Champs Toolkit
Thank you for being the Champion for the First Thousand Days (FTD) in your church. This is a crucial role to see many families supported to give their children a strong start to life. Welcome!
Sikunye, we are together
As a Champion, you are leading and influencing within your church and surrounding community. This toolkit is intended to help you better understand, better prepare, and better serve families. This is not a formula to follow – your church has unique strengths and opportunities that can be explored – use this toolkit to help you identify and think through where your church can use these strengths to best support families.
You are not alone as a Champion. You are working with your pastor, you have Sikunye to support you and a growing network of Champions in other congregations who can inspire, share learnings with and encourage you.
Thank you for joining the movement of churches giving all children a strong start to life.
1.
Get things moving
As a Champion with a passion for seeing families cared for, there may be some easy first steps you can take. Even as you dream big, here are some tools to help you get started.
First step: explore the strengths and assets of your church
Listen to parents and families
Explore the experiences of families in your church
The first few steps you can take
Some ‘easy wins’ to get things moving, even as you plan for more
Seeking God’s heart for your church in your context is essential. Find out how
Make a plan
Use this tool to map out your step-by-step plan of action
How to work within a church
To work well within your church, explore the structures and processes that are unique to your church
What to do if your pastor is not on board
Explore steps to take when it feels like your pastor is not supportive / has not yet got the vision?
2.
Recruit and lead a team
As a Champion, you cannot serve every family and reach into the broader community by yourself. You need a team that can give attention, energy, time and their unique skills to sustainably serve families. Explore these tools to better understand your role and how to grow and sustain your team.
What is a Champion?
The ‘job description’ of a Champion – learnt from different churches’ experiences
What does success for a Champion look like?
It may feel as you take this journey that you are not “winning” but here are some ideas around what success would look like for a FTD team and yourself
How to grow your team
Tips on how to recruit people into the FTD team in your church
How to sustain yourself and your team
To keep yourself and your team serving fruitfully, you need to be sustainable. Find out how
3.
Be an example of loving connections
As a Champion, you will be mobilising, stirring others, creating opportunities for various people to serve. Be sure that you are a growing example of what this looks like. Grow your personal conviction, connect with families, be the example of loving connections.
Grow your awareness and conviction
Keep up to date with best practices and developments on why FTD and The Church
Be a living example
Even as you inspire others, keep growing in your care for families in your community
4.
Inspire others to create loving connections
Beyond the team that you will mobilise into specific areas of FTD ministry, engaging the whole church community is important to see change within your church. By inspiring and winning others over, you are also helping prepare people to engage with FTD in their workplaces, neighbourhoods and other spheres of influence.
How to stir the hearts of your congregants
Find out the various ways you can best communicate and reach your congregation to inspire them to get behind your vision of becoming a FTD-friendly church
How to win others over
Ways in which you engage with people who are not yet ‘on board’.
Pregnancy Devotional
Here is a helpful journal for pregnant moms and pregnancy devotional for the host
New Mom Devotional
Here is a helpful journal for new moms and a devotional for the host
5.
Connect with others churches and services
Your church exists within a community that has a range of services for families in the FTD. Rather than taking it all on yourself, explore ways that you can connect and partner with other churches and service providers, whilst increasing your knowledge of what is out there and available to families for you to refer to – but also how to minimise any gaps so that all families are supported.
How to get to know your community
Mapping your surrounding area is important to know the role you can best play by knowing who is doing what.
What does Sikunye offer?
What resources and services can you expect and anticipate from Sikunye?
This toolkit is here to help you, the Champion of the First Thousand Days in your congregation, build loving connections with families.
Discern with your pastor, knowing the unique context you are in, with the unique families you have, the best ways you can become FTD-friendly. Stay in touch with Sikunye (info@sikunye.org.za), share feedback and spread the big idea.
We are in this together.
You can access this because you have successfully registered as a Champion with Sikunye. If you were sent a link to this page from someone else, we ask you to explore the rest of the website to get the big idea, and to activate your church. This will allow you to be kept up to date with new resources, be connected to other churches becoming FTD-friendly and be notified of upcoming events.