“This feels hard, because it is,” the 25 participants from the BWC’s Christian Educators Engaged in Faith Formation agreed on their monthly ZOOM call April 16. But providing spiritual opportunities for children and youth and pointing “more people to Jesus” during the challenges of the coronavirus, has inspired them to pool resources and ideas for more effective ministry.

 Ministry Foundations
Several foundational ideas that educators regularly embrace have been reinforced. Among them:

• This is a family ministry. Don’t just minister to children and/or youth. Parents also need spiritual support and guidance.
• Relationship is key to everything.
• Silly matters. People need light-hearted fun.
• Know the resources in your community in case you spot needs. Most school districts have feeding and other assistance programs; the National Alliance on Mental Illness, NAMI, which offers free assistance, can help with mental health issues.
• Pay attention to the people you’re seeing and the people you haven’t seen since the pandemic began; check in with those who are absent.

 Virtual Lessons from the Pandemic
The Christian educators also quickly learned while trying to provide online spiritual opportunities for children and youth during this challenging season that:

• Young people have limited attention spans. Don’t try to do anything longer than 25-30 minutes for children.
• Many kids are “zoomed-out.” Engagement and getting them personally involved is important. The mute button is also an essential part of leading a Zoom session with children.
• Send out e-mails each week to parents informing them of opportunities and sharing brief family-based activities or prayers.
• Consider adding a learning/fun experience for young people immediately before or after online worship.
• Meet children at their point of need. Many young people have had their lives thrown out of balance and the structure in their lives has been shaken. The church can play an important role in addressing this.

 Ideas Worth Sharing
Several of the Christian educators shared ideas that had been successful for them:

• Send handwritten notes to every child in the church. This may be a time for intergenerational pen pals.
• Have Sunday School teachers record video messages that can be shared during online worship.
• Hold online scavenger hunts. Limit the time to search for each item, include music, offer prizes.
• Offer a weekly bedtime story, with a spiritual theme, via video or Zoom. Close with a goodnight prayer.
• Play family bingo, play Simon Says, have a dance contest, do one-minute talent shows. Have fun together.
• Ask different young people and their families to video the Scripture lesson each week, using rap, art, poetry, building, skits or other ways of storytelling.
• Use the background feature of Zoom and encourage youth to post photos in their backgrounds that are significant for them.
• Invite families to share videos that center around different crafts or traditions – for example, making rainbows to hang in windows.

 Resources:
Most of these companies are offering free resources during the pandemic.

• Discipleship Ministries – Denominational resources
• Deep Blue – Curriculum from Cokesbury
• Amplify Media https://amplifymedia.com – a video streaming service, offering free Deep Blue videos
• Spark House – curricula and workshops for every age
• Illustrated Ministry  – Free faith-formation resources for children
• Thoughtful Christian – learning resources for all ages
• Discovery Education Puzzlemaker – To make word searches
• Children’s Ministry Deals – a wide array of Sunday School and other resources
• Orange – Curriculum and experiences for young people and educators (has 30-day trials)
• Faith Finders Fun – Videos created for kids by pastors
• Sermons4kids.com – With children’s sermons text and activities

 Christian Educators Engaged in Faith Formation (CEF) will meet again May 14. For more information, contact Erica Benjamin.