After taking off in New Zealand Presbyterian churches, revolutionary children’s ministry initiative Kids Friendly is increasingly attracting overseas attention. It equips churches to intentionally minister to children and families in their communities. Kids Friendly Coach Jill Kayser says it’s about creating culture change in churches, so that everyone in the church sees it as their role to minister to children, while at the same time children are empowered to express their leadership potential. AMANDA WELLS reports.
Jill says she is becoming overwhelmed by the number of international requests for Kids Friendly information and resources.
Last August she was invited to share the Kids Friendly vision at the Uniting Church in Australia’s children and youth leaders’ national conference in Adelaide. “Since then I have been approached by individual churches to ask if they can join Kids Friendly and access our resources.” In February, the Rev Beth Nicholls from the Uniting Church in Australia’s Queensland Presbytery “shadowed” Jill for a week to learn more about what she does and about Kids Friendly, including presentations to church councils, coaching and training sessions and workshops.
Jill has been invited to share the Kids Friendly vision at five CWM conferences that will involve partner Churches from about 50 countries. The first “Mission with Children” conference was held last year in Samoa; the 2010 conference is in Malaysia. After one of its leaders attended the Samoa conference, the Presbyterian Church of Wales wants to buy into Kids Friendly, and Jill says she is struggling to know what to do with a number of similar requests.
In New Zealand, other denominations, including the Congregational Church in NZ and the Methodists have expressed keen interest.
Kids Friendly was developed about eight years ago by and for the Presbyterian Church of Aotearoa New Zealand to help our churches effectively minister to children and families in their communities. Piloted in Auckland Presbytery for two years, it went nationwide in 2006, and has benefited from funding by the Presbyterian Savings and Development Society and the Presbyterian Foundation.
Today there are 128 Presbyterian or Uniting congregations in the Kids Friendly network, which gives access to resources, including a manual and the Hands On newsletter, invitations to Kids Friendly events and advice. After joining the network, a church can sign a contract with Jill to work towards becoming a Kids Friendly church, which includes committing to achieving Kids Friendly goals and being able to brand your church with Kids Friendly signage. Forty of our churches have achieved Kids Friendly status, with another 60 churches in progress.
The Kids Friendly team’s capacity has recently been strengthened by the appointment of Cheryl Harray as full-time Kids Friendly Coach for the Synod of Otago and Southland area.
The role has grown out of Cheryl’s part-time position as Kids Friendly coach for Dunedin Presbytery, which started in April 2008. Jill says the presbytery has always been very supportive of Kids Friendly’s goals, and was one of the first that contracted her coaching services when Kids Friendly went nationwide. Jill works closely with Cheryl, who will report both to her and to the synod. Cheryl will also run Transformers, a programme designed to
“raise up young leaders” in the synod region.
Transformers involves a weekend camp and follow-up mentoring programme that is designed to effect culture change in a church, Jill says. “We believe that every child has the potential to be a leader and leadership skills can be taught and developed.”
Jill says the challenge is not convincing children they can be leaders; it’s helping adults recognise that children are born leaders. Schools encourage children’s leadership potential all the time, she says, but churches are seldom places where kids have opportunities to lead and make a difference.
Transformers targets 10 to 13 year olds, and each child attending needs to come with a mentor from their church. Churches are also asked to send 13-15 year olds to act as junior leaders, group leaders who are over 16, and the minister is strongly encouraged to attend.
Jill says the mentor’s role is to advocate for the child in their church, to make sure that they have opportunities to lead, as well as to encourage and guide them. “Everyone can be a mentor – you just have to commit for a year.” Jill has written a guide setting out the expectations of mentors, who like anyone working with children in the Presbyterian Church need to be police checked.
Transformers was piloted in Christchurch Presbytery in April 2009. Jill says the children attending “were so excited and so enthused”. She found that it was very important that the minister helped manage the mentoring process after the camp, as well as creating opportunities for the young “leaders in training” to exercise their leadership skills in the church. For example, they might design and lead part of a service, or develop a mission project.
