10 Ways to Help Your Child Make Friends at Church

The lady wistfully looked at the group of kids standing in the church yard. Service was over and now they had congregated on the grass to share the latest news, laugh together and just do some good-natured pushing and poking.All Categories

“I wish our kids had good friends at church,” the lady lamented to her husband.

Good friends for your kids … kids who have parents with the same beliefs and morals as you do.

What parent doesn’t want that for their kids – especially their tweens and teens?

Actually, the whole good friend thing is straight from the Bible. We read in Proverbs 13:20 – He that walketh with wise men shall be wise: but a companion of fools shall be destroyed.

Here are some ways to encourage those friendships –

1. Regularly attend church. If you show up once every two months, your kids will not have opportunity to connect to other kids.

2. Regularly get your kids to youth activities – whether that’s Sunday school, Awana or a summer program. Again kids won’t connect with people they never see.

3. Get to church early.

4. Stick around after church is over. Give your kids a chance to talk to their friends in the lobby or parking lot.

5. Allow your kids to participate in church camp, retreats or mission trips. Nothing connects kids more than serving together in a remote village or being together during the big storm that snowed-in the winter retreat.

6. Model friendship-making by developing your own friends at church.

7. Allow your child’s friends to go along with you when you go swimming at the waterpark or hiking in the woods.

8. Invite the families of your children’s friends over to your house for ice cream or a barbecue.

9. Occasionally get a group of families together to go out for Sunday dinner.

10. Open your home for kid/teen activities.

One morning I had to go to church earlier than usual to set up something in my SS classroom. I noticed a mom and her teen arriving at the same time.

“Where’s the rest of your family?” I asked.

“Oh, I’m just here because of all of Katy’s friends are on the worship team and practicing early. Katy wanted to be here with them and we decided that if she was that excited about being at church with her friends, then we could go out of our way to get her here early even if it means bringing two cars to church today.”

A lot of people might argue with that – but I was impressed. Here was a parent who cared about her child’s choices and was willing to go out of her way to make sure her daughter was with the right kind of  friends.

Like anything – we don’t have guarantees. We can’t say for sure that our children will never hang with the wrong peer group – but we can do a lot to encourage connection with the right peer group.