for those of you not in austin, you may not have heard, but for the next four sundays at church, we are having a family worship service called KidStuff FX. this has been a long time in the making and we are excited!! sure there is a huge castle in our foyer, some characters and lots of bright colorful shirts running around, but our excitement for fx is bigger than that. i am excited for parents to see exactly what we do in kidstuff so they can know what in the world their kids are talking about, but that still is not the driving force. i am more excited about the possibility of creating an environment where the family can encounter christ together. i recently returned from a mission trip to the dominican republic. i led a team of 2 families with elementary school kids. one of my favorite things about the trip was seeing the family serve together, struggle together and spur one another on. the bonds built on that trip between the families run deep! i am actually a little jealous of it, and wish my family had the opportunity to do the same. conversations happened that would not have otherwise. parents got to coach their kids through teachable moments, discuss highs and lows and even REAP through scripture together. it was incredible!
the longer i do children’s ministry, the more i want to foster situations like this. that is what we are most excited about for fx. the whole family can come together to worship. they can sing songs of praise to God together (and even talk more about what they mean afterward). How cool for kids to see their parents worship and vice versa! What an incredible opportunity they have to use that to teach them more about how and why we worship. they will also get to enter into the kids world and see the skits they talk about each week. This might help some things make sense! 
And then they all get to enter into a Bible story time that everyone understands. And how great to be able to talk about that for the rest of the week. Imagine families later talking more about their favorite part of the skit with thier kids, or the hardest part of the Bible story. Or even being able to hold each other accountable for what they have learned and apply the scripture. oh I get excited just thinking about it!
my prayer is that during these next four weeks of fx, the Lord will change some families lives for eternity! that a culture to discuss and experience spiritual things will be created or enhanced in each family. that fx will be a catalyst for families on mission. a family that worships together becomes a family that lives on mission together. can you imagine the future of the church if your kids start thinking and living missionally in elementary school? greater things have yet to come and greater things are still to be done in this city…
please join me in praying for fx and in fighting for our families!! we will be doing fx, july 26th, august 2nd, august 9th, and august 16th.
more info can be found on our website as well! here is a video we made for church a few weeks ago about fx:
KidStuff FX from The Austin Stone on Vimeo.
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