Latest / Growing Disciples: Faith at Home with Chatham Families / Growing Faith in Kids: A Conversation with Cynthia Dekaney
Transcript
- CK_Cynthia_7/28/26_for real: Well, welcome to Growing Disciples, Faith at Home with Chatham Families, a podcast for families who want to follow Jesus faithfully and nurture faith at home with confidence and joy. My name is Elizabeth Lindbergh, the Director of Family Ministries at Chatham Community Church, and host of the Growing Disciples Podcast. And if this is your first time joining us, and since it's only our second episode, there's a good chance that it is. We want you to know our heart behind this podcast. We're here to encourage families to see the ordinary moments of life, even the messy ones, as opportunities to point the people they love to Jesus. And one of the things that we'll do regularly on this podcast is sit down with ministry leaders at Chatham Community Church who serve our young people week in and week out. If you have a child from newborn through fifth grade who participates in Chatham Kids on Sundays, you may have had the chance to meet Cynthia DeCaney, our Chatham Kids director. And she is the heart behind this wonderful ministry. And she loves the Lord and loves your kiddos. So I asked Cynthia to join me today to share a little bit about herself, her faith journey, and what's ahead for Chatham Kids this coming year. Cynthia, thanks so much for being here. Thanks for having me. This is incredible to be like on your brand new podcast. I'm quite honored. it's awesome. Awesome. So I've had the privilege of working with Cynthia for about four years. I began serving as a classroom teacher for the fourth and fifth graders before I even came on staff at church. And she is so talented, and the Lord has gifted her uniquely to serve our church community in this way. So, Cynthia, tell us a little bit about your family, what your life looks like outside of church. Okay, sure. So a little background, we're not originally from North Carolina. So Chris and I both grew up in the Houston area in Texas, went to Texas AM University, met there, married while he was still finishing up his degree and started our family. then as he got to the end of his degree, we got this opportunity to come to North Carolina for a little adventure. So we packed up four little kids. our oldest just finished third grade at the time, and headed out here for what we thought was like a five-year adventure, and then we'd be back in Texas, well. We're still here. our oldest is almost 28 now, and we love it here. We had at a fifth at Tar Hill Texan, and she is about to launch off to college this fall. So life looks like some changing happening around for us with that transition. Yeah, so that's gonna be exciting and and something new for us. in addition to this job here at church, I also teach preschool. Mm-hmm. in the mornings at a really sweet Baptist preschool down in downtown Pittsburgh. So so yeah, that's what keeps me busy. You have kids, kiddos all day long, all week long. I'm launching big kids and sitting at the in school playing on the floor with little kids. What a gift. Absolutely. And the two most amazing jobs that I could ever asked to have so I'm very thankful. And your heart and your love for kids comes through all the time. So we're very lucky. I'm so glad. So what about a little bit about your story, what led you into children's ministry. Right. So I think kids led me into ministry. I didn't go to school with the idea of children's ministry in mind. As long as I can remember, I wanted to be a teacher. I wanted to be with kids. did not grow up in a family that attended church, but I was invited to a church. and went and saw that they had a nursery. So I thought, well I could I could come here and volunteer and I'd get my fill of babies. And then church was kind of the the byproduct was that. The the very sweet children's director there at this church said we love for all of our volunteers to attend a service before they come to serve. So I got up early, I went and attended church and then I went back to be with the kids. And just loved getting to be involved even from when I knew almost nothing about faith to be with these kids and seeing them learn about faith and I got to learn about it at the same time with these with these little ones and did that for a couple years through high school even through college volunteered in kids ministry and youth ministry and then I was done with that. I was gonna go to work and teach in a in a public school. But then had our own kids and put our Our own kids in in ministry and trusted trusted those kids, our kids over to people. one of the churches, this is not the way we do things at Chatham Kids, but one of the churches we attended when we were a young family, it was required. If you had a child in the nursery, then you had to serve a time in the nursery. and I didn't mind doing that. I really liked it. From there, I never really made an attempt to disengage. And fortunately, I was able to just grow my involvement in children's ministry through my kids and through different opportunities and options that that came available, I think. when people asked, I said yes. And then pretty soon I became the one doing the asking. just something I want to a thread I want to pull. I think it's it's so lovely of the Lord to draw the many. different ways he draws us to himself and for you I hear that he used that that that part he put in you that loves children to draw you to himself and how you came to faith or grew in your faith by ministering to children. I just think that's so it's so just like the Lord, you know, he's so faithful, he sees us, he sees our hearts, he puts desires in our hearts and then led you in that direction. And I'm absolutely so very grateful for the way that that's happened. Obviously the Lord knows that that was the perfect way to get to me and I'm very thankful for that. a tailor-made, unique, special to me way to draw me close to the Lord and I will forever be thankful for that for sure. I love it. What do you love most about working with kids? So many things. So many things. if I have to pick, especially in this setting. I love okay, I'm I'm I'm gonna go to two. I'm gonna I'll do two. Just this Sunday I was in the toddler room