Finding Home

Walking into a new place for the first time can be nerve-wracking. For six-year-old Noah, having just moved to Texas with his family, it took a lot of courage to walk into our Milestone Kids area a few weeks ago. Kristen and Jeremy, Noah’s parents, came to Milestone hoping to find a place their entire family would be comfortable calling home. Just weeks after trying out Milestone for the first time, Noah’s take on kids’ church anchored them here. Today, Kristen shares her story with us as a powerful reminder of how God can move through even the youngest of us.

“Our son Noah has always been hesitant in children’s church. A couple of years ago, when he started to say, ‘I don’t like church,’ we thought, ‘Oh no, that’s not okay with us; we have to do something about that.’ So, we started allowing Noah and our eight-year-old daughter Madison to come to adult services with us. That just became our thing as a family.

When we moved here to Texas a few months ago, we were passionate about finding a church where all of us—my kids, and my husband and I—would grow spiritually. The number one thing that we were looking for was for our kids to be poured into so they, in turn, could go and pour into other people.

After visiting Milestone a few times, on June 9th, Madison decided that she was ready to try Milestone Kids, and Noah, surprisingly, said that he would try as well. When we showed up that Sunday morning, Noah was very hesitant about going in. When I asked him to describe how he felt, he replied, “I am incredibly nervous, Mommy.”

I was so nervous for him, but when I went to pick him up at the end of service, he had the biggest smile on his face. While walking out, he looked at me and said,

‘Mommy, this is our church home.’

I had to hold it together so I wouldn’t just start crying. I was floored.

Noah and Madison could not stop talking about all of the amazing things that they had learned, and about the worship. They raved about the experience of praising God together and wanted to go deeper into the lesson they had learned about.

It was everything we had hoped and prayed for.

Going to VBS 2019 was a big step for our family. Our kids were nervous because this was the first big event at Milestone that our family would be involved in. But immediately, as the teenagers were singing and dancing, and Lego characters were playing around, our two kiddos became fully engaged. Their nervousness faded away and was replaced with absolute joy and excitement!

Our kids have always known God’s great love for them, and we speak daily to them about what it means to be fearfully and wonderfully made, but what really resonated with them was being able to sit with twelve hundred other kids and look around and see that God created each and every one of those children too, with a plan, with a purpose, and with partners.

For the first time, our kids sat in their church community with their peers, with their partners, and that meant everything to us! We love that Milestone believes that they can be great kids today, and you can see that belief woven into the action of every volunteer and every staff member at this church.

Milestone VBS gave our kids a church family.

To see God’s perfect love work through a church as they pour into their youth is spectacular.

Witnessing His love confirmed in the voices of your little ones, to hear their hearts yearning, and continuing to want to chase God like He chases them, is just awesome. It always renews so much of my own understanding and perspective on God when I hear about the love of God from the mouths of little kids.

We love that Milestone encourages our kids that they don’t have to wait to be great. They can be great right now!

Our family is over the moon about finding ‘our church home.’”

-Kristen