Family-Based Church Activities
This will be hard for some to swallow. It seems our society has almost completely lost the idea of family-based activities. In and out of the church.
ACTIVITY NEEDED
We need activities, and the church is good at providing tons of them. Weekly is a lot! We could even do monthly.
PEERS CANT LEAD PEERS
At any rate, are the blind leading the blind? Maybe the leader child ratio is off. As in, the kids are leading the kids. That’s the whole point (it’s also the point of public schools). It’s a primarily peer based system, with a few leaders thrown in.
BRING THE FAMILY TO MORE CHURCH ACTIVITIES
Maybe parents should be able to and encouraged to attend the youth night activities.
BRING SIBLINGS
Even other different-aged siblings could come. Sure, some activities will be such that they’re geared for older kids. But many aren’t! Park games, movies, sports, these can often include younger and older kids.
WHOLE COMMUNITY BUILDING
There’s a tremendous opportunity for families of the community to get to know each other at these activities. But it’s wasted if parents just drop off kids and drive away. The few hours a week at church is quite insufficient for families to grow together in a community in a zion-like way. Families are meant to operate together. Work together. Play together. Socialize together. Learn together. Worship together.
REGAIN ANCIENT FAMILY UNITY AND STRENGTH
In the ancient and highest order, the family was much more united. Families can’t unite if they aren’t together for the activities. Life is full of work, and when we do have a little time for fun, let’s do it as a family. And if we want activities with more peers, let’s join multiple families from the church, not just peer-only events.
PARENTS PASS THE CULTURE
What culture is being passed on to the youth? There’s a lot of different cultures in the church. If the parents were more involved in the activities there would be more assurance that the desired cultures were being passed on to the children. There need not be the famed generation gap so prominent today.
Dr Leonard Sax in “the collapse of parenting” does a great job at showing how appear led society goes nowhere fast (my notes on his work here: https://richardsonstudies.com/book-collapse-parent/)
It’s okay for adults to be involved. It’s okay for adults to be highly involved in decisions about what activities are done.
At activities, there should be plenty of adults around, so the kids can learn how to act at said activities, what things to value, how to be mature, how to take interest in things of importance, to hear stories of church history and american hstory, to increase the general quality of the education of the event (and yes, every event is educational, for good or bad (or indifferent, which is also bad)).
PARENTAL PRESENSE IS NATURAL & HELPFUL
Ultimately these activities will be much less awkward for kids if their parents are encouraged to attend. And they’ll do much less stupid things they wouldn’t do unsupervised if the parents are present.
PARENTAL PRESENSE HELPS PARENTS DISCERN WHATS BEST FOR THEIR KIDS
When a parent can observe which pairs their children gravitate to it gives important insights into the disposition of the child.
When the events are more family based the parents can discern disposition of the various community kids which gives them insights into who they want to be closer to, who they can trust in times of the dating age and so forth.
It’s also important for families to observe how other families act outside of church. How do they dress? What do they like to talk about when there’s not an obligation for them to focus on gospel topics like there is at church?
What are you talking about around their peers? This is another important thing to observe. If youth are embarrassed by or talk badly about their families, they are not mature enough for peer activities, especially less supervised peer activities.
OK TO STAND WITH THE PROPHETS ON SOCIAL STANDARDS
Being more in tune to what your kids are encountering in this way can help the parent know what lessons the child needs to hear most urgently. Always look to the profits for guidance on standards.
Never be ashamed of teaching and asking for those standards, or even leaving certain events where those standards may be jeopardized. (God forbid we miss a week of activities! Will the world end suddenly?!)
A common pitfall in Utah is to say that whatever is happening is okay because we’re all latter-day saints here, a very dangerous trap. In other states you can say “no thanks I’m a latter-day Saint.” You try to say that in Utah and they say “so what, so am I!” As Joseph Smith scholar Hyrum Andrus likes to say, sometimes we would better be called latter-day ‘aints or latter-day complaints!
ALL FAMILIES SHOULD BE FAMILY DANCES
I heard of one area that does a family-based school prom where all the parents are encouraged to attend. What a tremendous idea! School dances are notorious for being trouble and for inappropriate boundaries to exist. With parents present these issues go down dramatically. In the old days, when society was more sane, all dances were family dances.
SINGLE-AGE EVENTS UNNATURAL
When events are governed by rigid age numbers, maturity is not taken into account. Some kids at younger ages are ready for more mature activities and some older kids will bring chaos to events no matter what their age.
It’s important for youth to learn how to interact with peers not their age. This is something they don’t much get at school (which is yet another reason to boycott the public schools).