and as the morning wound down, One particular toddler was getting tired and you could tell it was close to lunch and nap time and she just reached up and I picked her up and she just melted into me and then her little fingers twined in my hair just like my little kids used to do. and so I loved being there for her in that time. To me it was an amazing trust that little kids have. to just melt into this trusted adult and the privilege it is and the joy it is to be a person, to be called to be that person for that child at that time. Yeah. Absolutely incredible. as they get older, I think it's super fun to watch their faith, like we use the term childlike faith. And super fun to see them enter into when we tell them these stories and they enter in how this story works for them and what does this mean. I remember trying like to explain the Trinity to a four-year-old. And I said, Do you get that? He went, Yep. And I said, Do you have more questions about that? And he said, No. And I just thought, how cool is that? That for some kids, like I obviously, when they get older, they're gonna have questions and they're gonna rest. But for some kids, they trust you. They have been taught that they can trust the Lord and that that that Jesus is there for them and they're like, Okay, mm-hmm, got it. Let's go with it. And I that is so fun to be there in that moment, to get to be part of that, nurturing faith from early on. super fun, like the term childlike faith. It's it's thrown around a lot, but when you get to like watch it happen, so incredible. Yeah. Yeah, and and as a again, as someone who is a volunteer in Chatham Kids, I watch you lead this ministry and those two things, I believe you really f foster and model well for the volunteers, you know, communicating the joy and the privilege it is, A, to have parents entrust their children to us. While they're in church, and and then just the delight that it is to get to know these children it's so fantastic, but then also the way that you encourage all of us to share Jesus with them, to love on them and Be Jesus' hands and feet in the classroom. And I just think you foster that environment really well. And also to c comment about what you said a little bit earlier It's also you've also created a great environment where parents are free to bring their kids into Chatham Kids and go and be ministered to in service. And if this is a season where they need that time to grow in their faith, they don't have to feel obligated just because they're partaking in Chatham Kids, they don't have to be a volunteer. We welcome them, of course, if they want, if that's what they love. as you said earlier, it's not an obligation. It's a privilege, right? And so again, you foster this great environment. So there's there's there's moms, you know, current moms in the trenches volunteering and there's grandparents and everything in between. So so anyway, everyone that's there wants to be there. That that's absolutely a high value for our volunteer culture is that you're serving in joy in a place where you feel you are equipped to pour into your position and your and your job and you're also being enriched by that. I mean selfishly when we serve in Chatham kids. We're we're served as well, Relationship building is also very high value in our ministry. I mentioned what a privilege it is to be in in kids' ministry and to be involved, like you said, in the lives of these families and to be trusted by these families. And one of the things I think we do well because of the volunteers that we have, because they're there, because they want to be, is we put trusted adults in the lives of kids, and we've extended their from their nuclear family out to their Christian. church family. having had five kids come through this program, that is huge to me. I tell the story a lot of one of my kids. he And another adult in the church, their names Rhyme. It was Ben and Ken. And so they had a goal at the end of of church to steal each other's name tags and create a collection of, you know, Ben and Ken name tags that they each had. I don't know what Ken did with his. Ben had his like stuck by his car seat in the van. Fast forward, five or six years and Ben's the one on the floor in the nursery with the kids climbing all over him. But Ken is still an important person in his life, somebody he would call if he needed career advice or things like this. So, I love that part of it. I love the extending the your family to include church family and trusted adults. So we desire entitlement kids to put trusted adults in the lives of your children. So the people we put in those rooms we feel like fit that bill. Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. And I'm sure you could tell us story after story after story. Too many. Yeah, and so maybe summarizing like what is your what is your hope as kids come through Chatham Kids, if you could say like sort of this big picture hope, what would that be? And I hope all of our volunteers also have it as a goal that these kids would come to love the Lord, that they would choose to follow the Lord, that they would make faith their own. speaking of stories, we had a teenager recently who was asked to share a little bit about his experience And he said, when you're little and you're in kids' classrooms in Sunday school, they tell you what to read, they read you the stories, they tell you what the stories mean, they tell you what scripture to memorize. But when you get older, you get to choose how you follow the Lord and what you study and what you read. I mean just if my heart could burst any more f for a child who came through our program to live it out. He was poured into and now he's realizing it's his turn to to take his faith and make it his own. and I think that's the hope for all of us as we pour into these kids you know, we're planting seeds for their faith that will grow that will make roots and then when they get to go out and and choose their faith it's started here in our classrooms with volunteers on the floor, opening the Bible on their laps, with the silly videos and the s games that we sometimes play. Even just a person that every Sunday was happy to see them. You know, we have kids where school days are rough. Yeah. School days are long. School days are are not always