Teaching young kids to serve others

We’ve talked about learning and studying God’s Word for the past several days.  But God did not just call us to study His Word in a vacuum of Sunday School.  He is very clear that we are to serve others as well, and this is a wonderful way to encourage family discipleship.

But how can you do that with your kids?  Many service places won’t let your kids in until they are 10.  I’ve looked into it.

So here are some ways we have worked around that.

Suggestion 1: Pick up your local park

God called us to be stewards of our world.  Does that mean we have to be environmentalists and obsessively monitor everyone else’s movement and what they’re doing? No.  Should we be more aware of God’s beautiful creation? Yes.  Go to a park or somewhere else safe nearby.  Take a trash bag and gloves if you are worried about germs.  I brought hand sanitizer.  Before picking anything up talk about what is and is not safe to pick up.  My kids were to tell me about any broken glass or anything sharp, and I would pick up that.

Future Ticia 2023, caveat. This only works because my kids are fairly obedient and the particular parks we were working in only had mild problems. I have worked in parks where I could not do this with my kids at that age because there would be too much-broken glass in that particular park, and they would have hurt themselves.

My kids at that age could hurt themselves just walking.

Volunteer to serve food

I’m going to preface this by saying, right now my kids are not old enough to do this at most places, but they have helped with it.  We served food for church outreach events.  We’ve gone to food pantries and organized their shelves.  It will depend on the organization and the event.  We’ve been blessed to have a church that emphasizes serving and blessing our community, so we have been able to do these things at a younger age than usual.

Pack boxes for charity

There are multiple organizations that accept donations you pack.  Operation Christmas Child gives a shoe box full of toys and clothes to kids around the world.  That’s going on RIGHT NOW, don’t miss out.  We’re going to be packing boxes for kids soon ourselves.  Pack a box for Children’s Hunger Fund, it’s food to feed a family of 4 for several days.  This picture is from our packing the boxes two years ago.

I love when I see a post on my topic JUST after I’ve shared, check out this great list of Dollar Store Items for Operation Christmas Child.

Host a garage sale, and donate the money

This is our current project, so no great pictures right now.  We’re going through our house and gathering all the stuff we’ve outgrown, don’t need or don’t use, and we’re hosting a garage sale.  Then we’ll give all the money we get to our church for a building.

Volunteer at a retirement home

Future Ticia 2023 is adding this in. I have no pictures from this one, but my friend has taken her daughters to a local retirement home for years. At the time she started her youngest was in preschool. They came and ran bingo nights for the residents, or would bring cookies and talk.

Now, we are in a post-Covid world, so many retirement homes have different rules on volunteering. At the time I’m writing this, they were not able to volunteer for several months, and then they were allowed to come back in and volunteer again.

Hmmmm, I’m blanking on my other things I was going to write down, I’ll have to come back again later

Have I got you thinking about getting involved?  The number one thing, your kids won’t volunteer unless they see you volunteering, so get involved.

Need more ideas for teaching kids to serve others?

Then check out this post: Service and Leadership, serving ideas

• Day 1: Choosing your Bible
• Day 2: Finding the right Bible study for you
• Day 3: Choosing a children’s Bible
• Day 4: Choosing a children’s Bible study
• Day 5: What to do when you’re spiritually empty
• Day 6: Digging Deeper
• Day 7: Live it Out
• Day 8: Sing it Loud
• Day 9: Act it Out
• Day 10: A week in our Bible Study