionals that will work for your children, no matter the age.
This year we are also offering another devotional that goes into our theme of light and darkness a bit more, and also has discussion questions that work for all ages. This Illustrated Devotional is a new type of product for us, and we think you’re really going to like it.
This unique intergenerational resource is a hybrid devotional/coloring book. In Light and Darkness: An Illustrated Devotional includes five weekly devotions for all ages, as well as illustrations to color and opportunities to doodle and engage with the content in fun and creative ways. The photos below can help give you a sense of some of the coloring opportunities in this devotional.
We are excited about this fabulous craft this year: our Christmas Shadow Box Theater. By following simple directions, you can build your Christmas Shadow Box Theater and use it to act out the story of Christmas using light and shadows.
This is a great supplemental activity for Sunday School, to use at an Advent festival or event, and for families with young children to help tell the Christmas story.
While our youngest participants may need some additional assistance with this year’s craft, it is something that all ages can participate in. And certainly, it is an activity that all ages will have fun playing with once it’s created.
We also have this craft available for purchase as a standalone activity. You can purchase our Illustrated Christmas Shadow Box Theater, and find other crafts from past years, here.
While many Advent calendars today come with the promise of chocolates or toys behind each of the numbered doors, this Advent calendar is a little different. Our Advent calendar is more of an activity calendar — activities that can help you get into the Advent and Christmas spirit.
Some of these activities will be great for your kids to do by themselves—others will require the whole family. And some activities require you to get out of your house and go into your community.
Each of the Advent calendar activities fits in with our theme of light and darkness and will help participants (of all ages) think about light and darkness and how it can affect how we think about Advent and Christmas.
Below are 3 sample activities from the Advent Calendar:
Order your copy of An Illustrated Advent for Families: In Light & Darkness by visiting our store today!
We hope you’ll take some time to check out An Illustrated Advent for Families: In Light & Darkness, and let us know if you have any questions. Whether you thought you were just looking for an Advent devotional for kids, or if you specifically wanted a family Advent devotional – our Illustrated Advent for Families has something for everyone.
One of our amazing readers wrote to us wanting to connect with families who aren’t regularly at church. We hear you! This can be a tough thing. Read on for our five wildly effective ways to stay connected.
Do you have even more ideas to share? Tell us in the comments below!
There are so many reasons why families may not be at church regularly. As a ministry leader, it may be easy to assume it’s because they don’t like something you’re doing. However, this is most likely not the case.
Families may not be attending church regularly because…
Keep in mind how busy families are and remember that context. Packed schedules and complex dynamics make it difficult to say yes, even to the things we really want to be doing in our lives.
So, what’s your role given that some of this may be true? You need to be doing two main things: connecting to the families and connecting the families to the community.
And here’s the cool thing. The families who aren’t at church regularly are going to feel more a part of the church. But, so are the families who are there regularly. Everyone will feel the improvement when these efforts are made.
How can you do this effectively? Read on for a few ideas we hope will help in both of these efforts!
Families who aren’t present regularly can feel forgotten. So, be sure to connect with families regularly even if they aren’t at church. Send a text checking in. Be sure they’re on the email blast. Send birthday and holiday cards to them. Invite them personally to special events.
If families are hearing from you in only one way, it can feel contrived. They may feel like there’s a list they’re on (which is probably true, but still…) and they’re only getting contacted because of that.
So, vary in your contact with them. Text, email, snail mail are all great options. Also, vary the person who contacts them. Share this responsibility across several people. For example, perhaps the pastor sends an email checking in. Then the ministry director sends the email blast and sets up a lunch date. And the Sunday school teacher comments on their social media posts. And a friend of the family invites them to a special upcoming event.
If your church doesn’t have an online presence, that needs to change. It just does. Too many of our churches don’t have a person heading up digital communications. If your church is one of them, just create a profile for your ministry to connect with families.
Your families are online all the time. It’s an easy way to connect to all of them with little effort.
Learn how to use social media to communicate with your families. And post 1-3 times a day.
Most families aren’t finding ways to serve others. And this is a value for so many parents, especially in their children’s development. However, it can be hard to know where to look for opportunities. So, connect with families around service.
For this reason, events where families can serve together and make a difference tend to be well-attended. This is great news for everyone. It connects the congregation and the congregation to the community.
Parents very often have little to no idea how to do spiritual formation with their children. As a result, if families aren’t at church, the kids aren’t learning about their faith.
So, share resources with them. Send them a new book to read together each month. Send a weekly email with the Sunday School topic and discussion questions for them to use at home.
Do you have more ideas to share with the IM community? We’d love to hear from you! In the comments below tell us how you connect with families who aren’t regularly at church.