Holiday Clubs - What Value?

I'm back from holiday and think I have caught up with everything else I needed to do on my return. So it's time to blog again. And immediately I want to return to the topic of my last blog Children and mission. In case you haven't read earlier blogs I guess I better say at the outset that I am absolutely committed to children's ministry and outreach. I long to see children serving in our churches and reaching out to their peers. I have been committed to primary school chaplaincy work through my years of ministry and spent several years working as a children's evangelist.

Yet today I am asking the question what is the real value of a children's holiday club? In the adult world we gave up on week-long missions a long time ago in place of things like Alpha or Christianity Explored courses. We have in the adult world primarily moved to a model of evangelism as a journey experienced over many weeks, months or years as opposed to an event. Yet this summer all around the country churches will hold holiday clubs and declare them a successful outreach. But are they?

Yesterday I visited two holiday clubs in the town of Kirkintilloch. Our Step Out team are working with the Harestanes Church in the local community centre made up of three portacabins. The children drawn from the local community looked delighted to be there, parents who were not church members on the whole looked delighted to leave them.

At Kirkintilloch Baptist Church a similar picture of happy children, happy parents and happy leaders. Both clubs were full of life, energy and creativity. There was an excitement in the room, and the children were feeding off it.

However looking back over 20 years of running several clubs a year I cannot think of many non-churched children who have come to faith and grown in discipleship through this work and are still following Christ today. Yes, there are many children who said during the week that they wanted to follow Jesus, conversion statistics would be high but to my knowledge they do not follow today, probably something to do with the fact that we expected kids to be discipled in Sunday school each week and a regular Sunday commitment was not on their parents' radar.

So why would I still choose to do a holiday club today? Why do I still support what the Step Out teams are doing?

1. Church kids find themselves presented with a clear gospel presentation and an opportunity to commit themselves to Christ.


2. It brings an opportunity to train Church children's leaders and introduce fresh communication methods, modern music and creative energy into the life of the Sunday School.


3. Teenagers in the church find a place of fulfilling service where their ideas and creativity are needed, valued and seen to work.


4. It demonstrates to the church it's ability to work together, across the ages, on a short term mission project bringing lots of people into service, and gives others something to pray for and get excited about. It's an encouragement.


5. Childcare provision in the holidays is a great blessing to working families in the community.
   
6. Saturday/Sunday events following a holiday club and pick up/drop off times give an opportunity for church members to get to know the parents of these children and to offer friendship to them and to introduce them to other services provided by the church.


7. Local Press will gladly run with your story and communicate to the community that the church is alive and is active in the town.


8. Who knows what the church will do to follow up a holiday club? In my experience in one church it was used to plant a new congregation, launch a weekly after school club, start a monthly kids club.

So I'm all for holiday clubs and you can maybe add other valuable reasons for them. But I am also concerned that we find a working model for presenting a clear gospel message to non-churched children that has lifelong discipleship at its core. Ideas on a postcard, or even replies to this blog would be greatly received.