~ Donna Dunn, 2017
Gather up your telegrams
Your faded pictures, best laid plans
Books and postcards, 45's
Every sunset in the sky
Carry with you maps and string, flashlights
Friends who make you sing
And stars to help you find your place
Music, hope and amazing grace
— Mary Chapin Carpenter
Start Where You Are
Five years ago, I wrote up a plan for a parenting ministry at Blue Ridge. It seemed like a good idea. There was a need. God put a passion in my heart for that need. Yet, everything about that plan fell apart.
Let me back up and give the back-story. In 2012, while attending a children’s ministry conference, I was really impacted by the fact that we in Kids Community have so little time with children at church, about an hour a week on average. At the same time, parents have at least 80 waking hours a week with their children. Even if the children attend school, they have about 32 hours with their parents — 30 times what church has. Add to this the fact that surveys show that parents often have the greatest spiritual influence on their children, and the need to equip parents to have a spiritual vision for their family seems critical.
But what does this look like?
I started to pray with a couple of other moms. And I started to pester anyone who would listen to me. “I believe it’s really important that parents play an active role in pointing our kids to Christ, but I have no idea how to do that. Can we start a ministry and bring in someone to do this?” I asked this to Kids Community Director Peggy Schaub. I remember her smiling and saying, “Maybe that’s why God’s putting it on your heart.” But I don’t know how to do this and I often feel I’m failing as a mom! How could I possibly be the right person for this?” I kept praying.
That fall, our family went through a difficult time and had to step back from any further plans for family/parenting ministry. Still, God was faithful to our prayers. In 2013, during a message series on discipleship, God put it on my heart as well as Randy’s that we needed to disciple our children. But how? We continued to pray and gradually connected with three and then four other families who had a heart for training up parents to train up their kids. Over the next year we watched many different videos until we came to the Grace Based Parenting series by Dr. Tim Kimmel. Finally, we had some direction!
We began to make plans to host some sort of event at church to show the videos. However, about this time, our small group began going separate ways. The other families either were called to serve somewhere else or had their own family struggles. This was a disappointing time for Randy and me, but God used it in so many ways. Most importantly, we really handed God all of our plans and surrendered: “God if you only had us do this for our family, then thank you. We needed it!”
A couple of months later, I attended a retreat for Early Childhood servers in West Virginia. During a praise and worship time, as I prayed about all of this, I asked God what next steps we should take, if any. In a very sweet and quiet way, I heard God say, “Start where you are.” When I came back and shared this with Randy, we felt God telling us to invite families we knew by serving in the Preschool rooms at Blue Ridge. That led us to begin hosting a short 6-week study in our house in which we went through the first of the Grace Based DVDs. Our friends who did these studies felt the impact, but only a couple felt a calling to lead in this area.
In the summer of 2015, we met with Pastor Dave Kountz and talked about our desire to share Grace Based Parenting, but we knew we needed more leaders. He connected us with one family he had talked to. They connected us with two others. At the same time, a couple of other families also expressed an interest in this area. We could see God weaving together just the right team. It was amazing because some of us didn’t even know each other, but it seemed exactly right, right from the beginning of our meeting together. In September 2015, eight families decided to go through all 25 weeks of the Grace-Based Parenting curriculum. We ended with a weekend retreat in April 2016. How wonderful that it took 9 months to birth a parent ministry!
Over the summer, all the leader families took on roles to help prepare for the fall. Again we saw how God brought together exactly the right mix of people at just the right time! We had a super organizer who planned our binders, several handy folks to make a model house, a long-time Kids Community server to write our emails on the serving values, moms with a heart for children to work on kids activities and babysitter boxes, a Centra employee to help us reserve their meeting space for the retreat, a single mom with a passion for other single moms, video gurus for our intro, a lawyer, an entrepreneur, communicators, and our own education professor to help create curriculum.
In 2016, as Blue Ridge went through the Living on Mission series, God broadened our vision for this ministry. He not only could use us to reach parents to give them a vision for being spiritual leaders for their kids (thus impacting children for eternity), but He could use this to reach parents who don’t know Him. Parenting is a felt need. Most of us feel like we need help. People who might not come to a church service might come to a parenting group. Imagine inviting neighbors and co-workers who don’t know Jesus and help them see how if they receive truth and grace they can point their kids toward truth and grace!
In September 2016 we began our first pilot group — four groups co-led by two leader families. We had 37 adults and 57 children, along with 15 CSER babysitters. Because of a family pushing for RightNow Media to be offered through Blue Ridge, we all had access to our videos in our homes. And while we struggled to find babysitters, God brought the exact number we needed — just in time.
Again and again God brought just who needed to lead, to serve and to participate. God has been entirely faithful. He has given us Secure Love, Strong Hope and a Significant Purpose — for our families and for our Home Front. Let us continue to follow Him one step at a time as we Live in Truth, Lead with Grace and Leave a Legacy of Faith.
For I know the plans I have for you, plans for good and not for evil to give you a hope and a future. — Jer. 29:11