What It Means To Be a Lion of Zion

What it Means – To our Servants and Parents

In the past year there has been no recusal from the complete move to Life Stage ministry for our children.  We are now Lions of Zion, infant to 10 years of age. 

 A Place for Children on the Grow!  We are growing to celebrate Christ, growing to connect to him in his word, growing to contribute our gifts and growing to care for others.

This year Lions of Zion focused on recruiting new servant leaders while retaining our experienced leaders, reaching the parents while raising the quantity and quality of opportunities for our children to connect to Jesus Christ.

Recruiting new servant leadership is happening largely through streamlining our training process which begins with our Teachers Training Small Group held each first Sunday.  This threshold launches servant leaders into a wide array of opportunities excited and equipped.  This is followed by peer coaching and intermitted training.

Retaining experienced leaders is essential to our healthy growth.  In reorganizing we recognized the different forms of our leadership.  What was a ministry became a zone with the necessary infrastructure to support duplication of small groups.  We identified Zone and C4 Leadership.  This added support to our high capacity leaders and created opportunities to recognize emerging leaders.

Reaching parents is the natural balance to ministering to our children.  We identified three key areas we our now developing Married Parents, Single Parents and GPAs (Grandparents Parenting Again).  As we build these there has been a great deal of excitement and we expect to see this growth!

Raising the quantity and quality of small group opportunities for our children has been a success.  We have done this by partnering with community organization who share our vision in developing Christian children.  Some of these partnerships include First Tee, Upward, the Scouts and many others.  We have also raised the quantity of small group opportunities by considering previously unmet needs like caring for those 6 months to 24 months old.  We now have a small group of excited parents just for this gentle age.

Lions of Zion Highlights

The 1^st Youth Empowerment Financial Series Small Group was formed and allowed children for 12 week’s to discover God’s Secret of Handling Money through Crown Financial. (Team Leader Ms. Laverne Benton)

• We received a $7,000.00 grant from the Community Foundation for our Saturday Reading Small Group. The Saturday Reading Small Group, offering students the opportunity to enhance both reading and social skills each Saturday morning. (Team Leader: Ms. Taneisha Brown & Ms. Mattie Boarman)
• Girls in Action and Royal Ambassadors Small Group raised some $2300.00 for the Richmond Children’s Hospital, placed second in the Wachovia Marathon Run, Partnered with First Tee Golf of Richmond free of charge to over 30 students. (Zone Leader: Mrs. P. Priscilla Goldsborough)
• Zion Zone (Children’s Church) offered spiritual teachings weekly for over 3000 children (Zone Leader: Mrs. Delisa Davis and Mrs. Tomona Johnson)
• Established Zion Zone on our South Campus -Children’s Church. (Zone Leader: Mereal Hughes)
• Thursday Night Encounter (Bible Study) Small Group, allowed children to learn about the bible and provided a setting for children to connect, celebrate, contribute and care. This bible study small group is created with Jesus in mind. (Zone Leader: Min. Darlene Williamson)
•  Lions of Zion Life Stage partnered with Ray of Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) and offered free Basketball tickets for students who were striving in school.
• Girl Scouts Latasha Trimiew received the distinguished Gold Award for Girl Scouts, this is the first in the history of Saint Paul’s Baptist Church (Group Leader: Jean Trimiew & Julinda Lewis).  We have done much but much more must be done to reach the children in our church and our community for Jesus Christ.  Now we challenge you to join us as we continue to become a place for children on the grow.  Contribute your gift to God by blessing our children!