Family friendly parish ministries?

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triumphguy

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I’m very involved with my parish already:

Lector, EMHC, teach some courses, funeral choir, That Man is You (5:45am!), I have a scheduled hour at Eucharistic Adoration, lead morning prayer for Saturday morning mass…

but I’m wondering if anyone has some good ideas for ministry as a family with other families?

I try an do things that won;t interfere with family life: That Man Is You is on at 5:45am on Wednesday mornings, adoration is 9pm Friday night, and morning prayer is 8:30am Saturday morning.

However, I’m worried that if I do much more on my own right now I’ll take away from my family (I’ve got young kids) so I’d like to do some family activities in Church.

Thoughts, suggestions or experiences anyone?
 
Well it depends on what your parish has and what they’re open to you starting, and the ages of your family.

Here at our parish, the youth ministry does many service projects together, which is useful because their whole family can come. Beach clean-ups, working in soup kitchens, parish beautification days are all days where little ones can help just as much as big kids.

There’s also VBS, if your parish has it. You can volunteer to help, or if that doesn’t work, then maybe your wife can and you can come have lunch with them to chat about what they’re learning.

Most of the “family” ministries that we have are geared towards moms and kids, but we do something called Families in Christ. One Sunday a month, the whole family gathers in our parish life center, has breakfast together and does an activity together on the Gospel for that day. We have packets for kids from pre-K all the way through high school, and they work on these with their families. Sometimes it’s mostly fun crafts, other times there are actual questions to work through. Everyone reads the gospel together as a big group, and then talks about it with their family. It’s pretty fun!

Hope that helps - I wasn’t sure exactly what you needed, but maybe this is a start. 🙂
 
The parish where I work has “Greeters”. I’m not exactly sure what the job description is, but I heard a Religious Ed family talking about being Greeters together one Sunday per month.
 
I don’t know if it’s techincally a ministry, but what about scouts? If your parish has a troop, it will probably have a Christian overtone and it will certainly be a good way to spend time with your kids. Also, Adoration is generally a good exercise to do together. (Though a hour might be too long for the littlest ones.)
 
I’m a woman and my kids are more or less grown now so I will give you my perspective looking back…

You are right to think that parish ministries can take away from your family. For years our parish had a “volunteer of the year” award. While I think that such awards are great I always thought it interesting that the winner was usually a retired person or at least someone whose children were adults. I also noted that in most cases the spouse of the award winner was either extremely active or completely invisible. So either activities were done jointly or one spouse held down the fort at home while the other did things for the parish.

In my opinion the ministries you assist with should probably change over the course of your life. At various points you must take into account what your parish needs from you, what your spouse needs from you, what your children need from you, and what your spouse and children need to do for their parish.

In my opinion your wife may be the best person to advise you because I’ll bet she’d doing a lot of holding down the fort right now. If your children are generally well behaved perhaps your whole family could lead morning prayer, or join the choir, or some other liturgical activity. I know that we have had choir members who had children that sat with the choir during Mass. But many --if not mos–t people don’t have such cooperative children. It may be that the ministry you should be doing is giving up something to stay with the kids so your wife can participate in some activity/ministry without you.

I don’t know if your children do/will attend Catholic/private/charter school, public school, or be home schooled. Whatever the situation may be it is likely that your family will need to be involved in some sort of group religious education for your children. While your children are young you might find it is better for your family if you drop some of your current activities in favor of assisting with your children’s religious education. And don’t discount scouting (as someone mentioned earlier) and sporting activities. I am of the opinion that coaching your son’s little league team or your daughter’s soccer team IS a kind of ministry even if it is not connected with the Church.

Most parishes have programs at Christmas time to help families that aren’t as well off as you are. There are toy drives, soup kitchens, clothing drives, and other such activities. There are walk-a-thons and other such events. Those kinds of activities work well as family ministries. Sometimes those kinds of activities benefit the doers more than the receivers but that’s OK.

I would think that you could take children with you to Eucharistic adoration once they are old enough to sit quietly and perhaps color or look at a picture bible. Older children can read a prayer book or books on the lives of the saints.
 
When your kids are old enough for in-parish religious education, you can help with that, or even be a catechist. That will keep you busy!

Generally speaking, once your kids get into about 5th grade or so, you will be needed to supervise service projects, both for them and for kids their age (the VBS example given above would be one).
 
Thanks for the ideas and (name removed by moderator)ut everyone:thumbsup:
 
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