5 Ways to Bless Your Church With (Free!) DWELL at Home Resources

Family life is busy. I don’t think I truly understood the truth of that statement until I lived the reality of school drop-offs, full work weeks, meal planning and prep, baths, attempting to keep the house clean, and remembering to somehow find a place in all of that to rest. It’s with an awareness of this full pace of life that Dwell at Home’s 5 Ways series was created.

The 5 Ways Series is a collection of helpful tip sheets that give parents simple, practical suggestions for connecting what their children learn at church to the rest of their week. The growing list includes:

• 5 Ways to Help Your Family Grow in Faith
• 5 Ways to Pray with Kids
• ​5 Ways to Help Kids Worship
• 5 Ways to Retell a Bible Story with Kids
• 5 Ways to Wonder with Kids
• 5 Ways to Bring Children's Ministry Home

My completely honest, unbiased opinion is that these resources are absolutely fantastic and it’s incredible that we’re able to offer them for free! I would love to see them bless as many families as possible. 

With that in mind, here are 5 ways you can share these helpful resources with your congregation:

1. Use them as bulletin inserts: Print several versions onto half-sheets of paper and tuck one inside each bulletin. Make an announcement alerting the congregation to this helpful insert, encouraging them to use it at home or pass it on to a friend. Consider printing them on cardstock and attaching a magnet to the back to give families an easy way to display the resource.
2. Place printed copies in your church: Print out copies of each 5 Ways resource on cardstock (so that they hold up!) and place stacks of them in your sanctuary. Include them at your welcome table or family worship resource area. Place them near the bulletins, throughout the pews or on a pamphlet holder in your children’s ministry area.
3. Link to them from your church website: Include links to the 5 Ways series on your church’s website. Link to each 5 Ways tip sheet individually or simply link to the Dwell at Home page, reminding congregants that these resources are available for free. If your church uses the Dwell curriculum, let parents know that they can use 5 Ways to expand on what their kids are engaging with in Dwell each week.
4. Never stop sharing these! Determine specific times of the year when it would be helpful to highlight specific titles from the 5 Ways series. Share 5 Ways to Retell a Bible Story a few weeks before Advent, when families may be entering into a season of regular Bible reading. Send out 5 Ways to Bring Children’s Ministry Home in the fall as children’s ministry activities are restarting.
5. Include these wherever you emphasize family resources. Many churches have blessed their families with these fun summer family resource buckets, and others love putting together Lent in a Bag kits for their families. Or you could try out Karen DeBoer’s latest idea to help families explore faith practices this summer. As you put together these gifts, print off a 5 Ways resource to include. 5 Ways to Wonder with Kids is a great reminder for families to slow down and experience God’s world with their children in the summer months. And 5 Ways to Pray with Kids is a helpful tool for families seeking to thoughtfully enter the Lenten weeks.

We’d love to hear your ideas! What creative ways are you finding to share the Dwell at Home resources? Share your ideas on our Facebook group or comment below!