The campaign aims to raise awareness of just how important parents are in building our children’s faith. We can’t just rely on the great children’s work that happens in our churches to teach our children about God. However important that may be, it’s not a substitute for the amazing opportunity we have at home with our children.

We want to give reminders, ideas and opportunities for us all to be more intentional about how we help our children’s love for God grow while they are young.

Our primary focus will be on equipping parents with children aged under 11. However we know that it’s never too late to start, and we don’t stop at any point either! We will be signposting to lots of resources that help at different ages too.

Impact

The Kitchen Table Project, together with Parenting for Faith from the Bible Reading Fellowship, is part of the Vine Programme, funded by the Douglas Trust. The aim is to see many more children from Christian homes growing up with a faith that lasts.

In 2020, evaluation of the programme was undertaken by NCVO and we are pleased to share the results with you.

Key findings included:

• The approachable, down-to-earth and encouraging tone of resources – websites, videos, podcasts, books, etc. – was frequently highlighted, as was the practical nature of the materials, with tools and ideas that could easily be implemented.
• The insight that children had, from a very early age, their own direct, unmediated relationship with God led, in many cases, to several related outcomes. These included parents taking a child-centred approach to nurturing faith, letting go of expectations about ‘getting it right’ or what ‘right’ looked like, and modelling their own faith in a more authentic way.
• A key entry point to transforming church culture is using the materials in training for church leaders and volunteers within children’s and family work, which several churches in the sample had begun to do or had been doing for some time. This enabled church workers to align the language that they used with children and parents, as well as, in some cases, the wider church.

UK Director of Care for the Family, Katharine Hill said:

“It’s so good to see the positive impact of the Kitchen Table Project and how the resources have helped parents and churches think about how they help children grow in faith. It’s wonderful to see the changes in ways of thinking so that raising faith at home is becoming a more natural way of life. The NCVO report has given our Kitchen Table Project team motivation and focus to continue with this important work.”

Find a summary and the full report available to download below.

Downloads