Playdates for Jesus

I personally am not a fan of the phrase "play date". I long for the days when it was just called "hanging out" or "going to your friends house". I don't know who coined this phrase, but working at a school, I hear it all day everyday. Kids are constantly having these so called "play dates". After school on the week nights, sleep overs on the weekends, and multi-day sleep overs on 3 day weekends. Don't get me wrong, I am a huge fan of having people come over to your house to play with your child... I just don't like the phrase.
All that being said, I would like to offer you and your family some encouragement and possibly a challenge.

1. Have Your Child's Friends Over: Using your home is a great way to build meaningful relationships between your child and their friends. Provide a safe and loving environment where your child and their friends can interact in a healthy way. In fact, while your child's friend is over, feel free to engage the children in meaningful conversation about their day. This opens a window not only into your child and their friend, but also to the friend's family.

2. Have Other Families Over: Inviting entire families over for a meal or just to hang out is also a great way to build meaningful relationships that God will use to change your community. Allow others to see into your life and understand that the only thing different about you is that you love God.

3. Invite the Families In Your Neighborhood to Church: This is the last and only logical conclusion to the first two points. As you build relationships, it is important to seek out opportunities to go further and share the good news as well as invite these families to church. Our church is a wonderful place full of warmth and acceptance and we would love to be a part of the lives of the families in your neighborhood.

There are families all around us. We interact with them on a daily basis. Lets all strive to use our resources and time to invest in these people in the hopes that we can lead them to Christ.