Elemental Children's Ministry

Need children’s ministry volunteers? Ever thought of having a former president help you out with that?

My friend Nevan Hooker from Minister’s Label had this video put together tho help you on your next children’s ministry recruitment campaign. I thought it was pretty fun. Why bother with trying to get the actual George W to speak at your church? Just think of all the logistics of having to deal with the Secret Service! Simply download this video from Worship House Kids and use it for your next creative volunteer recruitment campaign.

Spread the word! Tell everyone you know about this fun video!

(photo uploaded to Flickr by gerlos)

For those of you who might not already know, my family is taking a huge step of faith and leaving Thunder Bay, ON for California. You can read more about that move here.

We are leaving Canada this Friday, June 25 and planning on arriving in California on June 30. We thought we had secured housing. We were simply waiting for a lease agreement to sign. This morning, I received a phone call from the landlord stating that his wife no longer wants to rent the house out… Yep, you read that correctly… no house… I’d like to type some choice words, but this is a children’s ministry blog…

Anyway, I’m asking for those of you in the Elemental CM community to please pray for our family. This move, alone, is stressful. Now with this rental falling through after talking with the landlord for a week, our stress is multiplied. Please pray that we find someplace to rent and soon. Please pray that we have peace in the midst of this.

If any of you have any connection in the San Francisco East Bay (preferably the Concord area) or know of anyone who might have connections, please email me at henry(at)zonios(dot)org.

We rest in the fact that we know this move IS what God wants. It’s the “adventures” on this Wild Goose Chase that are challenging! Thanks for your prayers.

I know that this isn’t necessarily directly related to children’s ministry… but it could be! I just found out about this! TOMS Shoes has declared Thursday, April 8 as One Day Without Shoes day as a way to bring awareness to the plight of millions all over the world (including children) who don’t have shoes to wear. The idea is to go a day or part of the day without shoes. I’m planning on doing it, and if I can do it with weather being in the lower 50′s, you can do it, too.

Check out the site for ways you can take part in the day. They also have some ways for those who can’t go shoeless to participate.

For those of you who might have missed it, our family will be making a huge move at the end of June. You can read about it here.

To make a long story short, we are taking a huge step of faith and moving to Northern California. We plan on moving to the SF East Bay area. We’re not all sure what God is up to, but we do know that he is calling us to move. Read the whole story.

With me leaving Redwood, that means there is a position here for a new Pastor of Children’s and Family Ministries. You can take a look at the posting on our website if you are interested.

If you’re looking for your typical evangelical church with a position where you can settle in and coast, then Redwood is definitely not the place for you.

If you are adventurous, independent and wanting to be in a missional atmosphere where you will be dealing with many families who have no prior evangelical background, then Redwood is ideal. Strong administrative skills as well as a passion to build volunteer leadership teams is also a major plus as Redwood is aiming to double from approximately 850 attendees weekly to 1700. You would be working with a great staff team in an atmosphere where you can grow as a leader.

If you or someone you know would fit the bill, then check out the position. If you have any questions about Redwood or the ministry position, feel free to leave a comment or contact me.

Tony Kummer of Ministry-to-Children.com has started a fun competition a la NCAA Basketball’s March Madness. He’s taken 64 children’s ministry blogs and put them into four divisions based on geographical location, and has asked people to vote for the top four in each division.

I’m not so sure about his geographical designations because both Canada and Australia are mysteriously annexed into the US. Elemental Children’s Ministry (which is my blog and should be voted for because I have a degree in Chemistry and Biology… that should count for something shouldn’t it?) currently based in Canada was put into the Midwest Division, and David Wakerly and Rob Bradbury ended up in the West Division. I think Tony is secretly trying to have the US take over the world…

All kidding aside, you really should check it out. There are some blogs there that I hadn’t heard of before and now am following! If you don’t feel right about voting, you don’t have to (but you can alway vote for mine… I won’t tell).

Thanks to Tony for putting this fun post up as a way of letting us know about some other blogs that some of us may have never heard about otherwise!

(photo originally uploaded to Flickr by Ucodep)

Back in December, the Stuff Christians Like blog readers raised $60,000 to build two kindergartens in Vietnam through Samaritan’s Purse. It was so neat to see this happen in a matter of days. It was also inspiring to see the power of many people giving $5, $10, $25 and $100 gifts adding up quickly.

