Children's Ministry has been blessed that we have designated classroom spaces for our Friday Awana program and Sunday programs, and we are grateful. As more families return to in-person services after the pandemic, we now have over 100 children attending our various programs, and some of our classrooms are now reaching maximum capacity and still growing.
We also need a bigger and safer activity center for our children like a gym. During our Awana game time, we have been squeezing 20 or 30 kids in a regular classroom with concrete floor, and often the kids are bumping into each other or slipping and falling on the hard concrete floor. We always have ice packs and bandages ready to deal with those bumps and bruises. An indoor gym would be much better and safer for our children, and it will also help during the long winter when the kids cannot play outside.
Secondly, Children's Ministry and Youth Ministry both need the same kind of open activity space. Right now the only available open space is the basement. Children's activities interfere with youth worship when our kids play in the basement on Friday night. Another example is a couple of weeks ago when we had our annual car racing event, we invited the parents to join. We needed to use the whole basement and we had to ask youth ministry for it. Taylor graciously agreed to let us use the basement, but I feel bad that we are asking youth to make room for children. Sharing space also causes a lot of transition issues and requires extra effort from our coworkers when setting up and cleaning up.
Our children are flexible and adaptive, and I'm sure so are our youth. However, if we can take care of these needs through CBE, it would help us to spend more time and energy on their spiritual formation, and on our programs and teachers.
儿童事工很感恩,我们周五Awana和周日活动有固定的教室空间,感谢神。在疫情结束后,我们有越来越多的家庭参与我们的活动,我们现在有 100 多名孩子参加我们的各种项目,我们的一些教室现已达到最大容量,并且还在不断增加。 我们还需要为孩子们提供一个更大、更安全的活动中心,比如体育馆。 在我们的Awana游戏期间,我们在普通的水泥地板教室里挤了20或30个孩子,孩子们经常会互相碰撞或在坚硬的水泥地板上滑倒。 我们总是准备好冰袋和绷带来处理这些碰撞和瘀伤。 室内体育馆对孩子们会更好、更安全。漫长冬季孩子们不能在外面玩,体育馆也是一个很好的帮助。
其次,儿童事工和青少年事工都需要同样的开放活动空间。 目前唯一可用的开放空间是地下室。 当我们的孩子周五晚上在地下室玩时,孩子们的声音会干扰青少年崇拜。 另一个例子是几周前,当我们举办年度赛车活动时,我们邀请了家长们参加。 我们需要使用整个地下室,我们不得不向青少年部询问。Taylor传道慷慨地同意让我们使用地下室,但我感到很难过,因为我们要求青少年为孩子们腾出空间。 共享空间还会导致很多过渡问题,并且在布置和清理时需要我们的同工们付出额外的努力。
我们的孩子们非常灵活、适应性强,我相信我们的青少年也是如此。 然而,如果我们能够通过扩堂来满足这些需求,这将有助于我们花更多的时间和精力在他们的灵性培育上,也更好的支持我们儿童和青少年牧师和同工们。
-Sophie Yang (Children's Deacon), on behalf of Pastor Bowman (Children's Pastor) and Tony Ng (Children's Director)