Encourage students to be intentional in being relational with others. Building friendship is less about people approaching you to be a friend, but rather you reaching out to make a friend. As students may be tempted to think inward when they are without a friend ("everyone is already friends", "I don't know anyone", "No one talked to me today), we encourage our students to look outward. This could be through a simple act of kindness towards one another, seeing who else may be in need of a friend, buying/sharing a snack (breaking bread with others), being a good listener, having a positive/hopeful mindset, and/or being intentional in striking a conversation. 

Community building takes time. We have interviewed students who have had trouble making friends at our church, but now find themselves with friends and community. Many of them reported that those friendships came over time. It was an accumulation of meeting the right person, at the right time, through the right moments. One of the encouragement we want to share with our parents is that community takes time to build. We don’t know how long that is for each student, but we do know that as much as it is important to us, it is important to God. We believe that God is at work in building His community for His glory. 

Have a positive/prayerful mindset. When we have a negative outlook or mindset, we tend to focus on the bad. It may be helpful to encourage your child to have a growth mindset by focusing on praiseworthy things. Philippians 4:9 instructs us to think in this way always. For those who are struggling to find community, fill your child with words of encouragement, hope, and growth! Help them to think of this situation as a challenge they can overcome and never as an impossible situation that they need to avoid. 

Model for them what a friend looks like. Students are like sponges. They soak up everything they see, hear, and even feel. When we, as parents, model how we do “friendship” with one another, our students see, hear, and feel that to heart. They might not show it right away, but they see it and they follow. One of the things we noticed within our community, is that the parents who model friendship with one another, their students model a similar behavior within their community.

Showing up for an Event is half the battle. What we have learned is that in order for friendships to occur, students must show up. We know one event is not a cure-all to help your child make friends at church. But, we have created these events (and more fellowship events in the future) specifically to help create intentional opportunities for peers to meet and build fellowship together.