"Making known the Greatness of God to kids."
Learn. Connect. Grow.
- Learning: As learning is such a big part of a child's life, we think it is important to teach them about spiritual things, too! We want to help teach kids truth about God, the Bible, the world and themselves. This happens most specifically on Sunday mornings during our worship services.
- Connecting: Relationships are the most important part of any person's life. We want to be helping kids build good relationships with peers, relationships with leaders and mentors, and ultimately, a relationship with God. On top of this, we know that parents are the most influential people in a child's life, so we want to be encouraging strong family relationships too!
- Growing: We can say all that we want in a lesson, but it only holds real value if we're also being examples of what we're teaching. We know that children learn by watching and imitating, and we want to encourage their development in this way. We make a priority of acting and speaking in such a way that is Christ-like, and that shows the truths we're teaching in lessons. Our goal is to help children grow in the knowledge and love of Jesus.
Values:
- Safe: our first priority is your child's safety. We take many precautions to make sure our areas are safe for your kids; physically, emotionally and spiritually. This includes volunteer screening, sign-in and sign-out procedures. If you have any questions about any of our procedures, any of our fantastic Sunday morning leaders would be happy to help answer questions!
- Bible-based: Every event, program, and ministry happens for the purpose of bringing kids into a better understanding of, and closer relationship with God. While some events focus mostly on creating a loving community, others (such as Sunday mornings) focus on teaching truth right from the Bible. It is our desire to help each child develop a good foundation of truth. This process begins when an infant is born—with a loving, nurturing atmosphere, where they begin to hear, and eventually say basic statements of truth. By the time a child graduates from grade 5, we want all kids to know some foundational truths about God, the Bible, church, the world and themselves, in order to help prepare them for decisions they make as they become more and more independent.
- Age-appropriate: we do our best to understand each of the developmental stages, and how we can best teach and love the kids. For this reason, the music time, and teaching time looks very different for each of the age-groups.
- Family-focused: While we love having kids here on Sunday mornings, that is only one hour of the week. Compared to the time that a child spends at home, this is only a very small amount of time, and does not have the same potential influence as does time at home. We hope that Sunday mornings will provide a place where kids can connect with their peers, be encouraged by other solid leaders, and be taught about the Bible. We offer family events, resources and provide different forms of communication for parents to keep connected with what we're doing at church, and new ideas to take home!
- Missions-minded: As kids are growing, they are discovering the world around them. We introduce the concept of missions to our kids as young as JK. As part of the Christian and Missionary Alliance of Canada (www.cmacan.org), we support a Global network of missionaries. As Children's Ministry at WLA, we also support Compassion children- this is what our kids' offering goes towards
