Parents of Gospel City Kids, 

We miss you and your kids tremendously! We never could have imagined a time where we would have been physically separated as a church body for so long. Thank you for the ways you stepped up in discipling your kids during this season. We’ve heard many stories of how you’re using tools like the Family Worship Kit and Backyard Bible Bash to disciple at home. We are excited to be able to come alongside you again in showing the love of Christ to your kids and teaching them to follow Him!

We want to make sure you heard the good news that the church will be resuming in-person gatherings starting Sunday, July 5. Our new service times are 9am and 11am (both in-person and online.) SEE DETAILS FOR JULY 5 HERE

It is very important for families to note that EVERYONE will gather TOGETHER in our new worship center. All children will be seated with the adults for several weeks at least. In other words, there will be no children’s ministry yet (not even for the youngest kids). Currently, we do not anticipate opening the kids’ classrooms until the start of the school year. 

We realize this may be a challenge for families with younger kids and we apologize for that. We want you to know there is going to be much grace during this period—grace for some extra noise, and understanding for those who choose to continue to worship with us online for a time. We will continue to provide the same at-home worship experience for both adults and kids during this next season.

If you’re joining us in person, let us encourage you to know the needs of your children, and prepare accordingly. Maybe bring some crayons and paper to occupy them. Now would be a great time to talk with them about how we participate during worship (sing loud) and how we participate during the message (we quietly listen). 

Looking Ahead
The safety of your kids has always been, and will continue to be, our number one priority in Gospel City Kids. We want them to learn to love God by learning to love His Word and by loving coming to His church! 

We do not take your trust for granted—we realize this is a new era, with new challenges. So, we want to be proactive about some of the decisions we are making to help keep your kids as safe as possible when we reopen the children’s wing in the near future:

1. We are closely following the local schools and plan to open up our children’s classrooms around the start of the school year. (To be clear, mid-August at the earliest).

2. We will limit the number of children per classroom to allow for social distancing.

3. For the time being, kids will stay in their classroom and not use the playground.

4. All of the surfaces in the classroom will be cleaned before and after each service.

5. We will rotate the toys between services so that each service has clean toys that have not been touched in the last week.

6. We will shift some of our programming away from crafts that require more touching and do more activities and games that require less contact.

7. We will follow the local recommendations for face coverings at the time we reopen the classrooms (recognizing this continues to change). 

8. We have greatly enhanced the safety and security of the children’s wing during our renovations. There will be one entrance point with a traffic flow pattern that will help decrease the amount of contact in the hallways.

9. As we transition back to offering children’s ministry, we will most likely implement online reservations so that we can ensure we have the right amount of space and teachers for your kids.  

10. In addition, we are training our leaders in the new protocols during the month of July. If you are interested in serving, we are recruiting new children’s ministry volunteers now! We would love to have 50 new volunteers to help replace those we are sending to plant Redemption City, as well as to help keep our class sizes down. We desire to be able to welcome all the children who want to come. This would be a great time to join the team! If you are interested, please fill out this application and we will contact you. 


You are loved,
Michelle Helmkamp, Michele Wilson, Bethany Cowles
Gospel City Kids