(Design by Dylan Byrd)
"Everything is an experiment" is one of National Community Church's core values. A core value that Crosswalk Kids has taken to heart. As the childrens' ministry grows at NCC, we are constantly experimenting. This last Sunday was no exception.
We put on our FIRST EVER Family Experience (FX), where the elementary aged kids and their parents had an opportunity to worship together during our regular service time. We had wrestled with the decision, we thought through doing it after service and renting the theater a little bit longer, we had also though about doing it at a home, but in the end, we decided to experiment with having the FX during service for a couple reasons. One, the families with younger kids wouldn't have to search for sitters, or have only one parent able to join the service, and two, we decided that it would be a cool way to show the parents what goes on in the theater every Sunday for their child. The other element of the experiment was only trying it at one of the locations, Ballston.
Every year, Pastor Heather Zempel does the "Story" which is a 3 week class that goes through the Bible, from beginning to end. Nina and I had been in conversation with Heather from the beginning trying to figure out a way that we could do this with kids and families. We also use ReThink's curriculum, and loved the idea of having a "For Heaven's Sake" event. We decided to merge the two, and added a little bit of spice to the Sunday with our regular "Super Short Show" characters. And it became one BIG (and awesome) event.
BIG was our theme. "Go BIG or go home" was the mantra that I had set in my head for this event. We wanted to create an experience for both the kids and the families, but also an opportunity for conversations to begin both at church and at home. We talked about the BIG story, we had the characters of the Super Short Show be there in BIG person, we had BIG-in-their-face lighting, using our BIG theater screens, we sang "BIG House", AND each person got BIG glasses to prepare themselves for the BIG event. We had so many people invest their time and efforts into this FX, and it was a BIG success!!
It was a great Sunday, and I know I am excited to "experiment" with this again! 
The goodie bags that we gave to each person coming to the Family Experience! (FX)
The Family Experience hosts entertain the attendees of the Crosswalk Kids FX. (See the BIG book? It hid one of our CWK Super Short Show characters for a skit!)
The Crosswalk Kids Super Short Show talk about being in God's BIG Story! (The Super Short Show is a intro and closing to our storytellers video)
One of our Uprising (NCC's Student Ministry) Students, Hannah, filming the FX
(All photos were taken by Yejin Oh)
(Post was originally written for Crosswalk Kids' Blog: www.theaterchurch.com/crosswalkkids/blog)
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