Last night, the Family Ministry team put together our first Family XP (a.k.a Family Experience). We called it "Fall on the Farm". The idea was to partner with families by creating a fun event for a family to do together. You see, sometimes people can live in the same house, share the same last name, spend money from the same account... and hardly spend any time together at all. Sound familiar? It does to me too. That's why we wanted to give families an opportunity to get together and enjoy each other in God's creation, before we all get distracted by sports, Christmas shopping, mid-term exams, year-end projections.... and the billions of other things that a family has to fit into a week. The fact is, parenting is hard. Overwhelmingly hard sometimes. It takes so much time and intention. I read this quote once that, well to be honest, it shook to my core... "If you don't have TIME to do it right, when will you have TIME to do it over?"
That's what "Family Ministry" is all about. It's about partnering with parents to help and encourage them to weave God into their family's everyday life. It's not about giving parents more to do. It's not about church planning more events. It's about combining our efforts to create the biggest impact in a child's life, because we only get a limited amount of time to influence them.
Thanks for partnering with Family Ministry and Wiregrass Church! Enjoy the pictures from "Fall on the Farm":
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| taking photos of families. love it! |
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| train ride! |
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| I snuck in on this family's photo being taken by a friend. too cute!! |
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| the folks that make it happen |
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| "photo spot" signs. stole this idea from Disney. |
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| PACKED parking lot! THANK YOU, K. Faulk & small group for providing parking volunteers! |
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| Farmer on the Farm |
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| cool fall weather. cool fun family. |
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| hugs! |
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| family moment to remember |
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| hayride to pumpkin patch |
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| "crowd" waiting for the hayride. How cool?! We actually had "crowds" at Family XP! |
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| It's the great pumpkin! |
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| pumpkin...check, sunflower... check, wife... check. good to go! |
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| exploring |
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| cook out |
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| Thank you college girls small group for providing guest service volunteers! |
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| fun family photo! |
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| family picnic |
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| Photo op |
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| proud survivors of the corn maze |
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| Dad found a pumpkin as big as his kid |
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"Hey let's go and get the audio CD we get to listen to on the way home from the farm! I hear it has a great talk from Adam about intentional parenting on it!" (pretty sure that's what I heard them talking about) |
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| love capturing people, capturing their small, beautiful moments |
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| "seriously, this is how people used to get water?!" |
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| good to the last cookie crumb |
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| the farm was fun for students too |
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| generations on one farm, together. |
