Children are drawn to the waterslide at Trinity United Methodist Church’s summer event.
Saturday, July 23, 2022 7:00 a.m
Story and photos by Alice Gerard
A basket raffle, snacks, drinks and bounce houses were the highlights of the Summer Breakout event held July 10 at Trinity United Methodist Church.
According to Cherie Sharp, co-director of children’s programming at the church, “This is an event that Pastor Kevin (Slough) had started a few years ago, when he was new. I think our first one was right before COVID. This is really just a way to say hello to the community. For people who may not know we are here, come in and bring your families, enjoy your families for the day, have fun, bring your friends. It’s a very casual thing just to let people know we’re here and invite them and open our doors.”
Slough said the event was about kids having fun at an event offered to the community at no cost.
Sharp, who has been co-director of children’s programming for the past six years, said the church continues to open up and more programs are being offered to children and families.
“For a lot of the kids, this is the first year we’ve had a little camp,” he said. “Some of them go to camp away from home for a little fellowship or maybe work with some other churches to do charity work. Mitch (Johnson, the youth program director) has movie nights on Mondays. We start the movie nights here one Monday a month. The kids can come hang out and have a partner and watch a good movie. We’re going to start other activities, like maybe laser tag. We’re doing group things again that we didn’t do during covid
“We’re coming back from COVID. It’s very exciting. There are social pieces that people want. We had put them on hold for a while to try to figure out how to deal with that. People need other people.
“That’s our goal here: to let them know they’re loved, no matter who they are. We want to build safe spaces for everyone, to feel welcome and come here, and it doesn’t matter where you are in social status. You’re welcome here and you’re important.”
Cherie Sharp, who has been co-director of children’s programming at Trinity United Methodist Church for six years, said the church is creating “safe spaces” for people of all ages.
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The bounce house and water slide were big hits with the kids, Sharp said. “The kids always love it. Whenever I’m here, we’ve had them at all of our kids’ events. We do kids’ events twice a year. They love the giant water slide. That brings a lot of excitement. I was talking with a few that were here, and they said to me, ‘We see the bounce houses.’ So that’s a big draw, a big excitement.”
Sharp said Johnson was recently hired. He’s “bringing a lot of youth to the program.”
The next big event for the church, Sharp said, is rally day, which will be held in September. Sharp described it as “a welcome back to Sunday school.”
According to Slough, “Rally Day is when people of all ages, usually a week after the kids go back to school, come and have a big cookout and party here. They target kids, youth and adults to in Christian education throughout the school year. It always involves food. We are Methodists.”
He described the church as “a Bible-based, deeply rooted Christian faith church that is here to bless the community and to bring people into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ as their Lord and savior.”
The next community event will be the church’s annual fall festival.
“It’s about mid-October. That’s when we have our ‘Trunk or Treat.’ It’s our biggest fundraiser,” Sharp said.
Diane Gerard takes a look at some of the deals in the Summer Event Basket Raffle.
