Jason Ham is the operations coordinator at Elim's Rediscover Church, Exeter

Bringing families into a relationship with Jesus

An effective way to evangelise is to build links with and support local families. Jason Ham explains how Rediscover Church in Exeter is doing just that...

“What can we do to bring families and children into church and into a relationship with Jesus?” This is the question Rediscover Church has been asking over the past year as it has looked to extend its community outreach in Exeter.

The answer, says operations coordinator Jason Ham, has been a series of creative activities to build links with local people.

“There are so many people who don’t know Jesus. We wanted to create opportunities to engage with them beyond our Sunday services so we started doing more outreach events,” he says.

To a certain extent this was nothing new.

“We’ve always been very mission-centred, holding invitational events, Alpha courses and so on, but a lot of that has been with adults.

“The family and kids outreach, though, had potential to reach even more people, so we’ve been more strategic over the past year, organising events and activities and mobilising the church to meet and befriend families.”

An energetic mix of family fun days, holiday clubs, Christmas and Easter activities and support for people in tough situations has been organised to create natural and fun opportunities for people to engage with the church.

“The idea behind all these events is building trust and healthy relationships where people get to know who we are,” says Jason.

“Unfortunately, the media paints a pretty poor picture of Christianity in this country, and too many find faith irrelevant and difficult to understand. We’re trying to show the love of Jesus in all we do and to care for people.”

Many families are struggling, not least with the cost-of-living crisis, so the church aims to share love and joy through its free activities.

“It’s about reaching people where they’re at and thinking about their needs. People want to know that the church and Jesus care for them.

“Has everyone crossed the line to become a Christian through our events? No, but people have opened up, they’ve started asking us why we’re doing what we’re doing.

“We’ve had the opportunity to pray for some, others have come to church, and families who would never think of engaging with us have established links with us as a local church in their community. God is moving in people’s lives.”

The outreach events building community connections

Rediscover Church has organised a wide range of community outreach events over the past year. Jason gave us a run-down of the activities that are building local links and relationships.

Family fun days

We’ve started running family fun days on Saturday mornings at church and they’ve been really successful. We start with party dances, such as the hokey cokey, then continue with Bible stories and activities which help to bring Jesus alive in a vibrant and colourful way. Introducing kids to the Word of God in a gentle and enjoyable style helps people to understand God’s love for them.

Recently, we also had a healthy eating themed fun day which we organised with funding from the local council. Kids made and ate fruit faces, threw fruit beanbags around and talked about the goodness of fruit from a health point of view. Alongside that, we did songs, told Bible stories and organised activities about the fruit of the Spirit. A great combination!

It’s amazing how people have engaged with a relatively simple concept.

Rediscover Church is connecting with its community in many ways

New summer holiday club

We used to be a very Christian country where children knew Bible stories and the Lord’s Prayer from a young age, but that’s changed and we now need to introduce kids to the Bible because they don’t know who Jesus is.

To help do this, we ran a holiday club in July. It was based around the film ‘Sing 2’ with lots of fun characters and animals. Around 70% of kids signed up weren’t from church and our aim was to build relationships with non-church kids and families. This was the first holiday club we have ever organised, and we’re definitely going to run more!

Easter outreach

We’ve got a missional community in a town near here called Cranbrook, which has been created with some of our life groups coming together. Here, we did Easter family outreach and an Easter trail.

We had activity stations around the community with games such as hook-a-duck, running races, Olympic challenges, sack races and more. There were clues and letters for people to find as they went around, and when they unscrambled the letters they spelled Jesus and got a chocolate egg at the end – which unsurprisingly everyone enjoyed!

We’ve run these Easter outreaches for two years and they work really well, opening up the Easter story in an accessible way and building great relationships.

Rediscover Church coordinates various creative activities to build links with local people

An alternative Halloween

Last year we organised an alternative Halloween party with glow sticks and a DJ called DJ Jozzy. It was a brilliant opportunity to share Jesus as the light of the world!

We’ve also got a rapper in church who writes and performs drill music. He has a powerful testimony of being involved with county lines drugs and finding God during this time. He shared it that evening which made the young people think and open up.

A bunch of teenagers came along and they were really engaged – listening to his story and searching out his music on Spotify afterwards.

Christmas hamper distribution

Last year we distributed 1,800 Christmas hampers to families in the community, working with GP surgeries, schools and other organisations to identify those most in need. It’s thanks to the generosity and kindness of the church we can support people practically through the Christmas season with food when there are so many pressures on finances.

We’ve distributed hampers for ten years and gave out the highest number ever last year because the need was so great. It’s been so special and powerful for the church to go to people’s homes with food and be the hands and feet of Jesus at Christmas.

Often people feel lonely at Christmas and, alongside the food, this outreach has made a lasting impression, with great conversations about ‘why’ we do it and personal testimonies being shared.

Prayer walking

South West Awake is a yearly initiative birthed from Rediscover Church in which thousands of Christians gather from across the region to pray at the same time.

This year, more than 6,000 Christians participated, which was amazing. At one location at a beach we organised family prayer and had families and kids engaging. We led the children and families in “head-to-toe prayer” – our hands are about acknowledging God’s gifts and treasures to us and stewarding these well; our heads are about asking God for wisdom in all we do, and so on.

Fun days for asylum seekers

We have asylum seekers in Exeter living in two hotels while awaiting refugee status. That can take up to two years and is a frustrating and difficult time for them. While in the hotels they are often bored and isolated.

We’ve been going to the hotels to run playgroups every Friday and run family fun days with games, painting, friendship bracelet making, inflatable surfboards and so on. The kids love it!

Listening to their harrowing stories of escaping from their home countries due to war, persecution and so on, we’ve been building great relationships.

We’ve even had some asylum seekers coming to our other activities, so we’re starting to build some good connections there as we help them to settle to life in this country.

Would your church like to run similar events? Jason would be happy to share guidance based on their experience. Email: jason.ham@rediscoverchurch.com

This article first appeared in Direction Magazine. For further details, please click here.

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