The Family Ministry Summit

Yesterday, we had an all day meeting regarding children’s and youth programming at Nativity. It was the first time since I’ve been here that all responsible for these programs sat down and discussed how we are connected and how things are going to work for children’s and youth ministry.
The day started out and was pretty much dominated by discussion of what we want the children of our parish to know, learn and understand by the time they turn 18. So to start off we created an image of what an ideal 18 year old student would look and act like after traveling through 18 years of ministry at Nativity.
For those of you not familiar the path one takes starts with our Kidzone program (6months – 3years old), followed by All Stars (3 years – 6 years old) after that we have the one, two punch of Children’s Religious Ed (we are looking for a new name) and Time Travelers our Children’s Liturgy of the Word. These two programs focus on grades 1-4, where they all have the opportunity to go deeper during religious ed and celebrate during Mass at Time Travelers. Once they reach the end of their elementary school years they begin Ascent (5th and 6th grade), followed by Resurrection (7th and 8th grade), and then wrap up their high school years in Uprising.
I would tell you what we came up with; however, our notes need to be better organized and once we get that done, it’ll be launching this to our ministers. But what I do want to say is that we are definitely going to be starting out the year in unison and on the same page, and how could you not be excited about that?