Child-Friendly Church, Help Church to Grow
Anxiety over the loss of church programs during the Covid-19 pandemic has made the Front Line Servant of God Fellowship (PPHTGD) Sungai Betung Sub-district together with Wahana Visi Indonesia (WVI) Bengkayang Program Area committed to developing children's service activities in realizing a child-friendly church.
One of the activities carried out is increasing the capacity of Sunday school teachers in classroom management, making creative songs, and developing educational aids that support fun and child-friendly Sunday School activities.
After 4 months of mentoring, an interesting change began to appear in the children's participation.
“We tried new things that had never been done before, such as giving stickers that we made from used paper, creating new songs and now there are forty children who are actively participating in Sunday school, usually only 15 to 20 people want to participate. come," said Epi Pania (32) a teacher at the GPIBI Antioch Sunday school Lamat Semalat, Cipta Karya Village.
Not only for children, but new teachers are also increasing and are actively developing Sunday schools in their churches.
“One of our service places that rarely have activities for children is in Side Hamlet. It is difficult to find local people who want to be Sunday school teachers. What's more, in the current Covid-19 period, there are increasingly no services for children there. We are grateful that after the training and mentoring for the past few months, there have been several congregations who are willing to be involved in serving the Sunday School, so we can do Sunday School in Side Hamlet and it has been running for five weeks now,” added Magdalena (38), the person in charge of GPIBI Rehobot Sunday School Betung River, Suka Maju Village.
WVI has committed to developing churches towards child-friendly churches since February 2021. Eight churches from three church denominations in four villages in Bengkayang Regency have committed to join this program so far.
Written by: Yan A. Riwu, CESP Area Coordinator of Wahana Visi Indonesia's Bengkayang Program