YOUTH’S NEED FOR EXPERIENCE
Someone might say that the kids need to experience not being supervised all the time. Yes there will be planned circumstances on some occasions where relationships of trust have already been established for some of these activities. But a major truth our generation is forgotten is that children need continued supervision.
HOW CAN PARENTS INCREASE INVOLVEMENT?
Even if the culture doesn’t change and parents remain by and large excluded from church youth activities, parents can try to find an excuse to attend at least every now and then.
ASK
They could even express this wish openly to youth leaders and word leadership and there’s no reason why accommodations can’t be made to support this righteous desire. Particularly if a mother says she wants to come to her daughter’s youth activities sometimes, or if a father says he wants to go to his son’s young men activities sometimes, this request is almost surely to be accommodated.
SHOW UP
Another tactic is to just start showing up. If there’s resistance, don’t do it every time, or have those conversations to begin to establish new norms.
LEADERS: BRING YOUR OTHER KIDS
One great example is when the leaders chose to bring more of their children. James Stoddard was known for bringing more of his kids along when he was a youth leader. He guaranteed that they would act with maturity, and not cause issues. It takes some rough parenting to help a child be mature enough to fit in with older type actions not cause issues, but it can be done, and used to be more commonplace. James would include his children even in business meetings, and other church calling assignments. He belie that adults need to be around adults if they are to become adults.
(My notes on his story here: https://richardsonstudies.com/2022/06/16/a-christ-centered-home-life-teachings-example-of-james-stoddard-etc-book-notes/)
DO THE ACTIVITIES IN HOMES
Another way to accommodate family-based activities is to plan activities at the homes of ward families, particularly the families with youths in the ward so the parents can have more opportunities to be present, even if only in turn and on occasion.
It’s also helpful for youths to learn to not be embarrassed by their family members including younger siblings and parents.
ACTIVITIES SHOULD EDIFY
There’s a trend for our activities to shift from a religious organization to just another social organization. The excuse is used that we must have social and physical strength, not just mental spiritual, and that some activities are ‘just focused on the social’. But every activity should be spiritual. You can build all 4 easily into one, but not if the activities are inherently fluffy. The more parents are involved, the more this can be helped.
GUIDED YOUTH PLANNING
Sure, let youth have more say in what is done. But that never meant free reign. It also means parents can veto things if there off course. It’s like how a bishop would veto a ward member who leads the congregation off course. So should parents and youth leaders help youth be focused on what matters most. When people see our activities, they should easily be able to say, ‘noe there is a Christian organization!’ Kids like to make excuses, like the ‘leta go boating, the waves are like adversity waves in life.’ Except they’re not. Make no mistake, we are a service based ritual based religious organization! We don’t have time for anything that isn’t Zion! We have a work to do! Kids have enough soft, enough fluff, enough wasted time, enough junk, enough frivolity. The church and it’s activities are to help the youth mature, not the extend their childish ways into what used to be considered ages of adulthood. The point isn’t to be the youths friend, it’s to lead them! Yes I hear you say you can’t delete someone who’s not your friend. But what type of friendship is that if you never ask them to sacrifice? No more water down medicine. No more waiting forever to ask and expect them to raise the bar.
ADD, NOT DETRACT
Of course youth activity leaders will not want a bunch more kids running around that they have to deal with. If yours participate you have to be a net positive helpful influence not another chore, and that means your kids need to be well trained about how to act in these settings and you need to offer to help however you can.
Some might be concerned about the financial cost of some of these events and the word budget. For starters there’s usually a surplus. Second, this is what the church funds are for. Third, be considerate on this point and try not to be a burden.
CONCLUSION
As a culture we aren’t used to family-based events.
When you try to get more involved or to steer activities more toward the homes and toward more inherently edifying events, you can likely see some pushback.
Let it roll off your back like water off a duck. Don’t ever be offended if someone’s trying to keep doing things the way they’ve always been done.
Be tactful. As the master said, wise as serpents, harmless as doves.
Never stop pushing for family-first agendas. To stand for the family is to stand for the heart of the gospel of Christ.
Elder Boyd K. Packer taught,
“The ultimate purpose of every teaching and activity in the Church is that parents and children are happy at home, sealed in an eternal marriage, and linked to their generations,” he said. “The ultimate purpose of the adversary . . . is to disrupt, disturb and destroy the home and family.”
(https://www.thechurchnews.com/1994/4/9/23257198/a-purpose-of-the-church-happiness-in-the-family/)
