Taking Church out of Church

I love church.  I really do.  It inspires me, corrects me, and allows me to worship with others.  It's a great support system.

But church is more than a building. And it's more than just a group of people who believe the same thing.

It has to be a way of life, not just something you do on Sunday mornings.

So we're taking church outside of our building.  And into our family, into our everyday lives. 

I read this statistic that says 50% of kids who are "raised in church" will deny their faith by college.  BUT kids who see their parents live their faith, that it's sincere and genuine and ingrained in every part of their lives, they will take their parents' faith and make it their own.

So we're trying to put our faith in everything we do, everything we talk about, and it's not easy. 

But we're trying to teach our kids the simple basics of faith.  We want to lay a foundation and show our kids that this is WHY WE LIVE.  Because if it's just something we do on Sunday mornings, then it isn't really real.  And kids know that.

Here's what we did last week:

SINK or FLOAT?

 

We took a tub filled with water and put the items on this sheet in to see if they sank or if they floated.  The boys loved it!  It was fun to guess which ones would bob up to the top.  (Yeah, I drew the pictures.  Yes, I know the rubber duck looks like a banana.  Trust me, my kids pointed it out.)

After the game, we read the Bible story about Jesus walking on the water.  While we worked on these pictures...

...I asked what would happen if we tried to walk on the water.  Initially, Thing One said he could walk on water like Jesus.  Haha! 

So I asked what happened when he got in the bathtub.  He realized he sank.  :)

Then we talked about how Jesus was different from anyone else because he could do things no other person could do.  He's different because he's God's Son. 

If my kids don't get this, if I don't get this, then what's the point of church at all?  If they don't understand who Jesus is, then they aren't going to do what He says to do.  And this is the very cornerstone of our lives.  This is why we do the things we do. 

(By the way, I didn't come up with this activity.  We did this at Agency D3 Vacation Bible School two weeks ago.  I took it straight from the kindergarten planning book.) 

We taped the pictures up on the kitchen windows so they could show Daddy and NaNa.   

And now there's a little bit of church in our house.  :)