• Target Audience—Fatherless
The sixth in a series that will attempt to help you deal with some of the issues you face in relating to various constituents in your children’s ministry.
#6. Focus on the Fatherless
We cannot forget the fatherless children. It is too common these days that we find children in our ministries without fathers. In my opinion, we have too many mothers raising kids without the presence of a man in the home. We need to surround these families with support systems that make provision for healthy male influence with these kids. Further, I believe that every Kidmin must be an advocate for the needs of the “fatherless” child. (See James 1:27)
So if you want to improve you focus on the fatherless child, here are my Ten Tips that help you to reach out to one-parent families.
1. Try to assess how much of an issue this Fatherless issue is in your church. It maybe that this is not much of a problem for you now, but it could be in the future.
2. Consider instituting an Adopt-A-Family program that matches families with Dads up with fatherless families.
3. When you offer Father-son activities, try to match up these children with fathers from other families
4. If warranted look into what it would take to modify the Big Brother type program in your church.
5. Establish a Father-son Program, and you will discover that a few mothers will want you to provide a surrogate dad for their son, in order to participate in the program. (See Father-son program mentioned in Unit 8-I)
6. Try to include fatherless children in your personal visitation program, so that you, as a leader, are more aware of what the “fatherless” in your ministry need.
7. Whenever you offer inter-generational programs, try to include the “fatherless” children into the mix, by adopt a family or adopt a grandparent, or adopt a man (married or single).
6. Be sure that the resources of your benevolent funds are readily available. Fatherless homes often are in greater financial need.
7. The fatherless are often latch-key kids, so any kind of an after-school program might provide some ongoing support, so these kids do not have too much unsupervised time on their hands.
8. Brainstorm with your leaders to collect ideas on how to include the needs of the fatherless children in your family models of ministry.
9. Discuss the needs of the fatherless kids with your church staff, departmental leaders and/or children’s administrative team. You must be an advocate to create options to be inclusive of their needs.
10. Try to support any family in your church that has adopted fatherless kids as their own. Their biological fathers may not be around, but these step dads might need some church support.
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