Kia Ora Bay Kids Whanau,
Welcome to Term Two! Amazingly, this is our 30th Family Discipleship Email! Wahoo!
And I love that this is now firmly part of our Bay Kids culture. (So… in case you’re counting, number 29 was a ‘live’ evening last month, and now I’m going to share with you some key points from that session together where I tried to weave in a Bay Kids Vision refresher for the serving teams, as well as for our families, and then an invitation to an ongoing discipleship journey with your children as they grown beyond Bay Kids - it was quite a lot 🙂)
KEY POINTS FROM OUR BAY KIDS VISION and FAMILY DISCIPLESHIP EVENING
At the heart of Bay Kids is this idea of reciprocal encouragement, and a sense of faith being shared, given, received by a community of believers, together with no ‘no junior holy spirit’. We hold to the simplicity of Romans 1:12 ‘When we get together, I want to encourage you in your faith, but I also want to be encouraged by yours.’ I am regularly encouraged in my faith by the children I spend time with on Sunday mornings. Your gorgeous children. And I have learnt a lot about prayer from their honest no-fluff matter-of-fact prayers full of faith and hope to a God they are getting to know and learning to trust.
Discipleship is about relationship, curiosity and conversation. Creating safe spaces and language to ask questions, share doubts, speak truth, tell story, and model the process. It’s the same for our children as us as adults, be with Jesus, become like Him, and do what He would do. We need to provide a counter-formation to what else will form our children. Not out of fear but because we have a better story to tell. Stories anchor us, they help us make sense of who we are and where we belong, they give us the security of knowing we’re part of something bigger than ourselves, and they point us home when we are lost.
When we think about Christian Parenting our thinking is that we are raising kids to see themselves as image bearers, full image bearers, not a junior version or a potential version or a yet to be expressed version, but as they. There is no Junior Holy Spirit, so let’s teach our children how to pray with the expectation that they can hear from God, and with that all the ways He’ll speak to them.
1 Samuel 3, v 7 -10 shows Eli’s example to Samuel. This illustrates the power of the teachable moment. Eli disciples Samuel in the expectation of hearing from God, right in the moment, full of possibility. He doesn't minimize his experience but insteads models what to do with the opportunity, without doubt or fear or condescension. It is beautiful, active, and brave discipleship. Discipleship doesn't happen later, like a magical graduation where you flick the switch and it just works, it happens now, it needs to happen now, use the teachable moments, these will flow from your own discipleship, and you might not always get it right each time, as Eli demonstrated.
It can be an intimidating term, discipling, but it’s just shepherding, guiding, teaching, showing - the very same thing that we do in all aspects of intentional parenting, intrinsic as manners, hygiene, values etc. Part of this process is show not tell, Children observe, they hear it in your language, your priorities, your response and it also happens in ordinary everyday table moments, they learn from watching us
Beautiful fruit is formed through the ordinary faithfulness of parents and whanau who disciple in the quiet, the regular, the unseen, and the everyday.
Here are the Formational Practices that we will continue to cycle through this term, in all our Bay Kids Programmes, growing in familiarity, depth, and confidence as we seek to disciple our children. Thank you for partnering with us in this journey:
Belonging - Learning to be community together in our Sunday programmes as well as developing friendships outside of this time, celebrating one another, showing kindness towards one another and praying for one another
Biblical Literacy - Learning the meta-narrative of Scripture, becoming familiar with the Big God Story of the Bible (this is a biggie for this term, see below)
Scripture Memorisation - Building up a collection of ‘Remember Verses’, known in context, hidden in our hearts and used in practical ways. Learning to pray Scripture
Prayer and Worship - Giving time to prayer in all our Sunday Programmes, regular prayer for Gabriel, teaching on different types of prayer, opportunities to go deeper in SPARKS prayer meetings and Home Church. Worship opportunities in partnership with Jen
Mission and Justice - Giving of our prayers and money through regular World Vision sponsorship
And the big picture in all of this, whether we serve, parent or disciple is that we want to build resilient disciples, who know who they are in God and are known in Community, who love and serve God with their interior and exterior lives and always come home
TERM 2 CURRICULUM:
This term is a high Biblical Literacy Focus for us across all our programmes. We love to walk through the scriptures with a strong sense of the meta-narrative of the Big God Story. This helps us to build our understanding of who God is and to establish a foundation from a young age of the big picture of the Bible - knowing context and where all the small stories belong amidst the bigger arc. We can learn to make sense of the Bible as we grow, knowing the story of God, and not just a focus on personalised moralistic lessons - which can be confusing if we’re looking for a hero in a story that isn't obvious or a life lesson which may not make sense.
Tim Keller says that “The reason for our confusion is that we usually read the Bible as a series of disconnected stories, each with a ‘moral’ for how we should live our lives. It is not. Rather, it comprises a single story, telling us how the human race got into its present condition, and how God through Jesus Christ has come and will come to put things right.”
So this term, in Bay Preschool and Team Bay, we’ll be looking at:
Bay Preschool - Foundational Truth: God Loves Me, Stories of Jesus from the New Testament
Jesus Chooses Us to Follow Him (Calling of the Apostles), Bible Passage: Luke 5:1–11
Jesus Is God (Calming the Storm), Bible Passage: Matthew 8:23–27; Mark 4:35–41
Jesus Cares (Feeding the 5,000), Bible Passage: Matthew 14:13–21; Mark 6:30–44; Luke 9:10–17; John 6:1–15Jesus Is Powerful (Healing of the Blind Man), Bible Passage: John 9:1–1
Team Bay Junior and Senior = Redemption through The Big God Story, Old Testament Narrative showing us more of who God is:
God Redeems (Need for a Redeemer), Bible Passage: Genesis 1—3
God Keeps His Word (The Flood), Bible Passage: Genesis 6:5—9:17
God Is Lord of All (The Promise), Bible Passage: Genesis 12:1–9; 15—16; 21:1–7
God Blesses (Jacob), Bible Passage: Genesis 25:19–34; 27:1–41; 32:1—33:11
God Is Good (Joseph), Bible Passage: Genesis 37; 39—50
God Is Enough (The Golden Calf), Bible Passage: Exodus 12:1—15:21; 19—30; 32—34
God Is in Control (Wandering in the Wilderness), Bible Passage: Numbers 9—20
God Is Faithful (Jericho), Bible Passage: Joshua 1—6
I’ll fill you in on the corresponding Remember Verses as the term goes on. If you have any questions about teaching or content, then please feel free to get in touch.
WHAT’S HAPPENING FOR YOU AS A FAMILY:
That’s a lot from me, I’d love to hear from you guys too! Let me know what’s working well (or not so well) for you and your family as you navigate this family discipleship journey together. Big moments, small moments, family rhythm moments, spontaneous moments, epic fail moments, successful moments, intentional moments, accidental moments, and all the near misses in-between. Let’s share what we're trying and what we’re making up as we go along. It’s so important to encourage one another. Email me and let me know your stories.
Grace and Peace to you all,
Charlotte