Jesus gives every church its mission: the Great Commission. At SAC, we have chosen to word our mission - "leading people into a growing relationship with Jesus Christ" . . . Great Commission.
How a church accomplishes this mission is what makes each church unique. At SAC, I believe there are 4 key distinctives we are pursuing to best accomplish Christ's mission. I want to unpack each of these distinctives in a series of four blog entries.
Distinctive: Partnering with Families.
One of the things we are passionate about at SAC is partnering with families. We believe that what happens at home is more important than what happens at church. After all, with holidays, illness, and vacations, your child will probably only spend about 40 hours a year at church. We will work hard to partner with you by:
1) Making Every Sunday Fun & Helpful
We want your children to know that learning the Bible is important, helpful, and fun. Each week we will utilize the 252Basics curriculum. Each Basic Truth is amplified by a weekly key concept which is systematically taught over a three-year track. The curriculum includes 150 Bible stories and is based on a Core and Memory Verse as the framework for each month.
2) Equipping You
Yes, we want your child to have fun, learn Biblical truths, and love coming so much that they drag you to church each Sunday. We also know that YOU want to be the primary spiritual influence in your child's life. Therefore, we want to partner with you as YOU raise your child to become a Christ follower. However, many parents feel ill-equipped or lack the time to invest spiritually in their child like they would like.
We want to partner with you each week by providing you with a "God-time Card" each week when you pick up your child after the service. This card will provide you a review of the Biblical story/principle your child "discovered" that day, offer some follow-up questions for you and your child, and provide some suggested conversations. Additionally, we will give you some websites where you can further develop the principle/virtue of the week. This helps equip YOU to be the primary spiritual influence in your child's life.
3) Offering Another Voice
As part of our model, we believe that sustained life change best happens in small groups. That applies within our children's ministry. So each week your child will be in a small group with the same adult small group leader. So each Sunday your child will begin in a small group for initial activities and then the small groups will combine for a large group production (worship, Bible story, etc.). Then everyone will return to their regular small group. The purpose of this approach is to teach each child personally and to hear each child personally. I have talked with several small group leaders from other partner churches who have told me that they have fallen in love with their small group children and they have chosen to promote each year to stay with the same small group for 5 or 6 years. They have literally become an extended part of the family. Awesome! This allows your child to have another mature voice in their life who loves your child like you do. As a parent of four young children, this is a high value for me and my wife.
So one of the distinctives of SAC is we want to partner with you as YOU raise your child to become a growing follower of Jesus Christ.
Stay tuned for the description of the other three major distinctives . . .
