When it comes to helping kids grow in their faith, we believe there are four spiritual habits to target. These habits are the decisions, behaviors, and rhythms that help us grow spiritually over time. If you’re like most people, when you hear “spiritual habit,” you start to think about reading the Bible, prayer, or going to church. These are important spiritual habits, but they’re not the only ones that matter.
While there’s no definitive list of spiritual habits, we think these four are worth targeting to help your kids grow:
- Spending time with God
- Spending time with others
- Using your gifts
- Sharing your story
These four habits sit at the core of our discipleship strategy (and if you don’t have a discipleship strategy yet, steal ours!). We believe spiritual growth should be the lens through which we see everything else we do in our ministries. So, each quarter, we focus on one of these four spiritual habits with a specific discipleship activity.
Here’s each quarterly discipleship activity you’ll find in Volume 8 of Grow Kids Curriculum.
SMALL GROUP PARTY KITS
With kids, we’re convinced the spiritual habit of Spending Time with Others is most important to cover at the beginning of every school year. It’s the time of year when kids build new friendships and begin a new year with their small groups. If we want kids to continue to grow during all this transition, they need space to grow in their relationships with each other, like their small groups. Small Group Party Kits will help group leaders easily create a fun and welcoming environment for kids. We’ve made it easy for small group leaders to choose a kit and create an event that gives kids a chance to spend quality time together.
THE JOY DRIVE
This discipleship activity gives you the tools to help kids in your group make a difference in your community. By partnering with a local organization you believe in, you’ll give kids and their families a chance to collect donations to improve their community. Each week, you’ll give updates on how your challenge is progressing and encourage kids to share what they can to love and serve others! In this month-long activity, small groups will work together to gather donations. While this activity can be done anytime during the year, we suggest pairing it with the teaching series Joy Story, which is all about Christmas and generosity!
THE GROW WITH GOD EXPERIENCE
The Easter season is the perfect time for kids to pause and take a moment to reflect on what Jesus has done and how it impacts their lives. No matter where kids are on their own spiritual journeys, this activity is designed to help them discover something new about God. Throughout your “garden,” in The Grow with God Experience, you can help kids experience how meaningful and helpful it can be for them to spend time with God. Kids will walk through the Easter story and practice a few spiritual habits along the way to help encourage their growth.
THE WHAT’S NEXT CHALLENGE
No matter how similar or relatable kids may feel to one another, no two stories are the same. There are pieces of every story that are unique, and parts of our stories make us unique and give us a unique perspective on the world. In The What’s Next Challenge, kids will use their creativity to reflect on who they are, what they have experienced, and who they want to be. Through this simple, fun activity, kids will learn how pieces of their lives fit together and how God can use their stories to help others.
Those are each of the four quarterly discipleship activities you can find inside of Grow Kids Curriculum. And if you’re already using Grow Kids, we’ve given you everything you need for each activity—instructions for each discipleship activity, editable graphics, shopping lists, flyers, debrief guides, handouts, and more!
In this post, here’s what we’ll cover: