After several years of doing parent-child events for the girls and boys of the children’s ministry, this year, Living Hope Community Church hosted an event for girls in kindergarten through 6th grade and their mothers, called “Love You to Pieces.”
For this year, the church hoped to instill in the girls the confidence that comes from the gospel, Living Hope’s children’s ministry director Min Song Lee explained.
“In Colossians 1:17, it says that Jesus holds us together, and I do think that while it refers to the whole body of Christ as the church, it also means that he holds our lives as broken people individually,” said Lee.
“There is beauty in the brokenness and the mess, and Jesus has the power to piece it all together and bring it back into the form it was intended to be.”
“As these girls are going through doubts about who they are, I thought it would be helpful to remind them that those are valid feelings, and definite struggles, even though they’re young, and that Jesus is the glue that holds us together.”
About 130 mothers, daughters, and church staff and volunteers attended the event, which took place on February 19. The mothers and daughters had dinner together, listened to a guest speaker who spoke on identity in Christ, and heard the testimony of a fellow mother. Then, daughters participated in a painting activity while mothers wrote letters to their daughters in a separate room on what it means for women to be used by God and to be “put together” by Him. The event came to an emotional close as mothers and daughters prayed together at the end.
“Our hope was that the girls would have ‘Godfidence’ as they walked out of the event,” Lee said.
The term ‘Godfidence’ refers to the idea that while self-confidence is earned through the work in this world, “Godfidence is grace – the work has been completed by Jesus,” explained Lee.
Living Hope has been hosting such parent-child events over the past several years to foster more partnership between the children’s ministry and parents.