What is Park Night?
Park Night is a second, weekly touchpoint that children, parents, and volunteers can have with their church. We structure the night around three activities:
- Teaching Time: Lessons on practically-oriented biblical topics.
- Small Group Time: Adults lead a table of children, providing help and accountability with the weekly memory verse. Leaders also help the children apply the lesson personally and look for ways to pray for the children.
- Game Time: An opportunity to have fun and expend energy in the middle of a long week. Also, game time creates an opportunity for fellowship and familiarity across families and generations.
What is unique about this mid-week program?
The goal of Park Night is to provide another avenue for the discipleship of College Park children. In particular, we believe in the importance of a discipleship strategy that spans Sundays, Wednesdays, and every other minute of the week. As with everything we do in Children’s Ministries, the goal is to support parents in their primary discipleship role. We believe Park Night accomplishes this in three ways:
- Scripture Memory: We recognize the incredible value of storing God’s word in our hearts. We also recognize that it can be hard to keep up when every child in the family has a different weekly memory verse for Sundays, Wednesdays, and possibly even school. Instead at Park Night the whole family will focus on memorizing one verse together. These verses are selected from the Fighter Verses Program.
- Comprehensive, Connected Content: We do not want the teaching at Park Night to float on its own. Rather, we want everything that children learn at College Park to be connected and intentional. Park Night will address practically-oriented biblical topics to complement the theologically-oriented teaching found in Sunday School and the parent-focused resources we send throughout the week.
- Intergenerational Influence: Parents have a huge role in their child’s spiritual development. But no family has everything they need for the task. During Park Night, children get to learn from other adults in their church. These adults have different God-given talents and personalities and give children a fuller witness to what the body of Christ looks like.
Because Park Night focuses on discipleship, we require that participants be members or regular attenders of College Park Church. We also welcome those without a church home and encourage children to invite their friends. If you are a member or regular attender of another local church, we would recommend you look for ways to invest further in your church.
What are Fighter Verses?
The Fighter Verses are a Bible memory plan focused on a single, weekly passage. Those who consistently memorize each Fighter Verse will end up with 260 highly valuable passages committed to memory over the course of five years.
The Fighter Verses website has weekly songs and devotionals for families looking for help in starting (or continuing this journey). The Verses Project has also put many of the Fighter Verses to music.
Who is this program geared toward?
Park Night is for Elementary-age children (K-6th grade). Nursery and Preschool are available for children of volunteers.
How can parents be involved?
Parents can be involved in two ways. First, memorize the weekly Fighter Verse with your family. Second, consider volunteering!
We also encourage those who are not parents to serve! Even if you aren’t raising children at the moment, you can play a huge role in the lives of the children in your church.
What curriculum is being taught?
Just like we do on Sunday mornings, we use Truth78 during Park Night. Their midweek curriculum covers books of the Bible—like Proverbs—as well as helpful topics—like the church, creation, and biblical manhood and womanhood.