Inactive children
(By Terry Finney)

I think that working with inactive families is one of the most important things we can do. Here are some things that I have/am doing;

  1. Birthday recognition: mail birthday card from child's class. Have the kids make one and/or sign one. We are taking a helium balloon and M&M's to each child this year on their birthday - this includes the inactive.
  2. AD and Cubs: make sure they know about these programs and keep inviting them to the activities. Encourage the leaders of these programs to do this too.
  3. Quarterly Activities: send them an invite in the mail and phone them to see if they are coming or need a ride. We have also hand delivered these so that we had a personal contact with the family.
  4. Home visits: phone the parents and make an appointment for a short visit. We took a plate of cookies, an invite to a upcoming activity, a handout about ADs (with times/dates meet/things do and leader's number) and a copy of the Friend which we left as a gift. We only stayed 10 minutes, basically a hello, get to know you, we would love to have you come to Primary etc. Very positive visits.
  5. As a teacher I sent postcards to my class when I was out of town - inactive too.
  6. Invite the family to any ward activities. It is hard to activate a child by his/herself...work on the family as a whole.
We encourage the classes/teachers to keep in touch with the inactive in their class as well as doing the follow: In previous presidencies I have also done home visits with a member of the Stake PP. We chose 3 children that were inactive but had come to some of our ward/primary activities. We made an appointment with the parents and stayed just 10 -15 minutes. We brought each child a plate of cookies and a copy of The Friend. The main focus of our visit was to say hi, get to know the child, encourage them to come out to primary, inform the families about cubs/AD and invite them to attend. We shared a story from a Friend magazine and spent a few minutes getting to know the child. These visits went very well and we felt it was a positive experience. One of the children came out a few times after this.

I have also hand delivered invitations to activities.

When I taught the CTR 8 class I had the active children write letters to the inactive saying that we missed them and hoped they would come out next Sunday. We also sent them stickers and pictures the kids drew.