met with friends and teachers who are happy to see you. But for a Sunday morning, when you encounter one of our volunteers at the door, that child is gonna be met with someone who is happy to see them, remembers their prayer request from a previous Sunday, or remembers that they had a soccer game or a big test coming up. and so My hope is that we plant these seeds that grow, and that every kid who comes through sees the love of Jesus poured out to them through our volunteers. Amen. Amen. It's beautiful. So yeah, and I also like how you and I've said this to you before, but I I also like how you encourage the volunteers relationship building is important you want the kids to feel seen to feel loved and you foster that so I'm grateful for that what's exciting about Chatham kids this coming year is there anything new happening Cynthia well as you just happen to mention Miss Elizabeth there is a new so Some new things happening for us. So I feel like we have amazing and incredible volunteers. So if I can find a decent curriculum, a good curriculum, then they can do amazing things with it. we were using had been using one curriculum for about five years, felt like that that curriculum as a tool was no longer really serving our our needs and we got together with a bunch of people and and found a new one. I think it's pretty good. I know you've you've worked with it. You were one of those people. So we We think it's pretty great and we're pretty excited to put that in the hands of our volunteers. It's got a super emphasis on the connection to the families and discipleship beyond just the classroom, which I really enjoy. I think one of the things that in addition to launching this curriculum, which is super exciting for kids' ministry right now, is that you and I have worked so closely over the course of the last maybe even six months. Chatham families existed, Chatham Kids existed, but we've made a super concerted effort over the last six months to make kids and Families are more intertwined ministry, and I'm so excited for that to bear fruit even more. It's it's born fruit for sure for me. I hope it has for you. I know that we've launched a few things that families and kids might not even know yet are happening. and I think there's a lot of opportunity for more. This curriculum is one of the tools that you and I I think are gonna be using to help launch that. so I'm super excited to see where kids' ministry goes now. the collaboration with families and kids, should be together. That should be a thing. And now we're just making it a lot more intentional and a lot more purposeful. And it's gonna be fun to see that how that plays out for our kids and for our families. so yeah, so it's it's August, the start of the school year is kind of the start of our it's kind of our happy new year, right? Like where we get to start some things fresh and launch some things new. So it's gonna be fun to see over the course of the fall how this how this plays out and how it bears out. For sure, for sure. Yeah. The and we've talked about the the parent devotional that comes along with this curriculum where and I've talked a little bit about it, but and we'll put a link in the show notes for the one for September where as a parent you can You can download this, you can print it out if you want, and you can see the verses that the kids are going to be studying, what's a topic they're going to be studying and then this parent devotional gives you a prayer prompt. It gives you opportunities to sort of process the the passage yourself and then also gives you questions so you can engage with your kids in a really concrete way, really specific way, to connect what they're learning in Chatham Kids through the rest of the week, as opposed to you know saying, How is Chatham Kids today? which is a fine question. But if you wanted to dig a little bit deeper and maybe help the kids process a little little bit maybe of what they learned and they could be hungry on the way home from church so it maybe it'll happen in the car ride on the way to school on Tuesday. I don't know but it that tool is there for you Again, like Cynthia was saying earlier, you know, making their faith their own, processing with them, asking them questions, all those things. So it's just a nice tool. So as parents are in service being ministered to, and their kids are in Chatham Kids being ministered to, there's a there can be a connection there. that's very intentional. and so we're we're here to help facilitate that in any way we can. So happy to do that. I think too, just a a side note to that, all the all the kids at all the age groups pre-K through fifth will hear the same. story. At a developmental level. So when you're in the car, when you're around the dinner table, I'm excited to hear if there are stories where the siblings play off each other. We talked about this in my class and it meant this and but then the older kids might have dug into something different and then that gives the parent a chance to also lean in Awesome. Well I'm super excited to to be on this little journey with Chatham Kids with Cynthia De Caney. and a feature of this podcast, is going to be regularly checking in with Cynthia, hearing how the curriculum's been going, what's any kind of nuggets that she wants to share with families. special things that happen around Christmas time and towards the end of the school year. So there'll be fun updates and whatnot. and if you have any questions or there's topics that you want us to cover in you know about anything with faith and families, but in particular about kids, please just email us at families at chathamchurch.org and we're be happy to to dig into those questions that folks might have And Cynthia, and anything else you want to share with parents as we close? that this is a super privilege that we have to serve your families and it is our desire that your kids feel safe with us, that you feel safe dropping them off. And as Elizabeth said earlier, if you do feel led to volunteer, we're always looking for some more people. So that's right, that's right. okay, so as we wrap up, we encourage you to like, subscribe, and follow the podcast so that more people can hear about it. And until next time, may the Lord bless you while you nurture faith at home.