Browsing Tag

Service

Bless Your Heart by Cindy Colley

Mama’s K.I.S.S. #78: Nursery Sanitation Crew

Posted on March 6, 2025

As you know, if you’ve been reading, for quite some time, I’ve occasionally been running little installments called “Mama’s K.I.S.S.” I know that lots of readers could give many more and far more creative ideas than I can offer, but these installments are just a few tried and true and mostly old-fashioned ideas for putting service hearts in our kids.  This is number 78 of a list of one hundred ways we train our kids to serve. K.I.S.S. is an acronym for “Kids In Service Suggestions”.

Somebody in your congregation, if you are a young church, is already taking the time and effort to sanitize the nursery class each week. Every little plastic car that rolls on the table while they are singing “The wheels on the car go round and round…on the way to Bible class/“ has to be rubbed down with a germ-killing wipe. The linens on the changing table have to be washed and replaced. The table -top that has their little bucket safety seats has to be disinfected and the little clocks they hold during “Tick-tock, time for Bible class” do, too. The diaper pail has to be emptied.

Why not ask the nursery teacher if your teens can do this job for a month of Sundays? You can supervise them if they are young and inexperienced. It’s a great time to teach them how to sanitize while teaching them how to serve. (This one is on almost the same level as the washing of feet in the upper room. It’s not a pretty job. That pail has a stench. But it’s a really necessary job.) This service is valuable in the development of your young “department of sanitation.”

Then at the end of your month, leave a little surprise on the table for the teacher:  a little goody basket or a candle or a box of chocolates.  Include  a note that tells her how much she’s appreciated. After all, she may be the one who is changing the diapers AND emptying the pail. Include this verse in a card.

Even so it is not the will of your Father which is in heaven, that one of these little ones should perish (Matthew 18:14)

 

Bless Your Heart by Cindy Colley

Mama’s K.I.S.S. #77: Cinnamon Rolls for Public Service Workers

Posted on February 26, 2025

As you know, if you’ve been reading, for quite some time, I’ve occasionally been running little installments called “Mama’s K.I.S.S.” I know that lots of readers could give many more and far more creative ideas than I can offer, but these installments are just a few tried and true and mostly old-fashioned ideas for putting service hearts in our kids.  This is number 77 of a list of one hundred ways we train our kids to serve. K.I.S.S. is an acronym for “Kids In Service Suggestions”.

I’ve yet to see the police department, fire station crew (volunteer or paid), or rescue unit that does not love homemade cinnamon rolls delivered to the station or precinct headquarters. You can make these at home with your own kids and do all the delivery work yourselves, or you can do this as a group project with several kids and deliver as a youth group. It can be a project for your homeschoolers, as well. The important thing is to let the kids go in there with hearts and words of gratitude to those men and women who are working to keep our communities safe.  It goes without saying that you will also want to include an invitation to visit the church with times and/or info about  special events or seminars included. You may want to even let each child deliver a hand-written note of thanks, as well.

Alternately, prepare breakfast at the building with your kids and teens and invite all the public service workers to a come-and-go breakfast. I’ve seen this be wildly successful on a Saturday morning. Just be sure you “cover-up” the fire and  police department with flyers ahead of time. Have the preacher or an elder call them, as well, to issue an invitation. This method is especially good in small towns where the department families know the church families. It fosters a great relationship between the church and the community.It’s great to put a sign out on the day of the event with this title  “Thank-you for your service! Free breakfast today for our police, fire and rescue workers. Come on in!” Have kids at the door to welcome and have them during the milk and juice ar helping with the coffee counter.

Here’s a recipe from The Pioneer Woman that I have made (with a few tweaks) and loved:

https://www.thepioneerwoman.com/food-cooking/recipes/a11914/cinammon-rolls/

 

 

Bless Your Heart by Cindy Colley

Mama’s K.I.S.S. #76: Sewing/Cooking Classes

Posted on January 24, 2025

As you know, if you’ve been reading, for quite some time, I’ve occasionally been running little installments called “Mama’s K.I.S.S.” I know that lots of readers could give many more and far more creative ideas than I can offer, but these installments are just a few tried and true and mostly old-fashioned ideas for putting service hearts in our kids.  This is number 76 of a list of one hundred ways we train our kids to serve. K.I.S.S. is an acronym for “Kids In Service Suggestions”.

