What is a meeting like?

If you've never been to a MOPS meeting I wanted to share with you what you could expect at your first meeting.  (For an estimated time table you can see our Meeting Schedules page.)

When you get to Central Bearden Church (6300 Deane Hill Drive in Knoxville) feel free to park in the visitor lot and come through the double glass doors.  If you are dropping off your MOPPETS, turn right as you walk through the entryway.  Continue walking down the hall until you get to the childcare welcome desk.  There someone will tell you which rooms your children will be in while you enjoy the meeting.

After your kids are settled, head up stairs to the third floor where we meet for both our morning and evening meetings.  Dinner is provided for members who choose to sign up and for all first time visitors.   After we gather our food, eat, and fellowship for a while there are generally announcements.  Then we typically have a speaker who shares with us for about 45 minutes or so. We have speakers that range from police officers, legal experts, kindergarten teachers, doctors and just regular mommas sharing what they know.

After our speaker (or other activity) we break up into small groups.  This year we will have three small groups: Moms with children who have special needs, Working moms and Stay-at-home moms.  Our small groups are really where you get to know the other moms in the group.  Here we discuss life, the speaker, or whatever needs to be discussed.  Our small groups are also responsible for planning play dates and mom-night-outs.  We already have a couple of "whole group" mom-night-outs on the calendar, but it is nice to meet in smaller groups so you can really get to know other moms.

Each of our small groups also contains mentor moms.  These can be moms that have school aged children or moms who are now grandmothers.  They are here to impart their wisdom to us and to support us in our roles as mothers with little ones!  These mentors are such blessings to us, I can't imagine our group with out them.

During the meeting your little ones (if you brought them) have been busy with our loving childcare workers and will be ready to be picked up at 8pm or 11:30am depending on which meeting you are attending.

Well, I hope this has given you a good picture of what a MOPS meeting is like and I truly hope to see you this Thursday at 6pm!