Next Gen Families Connecting with Food and Fun

Throughout the month of March and beginning of April, over 50 Gateway families participated in our 40-day “What’s for Dinner? Challenge” with the purpose of encouraging family meal time and family interaction during meals. We had a lot of positive feedback from this with many comments about how much fun families had as they stepped up to the challenge. Here is what a few families had to say about the challenge:

What activity did your family enjoy the most?

• We enjoyed the “Questions to Ask” and finding out things about each other we didn't know.
• We enjoyed the “Questions to Ask” and “Riddles” sections.
• We really enjoyed all the activities but here are a few of our favorites: the Easter activity which was a hunt, milk mustache, and washing the feet.

How did your family learn about God through this challenge?

• We learned that God provides. There were times we were struggling to eat dinner together as a family due to after school activities. We were feeling discouraged and God sent rain..a lot..to keep us at home a few of the days!
• When we did the feet washing, we read the story from the Bible first. This was a great reminder for us all to be servants.
• We were able to discuss different topics than the normal. We talked about how Jesus served and we can serve like Jesus did.
• I learned how rich and present He is even in the simple activities of our daily lives…our small conversations around the dinner table could be so sweet and innocent with our kiddos that we couldn’t deny God’s goodness.

What was the most challenging or most rewarding activity?

• Challenging: Evenings where we were all home together. Rewarding: The evenings when we were home together and being able to share our testimonies with our kiddos. Also seeing them being encouraging to one another during some of the questions.
• Some of the questions were challenging for our two year old. One of the rewarding activities was when we took the questions with us to our grandparents’ houses and included them.
• The most rewarding activity that our family did was the feet washing. We felt like we really connected with our kids and it was an emotional event for all of us.

Any other comments?

•  Thank you for doing this. Even though the challenge is over, the kids still want to do conversation starters at the dinner table.
• I really liked this practical challenge. Thanks for organizing it!
• We enjoyed the activity and it was a great way to teach our children godly principles and fellowship in a different way at the table. We would definitely be interested in doing it again with a different theme or more throughout the year.
• Thank you for the great opportunity. We had usually eaten dinner as a family at our home but this helped us to be more intentional with those precious moments with each other as a family and discuss what things we are being blessed to see God doing. It also helped us filter out some things that were becoming distractions during this special time. What a fun way to strengthen the family units in our church, which in turn strengthens our church, and as a result continues to strengthen the universal family of God!

Hungry for more conversation starters for your family to use during meal times? Check out The Family Dinner Project. The Family Dinner Project is an organization devoted to the study of regular family meals. Its website offers recipes, topics for dinner conversations, and ways to draw people in from the wider community.

Thank you to everyone who participated and congratulations to our winning families! We had drawings for several different prizes at the end of the challenge. The Strete family and also the Kozlesky family each won a $20 gift card from Chick-fil-a. The Jones family won the drawing of 2 tickets to the Newport Aquarium and $20 Heavenly Pizza gift card. And finally, the Beightler family won the grand prize of 5 tickets to the Newport Aquarium and a $40 Heavenly Pizza gift card. Congratulations to all!