Churches offer free child care for families
Want a free evening of child care to reconnect with that special someone? Call these churches.
St. Peter's Anglican Church and Zion United Methodist Church have offered free child care to give parents a break, for anyone in the community.
St. Peter's in Butler offered its first free night of child care July 21. The night was organized by the church's creative outreach team.
“That team dreams up ideas that they think will bless the community,” said Rev. Andrew DeFusco with St. Peter's.
About once a quarter, the team plans an event to show God's grace to the community, from free picnics to working on local parks.
“It isn't necessarily to solve the problems of the city or anything like that as much as it is to show snapshots as what God's grace is like,” said DeFusco.
The team members decided to host a free child care night after discussing needs in their own lives, as well as those in the community.
“Folks just don't have the time and space to nurture their own relationships,” DeFusco said.
Zion in Sarver offers Parents' Night Out once a month.
Around the holidays, it is not unusual for the church to have 40 children participating in the evening.
Parents' Night Out was started by Amy Shick, director of weekday ministries at Zion.
Shick noticed she was being asked to baby-sit for multiple families on the same night every month.
“I just thought this is a great chance for the church to step up and help,” Shick said.
Shick stressed the importance of parent's spending time one on one to help lower the chance of a divorce.
“It's so important and valuable to a family as a whole that the parents get to be a couple first. They were when the kids came and they will be when they leave,” Shick said.
By providing opportunities for parents to have an evening to themselves, Shick hopes children will follow in their parents' footsteps and make the necessary time to work on their own relationships.“Kids model what their parents are doing, so that's how we can fix the problem,” Shick said.While the child care is free, Zion asks for donations to go toward other weekday ministries' needs, such as maintaining playground equipment.“I always say, 'If you just need a night out and you can't afford it, just go,” Shick said.While the children are at the church, both St. Peter's and Zion provide a meal.“We make dinner together,” Shick said. “We do a family-style dinner and since it's summer, we've been having pizza a lot.”DeFusco was excited to sit down to fellowship with the children.“We ate a meal together, which was cool just to get to know them a little bit,” DeFusco said.For the rest of the time, youth and adult volunteers help entertain children while teaching them about the love of God.At Zion that time includes popcorn and movies, while at St. Peter's biblical-based crafts were made.Shick plans to continue offering Parents' Night Out monthly to those in the Sarver area.“Over the years we've probably had 50 to 60 families take advantage of the program,” she said.DeFusco said while St. Peter's Creative Outreach Team usually does not repeat events, it may make an exception for the free night of child care.
