Elemental Children's Ministry

(picture take from SmittenKitchen.com)

Today, I turn 33 on the 3rd! Isn’t that fun? It’s my double champagne birthday. For those of you who don’t know what that means (I didn’t know until a few months ago), your champagne birthday is when the age you turn is the same as the number of the date of your birthday… so, I get to have a double champagne birthday! Now you know, and your life is the better for it.

Today, I thought I’d simply share the wonderful cake I get to enjoy today… thanks to my wife and a recipe from Smitten Kitchen. The picture is above. It’s a chocolate peanut butter cake: a sour cream chocolate cake with peanut butter frosting and a chocolate glaze… Mmmmmm! Here is the link to the recipe. I’ll be thinking of you all as I eat it!

I’ll be back tomorrow with a more normal post.

A month ago I posted about finding wallpapers for each month. I had said that I would do a screencast on how to set a Mac so that your desktop wallpaper would rotate through wallpaper files in a designated folder.

Here is the screencast!

(image uploaded to Flickr by frgdr)

Yes, it’s cliche by now, but I had to have the Michael Jackson has passed away post. I figure enough time has passed that I don’t come off as too trendy, though.

Don’t worry, this post isn’t going to be about my memories of Michael Jackson or what my favourite song of his is or even about the colourfulness of his life most recently. When news of his possible death arrived, I was shocked at how quick most everyone on my Facebook started commenting about it. It wasn’t long before every network and news outlet pre-empted everything to follow the story (even the death of Farrah Fawcett that same day became secondary news).

Admittedly, I have no emotional connection to anything Michael Jackson did (unless it sounded like the Gaithers, it wasn’t played at home), but I was really taken aback at how much time and attention was diverted almost immediately to this superstar celebrity. I know that this is not a new phenomenon, but it concerned me nonetheless.

What does it say about our culture when we idolize and stop everything to pay tribute to a pop singer? Yes, I understand the effect he’s had on the music industry and pop culture. But I thought we were all fed up with celebrity worship. I thought that stuff like that was left to reality shows and tabloids and so-called entertainment news outlets.

I don’t remember this much hoopla and time go into covering Mother Teresa’s life when she passed away, and she accomplished way more for humanity and lived a life of integrity up to the day she passed.

Robin Dugall had this to say about a culture of celebrity worship. Go ahead and hop on over to read what he said. While he uses stronger language than I would, I have to agree that this is a sign that we are still mostly celebrity driven, narcissistic and consumeristic in out leanings regardless of how much we claim not to be.

I can’t help but wonder how much of that we inadvertently pass down to the kids we minister to. I’m not saying that we elevate celebrity to the kids. But I think that we in CM have our own version of celebrity status. We look to the big names in CM or the big churches. We go to conferences to listen to so and so more because they are famous rather than what they have to say. We want to be like them. We want to write books or curriculum or wish we were invited to speak. We buy their tapes (um I mean CDs… um download mp3s)…

Am I saying that we shouldn’t go to conferences or read books or listen to teachings by these CM celebrities? No. What I am saying, though, is that we need to check ourselves and make sure we are elevating these people to celebrity status in our minds. As we do that, we model for the kids watching us that it is OK to do the same with the celebrities they are familiar with.

What do you think about all this?

Do we have a culture of celebrity worship? If so, how do we combat it?

How do we keep from elevating those in CM to a place of celebrity and keep Jesus at the top?

(photo originally uploaded to Flickr by Sherlock77 (James))

Quick! What picture do you conjure up in your mind when you hear the word “evangelism?” Quick! Don’t think about it too much. Just describe the picture. Did it?

Here’s what I picture most of the time: walking up and down the streets of an urban area, approaching people who seem to not be doing anything, getting into a conversation with them and steering that conversation into questions about God and heaven and Jesus and asking them if they would like to pray a prayer with me. (Thank you, EE!)

For those of us who’ve been in traditional evangelical churches for a while, I’m sure your pictures are similar to mine.

A little while back I posted my reflections on Michael Spencer’s reaction to evangelism as a potential form of child abuse. You can go back and read the post if you missed it or want to relive the experience. The gist of my post was this:

“The key, though, is to help connect children and families to Christ and allowing the Holy Spirit to do the work of conversion. It’s more than just praying a prayer, raising a hand or coming to the altar. It’s about life transformation, and that is something that can’t be manufactured or manipulated into existence.”

A couple of days ago, I ran into this post from Mark Batterson. He had his congregation pray this prayer with him at their weekend services:

“Lord, I pray for an opportunity to share my faith with someone in some way. It’s not up to me to decide who or when or where. But I know why. Because you love them and want a relationship with them. So Lord, surprise me with opportunities to share my faith.

Forgive me for trying to do your job for you. You are the one who convicts of sin. You are the one who draws to Christ. But help me do my part as salt and light. Help me see those opportunities to react compassionately or listen patiently or speak kindly. Through word and deed, help me plant seeds of love in the lives of others. Give me boldness when it’s time to speak. Give me restraint when it’s time to listen. Give me words to say. But more importantly, give me ears to hear.

Lord, help me be sensitive to the prompting of your Holy Spirit so I can see the divine appointments you send my way. Help me not to be afraid of questions I cannot answer. Help me not to be afraid of people’s reactions or rejections.

Lord, help me preach the gospel every day, when necessary, with words.

In Jesus name, amen!”

What an awesome prayer for each of us to pray. Evangelism isn’t about what we do or say. It’s more about living our lives as Christ followers 24/7 and allowing the Holy Spirit to guide what we say and do. If that means we tell someone about Jesus, then so be it. If it means we keep our mouth shut, then so be it. If it means we simply listen and be a friend to someone who needs one, then so be it. It is not our job to do the converting. It’s the Holy Spirit’s job. We need to learn to work with him. For some of us that means taking a step back. For more and more of us, it means getting over our fears and hangups and taking a step forward.

It’s always fun to buy promotional products! Maybe it’s just me, but I love getting stuff with the children’s ministry logo on it.

Last year for our day camp and summer camp, I ordered water bottles because it can get hot, and we wanted to help the kids stay hydrated. So I ordered a bunch of bottles with the Redwood Kids logo on it.

This year I had to order some new ones because of all the negative press plastic nalgene-type bottles have been getting. I ordered aluminum ones.

Don’t they look cool? I thought so!

I also ordered some reusable shopping bags with the Redwood Kids logo on them, too! (You can thank my pastoral apprentice for modeling the bag for us.)

I don’t know about you, but stores here are phasing out plastic bags and encouraging people to bring in their own bags. I thought it would be great for people in our church to be using these bags as they grocery shop. They support the children’s ministry financially by buying a bag and advertise for us as well!

Buying stuff like this, though, can be confusing and daunting. There are soooo many companies and options out there. (Last year, I told you all about the company I use for ordering T-shirts: Terry’s Tees, who by the way is doing T-shirts for our camp again this year.) If you don’t already have a place that you purchase promotional items from, let me suggest you connect with Steve Rydin at True Summit Promotions. Steve and I were on staff together a few years back at a church in Oregon. Steve now lives in Colorado and helps organizations with their promotional item needs. He’s a great guy and will help you find what you need. Tell him Henry sent you!