Young people can have huge creative resources, she says, citing the example of 13-year-old Joseph Peacock from Mosgiel North Taieri Church who produced an innovative rendition of the Easter story using Lego and made it available on Youtube. “So many people picked up on it. I can’t tell you how many churches came back to me and told me they used it.
“Children have the ability to minister to us.”
The young leaders in Transformers work towards leadership awards, with a target of achieving six awards over the programme’s 12 months.
“The hope is that after that year, their church has had some kind of culture change,” Jill says, particularly in terms of the way in which the minister and the children see their ability to contribute.
After Christchurch, Kaimai Presbytery was next to pick up the challenge, running a camp at Waihi Beach in February.
Dunedin’s first Transformers camp was held in April, Manawatu Wanganui will hold one in June, Wellington in September, and possibly Christchurch during the period of General Assembly 2010 (Thursday 30 September - Sunday 3 October). Generally someone in each presbytery has “caught the vision”, Jill says, and promoted it to other ministers, and people in each church have been inspired to find children and mentors.
The presbytery runs the workshops during the camp, so that they have as much owner-ship of the initiative as possible, Jill says.
Lorraine Morgan, who became Kids Friendly’s part-time coordinator in 2009, is overseeing Transformers. The children and families coordinator at St Andrew’s Geraldine, Lorraine also coordinates Kids Friendly’s regional networking and training for those in children’s ministry. These Kids Friendly Connections are a two-day, live-in event for about 10 people, and include time to explore values and how they relate to their work.
The story of Transformers was told in Hands On, the Kids Friendly newsletter, and provoked some unexpected consequences, Jill says. Bev Reid of Knox Church in Morrinsville had picked up the newsletter after attending the Kaimai presbytery inauguration and was inspired by the mentoring part of the programme. She decided to pair up the church’s elders and children, setting up a morning tea for them to meet and selecting the matches with care.
One girl, who had struggled with learning difficulties, was matched with an elder who taught at a Kip McGrath tutoring centre. He gave her a Christmas gift of a free term’s help, and it was quickly discovered that her problems reading stemmed from visual perception difficulties that could be fixed by placing a coloured filter over the words. She discovered confidence and lost the belief that she was stupid.
Jill says she finds it hugely inspiring to hear these kinds of stories. “Kids Friendly is about planting seeds and letting them germinate. It’s very inspiring that people are taking action after reading our resources.”
Te Aka Puaho is another presbytery that’s caught the Kids Friendly dream. Te Ahorangi the Rev Wayne Te Kaawa says that after Jill visited in August 2009, people were keen to follow through on her message. “They were asking ‘why don’t we take this more seriously?’”
“In 1925, one of the elders described the Maori synod as a church of young people. We had hundreds of young people and many schools. Now we have hardly any children or youth.”
Soon after Jill’s visit, Te Aka Puaho was advertising for an administrator, and Wayne noticed that one of the applicants had a passion for children. “So we decided to develop this position and link it into Kids Friendly.” At the moment, Jackie Coleman is working on a volunteer basis, but Wayne hopes to find funding for a full-time position.
A registered kindergarten teacher, Jackie has been talking to people in the presbytery to find out their needs and develop a plan. Wayne says they are starting to see new opportunities. “We noticed that the eastern Bay of Plenty has a lot of children’s holiday programmes but our marae is empty. So Jackie’s looking at developing a children’s holiday programme. Also we have some churches that are empty. We’re asking, ‘why can’t we develop a preschool there?’”
Two parishes are working with Jackie to start up groups and ministries for children, Wayne says. “We’re seeing some shoots starting to appear.”
For more information about Kids Friendly, including access to back issues of Hands On, see www.presbyterian.org.nz/kidsfriendly. To subscribe to Hands On or to get in touch with Jill, please email her at jill@kidsfriendly.org.nz