I remember being in middle school when I was growing up in the Adamsville, Alabama church of Christ. I doubt that  any adult guided Laura and Marsha as they did this, but rather, I think they took it upon themselves to sort of mentor a group of three middle school girls.  I’m 65 years old and I still fondly remember the outings, sleepovers and service projects that these older (11th-12th grade) Christian girls planned for us. Laura’s parents owned a small apartment complex and they would let us have a vacant one for  our sleepovers. Those were the days. These very cool (and godly)  teenagers took time for us; and we (the middle-schoolers) thought we had arrived.

You should encourage your high school daughters to do this. They can be game-changers in the worlds of kids who are younger. Specifically, if your teens know how to cook, put together a little cooking class on a Saturday afternoon and just let the “older”s instruct the “younger”s as the group prepares just one dish or cake or pie. Make it for a specific service project: for a widow visit, a hospital waiting room delivery or a fire station appreciation gift. Let the older girls drive the younger ones to deliver. This is a first taste of  service independently from parents, but what a great way to launch out.

Alternately, do the same thing if your teen girls know how to sew or embroider or crochet.  Gather the needed tools and get together in the fellowship hall or at home. Let the “older”s share the skill with “younger”s and then deliver together. Middle school is a tough time and, for some, it can get a bit dark–even depressing. If you are an older teen girl or if you are the mom who can encourage an older teen girl to be a blessing to those just three or four years behind, by all means, reach out! It takes minimal organization and a little time. Possibly, the people who will thank you most are the moms of those middle-school girls.

I said that I doubted that Marsha and Laura were directed by any adult. But now that I think back about it, it could have been my own mother, trying to get me through some challenging days, who suggested to the older girls that they “take us under their wing.”  My mom was the 5th and 6th grade girls’ Bible class teacher. She could have very well put the bug in the ears of those older girls, who had also been in her class a few short years before. My mom was creative like that!   You can be, too!

Bless Your Heart by Cindy Colley

Mama’s Kiss #74: Hospital Volunteers

Posted on November 1, 2024

As you know, if you’ve been reading, for quite some time, I’ve occasionally been running little installments called “Mama’s K.I.S.S.” I know that lots of readers could give many more and far more creative ideas than I can offer, but these installments are just a few tried and true and mostly old-fashioned ideas for putting service hearts in our kids.  This is number 74 of a list of one hundred ways we train our kids to serve. K.I.S.S. is an acronym for “Kids In Service Suggestions”.

There are few places that bring smiles to young servants in a more eternally fulfilling way than the hallways of hospitals. Truly!

There are a few hospitals here and there that still allow teens to deliver the mail to the residents in volunteer programs. Mostly, though, in our post-modern and post covid world, though, the “candy-stripers” have been replaced by corporate systems that are touted as efficient and safe.

But smart parents are always on the look out for ways to incorporate the sick and hurting into the monthly service regimes of their teen (and even younger) children. Enlist the help of your youth group or church service group to do some or all of the following:

1. Fill little dollar store plastic bins with snack crackers and cookies and water bottles and deliver them to the waiting areas in hospitals with notes of encouragement from your local congregation. Be sure you include directions to your building and contact information with the open offer of meeting with families for prayer.

2. Have your children adopt a floor or wing of the hospital for weekly visiting, room by room. Choose as  safely as possible, but this limited risk is so worth it for your kids.   There are areas of non-infection in most larger hospitals. Consider the NICU or the cancer patients.

3. Have your children make little “laundry lines”  with clothes-pins to attach to the walls of patients who will be staying for a few days, so that they can display their cards. Be sure to have the children go in and attach the first card on the little yarn “clothes-lines”  they have made. Of course, the way your children find out who is staying for a few days is by visiting their floor or wing and conversing. (Today’s privacy rules will not allow the hospital to divulge that information, but many patients are so happy to have visitors and talk about their diagnoses.)

4. Have your children take a couple of friends with them (or your family) and choose a hymn to sing in three of their rooms, monthly, to those who would like to listen or sing along. You can even take the words to the hymn and let the patients read along, but be sure to identify the church and give contact information on the lyrics sheet that you leave.

5. During the Christmas holidays, take a small gift ( a lotion, a candy cane, a little pop-up greeting card, or a little strand of lights for the bedside table–just any little happy gift) to the patients in which your children are “investing”.

The receivers will evolve and the faces will look different monthly, but the givers will respond consistently and their faces will turn ever more  heavenward!

