by Betty Giesbrecht and Susan Schroeder

At our Pioneer Clubs here at Bethel Church in Langley, British Columbia, we wanted to include family events in our club program. Our goal was to get to know our “club” families as well as the kids. We also wanted to do things that our entire church family as well as our club families could participate in and get to know one another. Here are things we’ve done, and they have been awesome!

Family Christmas. Our annual Family Christmas takes place several weeks before the Christmas rush so everyone can come out. The club members are encouraged to invite their family, friends, grandparents, and so on, and we invite our church family, too.

Club members sit with their families and enjoy the evening of singing carols. Club leaders read special poems, the grade 7 club puts on skits, and our Pioneer Clubs choir sings.

At the end, one of our pastors presents a short devotional and invites everyone to our church’s Christmas events. Then we have goodies in the gym, with so many people mingling that we have standing room only—and our gym holds almost 250 people! It’s wonderful to see club families and church families getting to know each other.

Parent/Child Events. Other ways to get parents out to club are our Parent/Child events, with a hilarious theme for each. Father/Daughter themes have included:

• Good Buddies—Kids and dads dress alike. One dad and his two daughters all came in dresses and high heels!
  
• Hobby Craze—Kids and dads dress to represent the dads’ hobbies, so one girl came as a telescope.
  
• Beach Party—This includes limbo and a hula hoop contest for the dads.

These events show the parents who don’t come to church that it’s a friendly place where we care about each other.

Awards Night and Musical. This event ends our club year. Club members invite parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, friends—everyone! They put on a musical play which they’ve worked on each week during song time at club.

Our evening ends with goodies in the gym, where we play videos from our camp weekend and display posters of pages from our club yearbook.

Unchurched parents love our club events—we get only positive comments from them. We now have several families coming to church because of club.