Elemental Children's Ministry

Group Life Conference Main Session 1, originally uploaded by wcagrouplife.

Scot McKnight posted some thoughts on his blog about an alarming trend of more and more 20-something simply opting out of church. Now, I don’t think Scot is being an alarmist in how he is looking at the situation, but according to him the statistics are sobering. He asks the question of how do we approach children’s, youth and young adults ministries in a way that captures these demographics in such a way that they do not discount church or God.

I think one of the things that needs to happen is that the church needs to approach ministry in a more holistic way. We need to look at spiritual formation across the generational spectrum and create a culture where the different “departments” or areas of ministry are working together in facilitating disciples of Christ who live out their love of God by following Jesus and love of others by serving the greater communities around them. Ministries/Departments within a church need to stop working as silos alongside each other and start working as a living organism that benefits all the parts with the goal of being a part of what God is doing in reconciling people to himself, themselves, each other and creation. This takes church staff leaders to build real relationships with each other and intersecting their ministries with each other. It means church staff leaders working TOGETHER (sharing resources, time, finances, volunteers, etc.) to further God’s Kingdom regardless of which department gets credit. This takes huge amounts of time and energy, but I believe it is well worth it and makes the Church more effective.

What are your thoughts? What are some other things the Church needs to do in order to curb this trend?

 

Walt Disney: One Man’s Dream, originally uploaded by JoshMcConnell.

For my wife’s birthday, a friend of ours got her a DVD copy of Mary Poppins… one of my wife’s favourite Disney characters. About a month ago, we watched the “pop up” version of the movie. It was neat to see all the little facts about different parts of the movie.

One of the pop ups was a quote from Walt Disney.

“I don’t make films for children. I make films that children aren’t embarrassed to take their parents to.”

What would happen if more children’s pastors/directors used that as a guideline for their children’s ministries? What kind of excellence and thought and intentionality would we pour into what happens in our children’s ministries if we could not only captivate children but engage the intellect and imaginations and respect of parents?

I’ve blogged about it before. Children’s ministry isn’t just about making a ministry that speaks to kids. I want a children’s ministry where kids are not only bringing their friends to but where they are dragging their parents and their friends’ parents to as well. “Mom… Dad… you’ve got to see what we’re doing at church!”

If you haven’t seen or heard all the teenage girls swooning over Edward Cullen, then you might not be aware that a popular teen novel series called Twilight has hit theatres this weekend. While many of us in CM won’t run into too many littler kids who might know about Edward and Bella, we will run into preteen girls (grades 4-6) who will be all too aware of this romantic couple. Here is a link to a review by Time Magazine on the movie. I will be watching the movie in the next couple of days and submitting a review to Kidology. When I do, I will post the link to that review.

What are your thoughts on the Twilight series? The main hero, you may not know, is a vampire (a “vegetarian” vampire who only hunts animals and not humans) and thus adds to the intrigue of these stories. Have you run into any kids in your ministries who’ve read the books and plan to/have seen the movie? I’d be interested to hear some thoughts, and I’m sure others who read this blog would be interested as well. I’ll post my thoughts after I see the movie and write the Kidology review.

Generation WE: The Movement Begins… from Generation We on Vimeo

Thanks to Lanny Donoho’s blog for bringing my attention to this video.

As I watched this video, I was really excited about the hope that Millennials have in the midst of all the negative that they have facing them. I, then, thought, “Did the Church… Did I… play some role in forming these values? Did the Church have some role in the hope that Millennials have about their ability to make a difference in this world?”

The last of this generation is just leaving our children’s ministries: they are the grade 4, 5 and six kids! The oldest of them just turned 30! It just made me wonder if the kids who I’ve been privileged to pour into over the past 17 years are contributing to the hope I hear, see and read about in Millennials. It makes me wonder what churches are doing now to offer this generation a place where they can be empowered by the Holy Spirit to offer this hope to the world. Are we ready to jump in there and help this generation make the social changes that need to happen?

I also began to think about what I am doing now to help shape this next generation that is currently in our children’s ministries. Will the Church be the catalyst in how this upcoming generation views the world and their role in it, or will we, the Church, once again lapse behind and react to what this next generation becomes? Are we engaging the culture around us? Are we helping to create and shape culture? Are we helping this generation become Kingdom shapers… people who bring about change in this world in such a way that they facilitate the restoration of individuals and communities to God, themselves, each other and the world?

Or we can choose to wait and see what happens…

How fun is this? You can go onto the FAO Schwartz website and create your own Muppet. They’ve got three body types to choose from, eyes, noses, hair and clothes you can choose from. And the cost for something like this? It looks like it only cost $90 to make one of these. I’m not sure how big they are. I couldn’t find those details on the site. It also looks like the New York store will have a Muppet Whatnot section. Check it out. If you order one, let us know how it goes.

   

The Littlest Voter, originally uploaded by Orin Optiglot.

These past few weeks, based on news articles, commentaries, TV commercials, blog posts and stuff posted on Facebook and Twitter, that song could’ve been finished with the words, “than whom is voted President.” And that is from both sides of the political spectrum. I heard and read Christians who held up either McCain or Obama as THE biblical choice. I always am concerned when people starting saying something is “biblical.” It infers that if you don’t agree with them, then you are heretical. (But that is another topic.)

As I watched the election results on Tuesday, I saw footage of children who were rooting for McCain or Obama as if they were rooting for their favourite sports team. I guess you could say that it is great that children are learning to get excited about the political process. I’m all for that. My concern, though, is are we really teaching them that, or are we simply indoctrinating them into a certain way of political thinking. We spend more time teaching our children more about our biases rather than the thought process that led us to choose the candidate we voted for.

In all the back-and-forth that I witnessed, I saw more adults regurgitating party lines rather than engaging in respectful conversations to share ideas and learn from each other. Yes, there were those who did that, but the vast majority of what I saw were simply attempts at attacking each candidates’ character and policies so that people would come to their political side. What does that teach our children?

While I think Christians need to be actively involved in the public arena and be passionate about the issues we think are important and the leaders whom we think will advance those issues, I do think that we need to do more than just persuade or push people to agree with our points of view. We need to enter into conversations with each other that build bridges and relationships with each other. We need to enter into debate humbly, ready to learn from those we disagree with just as much, if not more, than trying to get our point across. We need to learn to be able to respectfully agree to disagree with fellow Christians, even on topics that are very important to us and have lots of emotion attached to them. Most of all, we need to help our children learn to think for themselves; we need to help them learn how to learn… even from those who disagree with us. And, in the end, when our children grow and begin to do that, we need to learn to respect them when they sometimes come to different conclusions on how to best advance the Kingdom of God… even if it means they endorse the other political candidate.

It is our job as parents and ministers to help those kids we have the privilege of influencing to hear God’s voice and follow him. It’s not our job to hear God’s voice for them.

We need to make sure our children see that OUR hope IS in Christ in how we live ALL aspects of our lives.

For more thoughts on growing up in church and politics, read this great post by Don Miller.

As I was reading through my daily Kidscreen eNewsletter, I came across this article from the Montreal Gazette which talked about the new trend of exergaming and its implications for the possibility of video games playing a positive role in the fight against childhood obesity. Now, if only Wii Fit wouldn’t make your Mii character fatter after it calculates your body mass index…