Hello J.A.M. Time parents

Thank you for allowing your child and/or children to be a part of Sunday morning J.A.M. (Jesus and me) Time! J.A.M. was engineered about 3 years ago by a couple parents who saw a need for their children to have a place to study God’s word on their own level, which would also enable them to concentrate on the sermon themselves. The CE committee has been working on defining the goals of J.A.M. to meet the needs of our congregation. The results of our meeting is to change the structure of the JAM time in two different ways

First, there will be a more focused age group for J.A.M. The ages will now include 1st through 5th graders with the 4th and 5th graders as potential leaders.  Kindergartners will be upstairs with the pre-school kids and the 6th graders will worship with their families and the congregation.  All grades mentioned are the grades the children will be attending in the fall. Of course, the J.A.M time and the pre-school church are opprotunities we provide for your family and your children are not required to attend.

Secondly, during the months of July and August all J.A.M. kids (1st through 5th grade) will start in the service with their families until they are dismissed right before the sermon. Kindergarteners will go upstairs for the entire service. There will be no J.A.M. the weekend of the church campout.  Please contact Jo-anne Wiesenborne or myself (Kim Glassett) to schedule the Sunday during July and/or August you would like to supervise during the DVD for about 30 or 40 minutes. 

This change doesn't come without a defined purpose. The CE Committee has identified 5 items that we consider the goals and vision behind this change. They are:
 
1) Allow families to worship together and begin teaching their children the value of the corporate worship service -- Coming into the adult corporate worship setting at 7th grade, having not experienced it at all before, is a big jump!! It would be really easy for the 7th grade students to tune out and check out of the service. Assuming they spend most of their young years in the full JAM time, all they know about church is really active music with motions, activities, games, crafts and a lesson (maybe even with a video). But when they hit 7th grade…WHAM…they are sitting and listening to scripture reading, the music is less active (without motions anyway) and they listen to a 30-45 minute sermon. Now, there is great value in the adult service! And there is great value in the JAM time too! Our goal is to provide the opportunity for the family to teach their children that both times are good and valuable. The adult time and the JAM time have great value and both contribute to the spiritual development of the children and family.

2) Allow the focus of the teaching to concentrate on a smaller age group because K-6th is a very wide range of ages -- We did some research and found that most churches offer children’s church for the ages of 1st - 5th grade. Kindergartners are often still too young and the 6th graders are feeling disconnected and burned out. Several of the volunteers helping with JAM have expressed both of these difficulties with the wide age range. Our goal is to focus the teaching to be more effective with the time we have.

3) Ease the burden on the time requirements for volunteer help and 4) allow our volunteer staff to worship together with the rest of the body - These two are really connected. Some of the volunteers give so much of their time and are away from the service so often that they are getting burned out. We are finding that fewer people are returning as volunteers because of the time demands and also because of the problems addressed in #2. We hope that volunteering can be refreshing and not draining for our people. Our goal in changing both the age range and the time format is to allow the volunteers to be a part of the corporate worship and to lesson the time demands of an extended kid’s service.

5) Allow and encourage parents to be a part of their children’s worship time. -- Children love music. And when taught what worship is, children love to worship! We desire to support and encourage children to learn and sing their own songs in JAM time! But we also desire to see children and families worshiping together to newer songs and also enjoying the timeless hymns. We want to encourage families to grow in worship together. Our goal is to create the opportunity for adults and families to become more active in training their children the value of worship in music.


If you have any questions you are welcome to contact Kim Glassett, Pastor Nathan or the CE committee.