Those who look to him are radiant,
and their faces shall never be ashamed. Psalm 34:5

Bless Your Heart by Cindy Colley

Mama’s K.I.S.S. #73–Teaching Kids to Teach Bible Classes

Posted on July 19, 2024

As you know, if you’ve been reading, for quite some time, I’ve occasionally been running little installments called “Mama’s K.I.S.S.” I know that lots of readers could give many more and far more creative ideas than I can offer, but these installments are just a few tried and true and mostly old-fashioned ideas for putting service hearts in our kids.  This is number 73 of a list of one hundred ways we train our kids to serve. K.I.S.S. is an acronym for “Kids In Service Suggestions”.

I remember well at the age of 15, becoming the teacher for the five-year-olds at the Adamsville church of Christ. I loved getting to teach and felt honored that the elders thought I could “handle that.” Of course the prequel to that was being the daughter of two people who were both actively teaching in the program and being called on to prepare materials and to be a part of many a cookout in our big yard for those who had achieved the attendance and memory work for their fifth grade year. My mom taught that grade and, every quarter, she planned a day at our house  for the students who were diligent throughout the quarter. (I was amazed at her funeral, how many came to me to tell me they still remembered her classes as the best of their lives, …”and she rewarded us with hot dogs at your house! That was soooo fun!”)

Growing up in a “culture” of teaching was hugely influential to the classes I was able to teach through the years, and to our family Bible times as our own kids were growing up.  I taught those five-year-olds until I left for college and it was a natural thing to sign up for teaching the four-year-olds with Miss Lora Laycook at the Henderson church when I went to Freed Hardeman University. From her, I learned invaluable tips and I honed skills. It was truly a joy to go in the basement of that old building Sunday after Sunday and watch a master teacher. I still sing songs with my grandchildren that I learned in that little room. Miss Lora spent  hours on hours each week making little clothespin dolls and cutting little robes out for their robes, making boxes for the kids to peek in as she told the story and making up songs that told the stories, musically. She was truly incredible, by the standards of college girls who had the privilege of observing and helping. Every semester there were two or three that had the blessing in that little concrete room in the basement. There was a never any curriculum bought…only a creative 80-year-old gentle woman with a meek spirit.

So for today and for “practical” get your pre-teens involved in helping you prepare for your Bible classes. If you aren’t teaching, get busy. I hear a lot of “…we just can’t find teachers.” Shame on the women in the kingdom when this is the case. We should be doing better; not just for our congregations, but specifically for our own children. It’s hard for us to show our own children the value of souls if we are too complacent to put any time into the most teachable, reachable souls in our own circles. 

If you haven’t been teaching,, go to your leaders and ask them to put you on the list. If you need to be in the classroom with a pro first, ask for that privilege. But whatever you do, stop showing your own kids the relative unimportance of little souls. Show the reality: Each child in the Bible school classroom has a soul that’s more important than all the money in all the pockets of all the millionaires of all the world, and, as for me and my household, we are determined to try to put Jesus in each one of those souls. Then get your own kids cutting and pasting and being part of the primary evangelism. 

You can do this. NOT doing it may be one of the most damning concessions you make in the area of service and evangelism to the little people in your house. 

 

Bless Your Heart by Cindy Colley

Mama’s K.I.S.S. #72–Lonely Birthdays

Posted on July 15, 2024

As you know, if you’ve been reading, for quite some time, I’ve occasionally been running little installments called “Mama’s K.I.S.S.” I know that lots of readers could give many more and far more creative ideas than I can offer, but these installments are just a few tried and true and mostly old-fashioned ideas for putting service hearts in our kids.  This is number 72 of a list of one hundred ways we train our kids to serve. K.I.S.S. is an acronym for “Kids In Service Suggestions”.

Most of you have monthly birthday lists in your church bulletins. Identify every person in your congregation who lives alone. Use the birthday list to mark a calendar or planner with the birthdays of each of these people. Your calendar entries can include college students, widows, unmarried, divorced people or young married people whose spouses are deployed. For the next year, determine that your children will visit each of these people on their birthdays with a small gift and cookies or a cake, sing “Happy Birthday” and be generous with the hugs. This is a game-changer for these people, but it’s also a really solid servant building block. Your children will make friends and there will be reciprocal encouragement.

Your children will receive thank-you notes often and the gift recipients will be looking for your kids at the services of the church. God will take the loaves and fishes that are these birthday remembrances and turn them into much good for a long time. When parents are providing transportation and helping with funding for these projects and, most especially, praying over each gift, God will do more than we are asking or imagining. (Ephesians 3:20) And there will be some happy birthdays in your neighborhood.