Well, I figure that if a blog like SCL can raise enough money to build two kindergartens, I’m sure that all of you in the Elemental Children’s Ministry community can give enough to buy one tent for people in Haiti.

I’ve been following a guy named Shaun King on Twitter for a while. If you don’t know who Shaun is, he’s a pretty charismatic guy (30 years old) who is the lead pastor of a pretty new church in the Atlanta area called Courageous Church. You can check out more of who he is via his blog Shaun in the City. I haven’t had a chance to actually meet or hear Shaun, but I get to attend a breakout he is doing at The Orange Conference at the end of April. I’m looking forward to it.

Ever since the earthquake hit, Shaun has been in the thick of things trying to get help to different areas of Haiti. He’s been using his influence with churches and his network to help make a dent in alleviating some of the suffering in Haiti. Most recently, he has launched an initiative called aHomeinHaiti.ORG. The ultimate goal of this initiative is to provide real homes for people in Haiti, but it is being done in phases. The first phase is to meet the immediate need of waterproof shelter for people. The rainy season in Haiti is quickly approaching, and most people simply have poles and sheets to use as shelter. They need more. One of the immediate ways to meet this need is to provide quality waterproof tents for people. Through aHomeinHaiti.ORG, Shaun has a goal of sending 200,000 tents to Haiti. This can be done in a couple of ways… People can browse an Amazon store that has been set up to purchase an actual tent, or people can donate via PayPal any cash amount that will directly go to purchasing tents.

Personally, as a family, we are going to partner with 5 other families to purchase a larger tent. At church, we are going to challenge the kids and their families to bring in money to purchase another larger tent.

Now, here’s where all of you in the Elemental Children’s Ministry community come in! I’d like to be able to help facilitate enough money coming in to purchase yet another large tent. My goal is for, at least, $600 to come through all of you readers. The way I am asking you to do that is by donating directly to aHomeinHaiti.ORG via PayPal donation. No money that you donate via the PayPal link will come directly through me or Elemental Children’s Ministry.

CLICK HERE TO DONATE MONEY TO AHOMEINHAITI.ORG THAT WILL GO TO PURCHASE TENTS FOR HAITI.

You don’t have to have a PayPal account to donate. If you do have one, great… if not, you can donate via credit card. Simply click on the link above and follow the instructions.

I think this is a very tangible and practical way we can help the people in Haiti. I encourage you to tell other people (friends, families, etc.) about aHomeinHaiti.ORG.

(NOTE: Neither I nor Elemental Children’s Ministry is receiving any kind of compensation for promoting aHomeinHaiti.ORG. All monies being donated to aHomeinHaiti.ORG by clicking on the above links are going directly to aHomeinHaiti.ORG via links from their website.)

Have you ever wondered how things are made? I do all the time! Who puts the sticky stuff on the back of stickers? Who makes CDs? (Um, as a kid one of our neighbors worked at a place that made CDs… I thought that was cool!) How DO they get the filling inside of Twinkies? (and don’t you find it disconcerting that Twinkies are what’s left on earth after it’s polluted to death on WALL-E?)

Well, there is one thing being made that you don’t have to wonder about anymore, and that is The Orange Conference. There is a new site covering all of the behind-the-scenes details of what is going into putting The Orange Conference together! There will be interviews with planners and speakers. It’s even rumored that there might even be a weekly vodcast from Reggie… (send ReThink mass emails to demand it, I’m sure they’ll comply :) )

Some other things you’ll see at MakingOfOrange.com will be the stream of the opening session of The Orange Conference (for those of you who aren’t able to be there), backstage interviews, and possibly some streams of breakouts (this last thing isn’t a sure thing, but is being considered).

So check out MakingOfOrange.com and subscribe to theRSS feed so you can keep up to date of the happenings behind the scenes of The Orange Conference as well as seeing backstage stuff during the conference!

BTW, if you haven’t registered for the conference, you can do so by clicking here. You can also have a chance to win a free registration to The Orange Conference by participating in the Think Orange group blogging project discussions here on Elemental Children’s Ministry.

I came across this post at Scot McKnight‘s blog Jesus Creed. He highlighted Ivy Beckwith‘s new book, Formational Children’s Ministry. I was pretty excited to see it show up on McKnight’s blog. Anyway, I encourage you to hop on over, take a look at the post and leave a comment.