OK, so I realize I’m pretty behind on my blog reading. Here it is June 10 and I’m citing a blog from June 1. I almost didn’t do it because it seems so “last week”. But it’s such great news I couldn’t resist.

Kurt Johnston from Saddleback Church (maybe you’ve heard of it?!?) posted this great blog last week on what their church is doing to integrate kids into the rest of the church. We love hearing these stories since they so resonate with our Sticky Faith research. As I told Kurt in an e.mail a few days ago, I am so thrilled with his ideas.

Of the many things I liked about this blog, here are a few of my favorite:

- We are going to eliminate much of the competing activities. We currently do a whole lot of youth versions of things such as a youth version of our membership class, a youth version of missions trips, a youth version of deeper learning bible studies etc. We are going to take a close look at these and determine which ones we can eliminate and jump on board with the ones offered for adults.

- We are going to creatively look for ways to get our students to actually attend an adult service on a somewhat regular basis! The older the students, the more effort we will make. So we will work extremely hard to get our college kids in the adult services, work sorta hard to get high schoolers there, and work a little bit to get our junior highers there.

So I’m curious: what ideas do you have to shorten the bridge between your kids and your church? We at FYI love to keep learning from you. Your creativity inspires us.