Elemental Children's Ministry

What do you think? Do you agree? Disagree? Why?

If you were to take Eric’s message to heart, what would that look like in your church? In your children’s ministry?

How do we teach kids to have this mindset?

(Image taken from Indexed)

I’ve started reading N.T. Wright’s most recent book, After You Believe: Why Christian Character Matters. In it, one of the things Wright challenges is the view that morality and character are mere rules that we follow out of guilt or a sense of obligation until we reach the “real” prize of heaven. It’s begun to make me think of the context in which we teach character to children. I think we are good at teaching kids how to “make God happy/proud” with how we live, but is that the point of character? Or is character about something more? What we do… what kids do… in that time between conversion and eternity has got to be about more than putting a smile on God’s face. It’s got to be about ruthlessly reflecting God to our world and being a part of bringing redemptive transformation to our world now.

What are the implications for your children’s ministry when approaching character this way?

How do you equip families to pass on this kind of view of virtues and character and morality?

How is this way of thinking different than how you’ve approached character? Is it different?

(photo originally uploaded to Flickr by sean drellinger)

I am reposting this as part of a multi-blog conversation surrounding a missional approach to children’s ministry. A little while back, Glen Woods wondered if anyone was interested in conversing via blogging about a missional approach to children’s ministry. Since this is something that I have been researching, thinking, and blogging about for a while, I agreed to be a part of the conversation. In addition to Glen Woods, there are two others participating in this: Anthony Prince and Shauna Morgan. I encourage you to check out and interact with the posts on these blogs as well. I will be attempting to interact on them as well.

For this first post, Glen asked each of us to give a brief overview of our philosophy of a missional approach to children’s ministry. I chose to repost this from a series I had run a little while back. This post focuses on some values that I think are consistent with a missional approach to children’s ministry. How these values get implemented will look different from context to context (which is a key characteristic of missional values).

Just as a sidenote… Glen had asked us to give examples of how our philosophy expresses itself in our ministries. It’s difficult for me to do that because everything we do is run through the filter of the values stated below. We don’t necessarily have programs that are more “missional” than others.

Here is the original post:

As I continue to explore children’s ministry in a missional paradigm, I wanted to throw out one more thing before fleshing out some of the ideas I’ve put out in this series.

As I’ve read and talked with and seen different incarnations of what emerging missional ministry might look like in a local church context, I’ve discovered some common values that would be important in children’s ministry. Now these values do show up all over the place whether “missional” or not. But I think these four values are key to a missional praxis of children’s ministry, which I will finally be fleshing out in future posts in this series.

The values are:

• Discovery Help children to discover who God is and how to best follow Jesus.
• Experience Help children to experience God’s love for them by connecting them to a dynamic relation with him.
• Action-Oriented Help children to live out what it means to love your neighbor as yourself missionally by providing a variety of ways they can change their community, country and world now. This includes reaching out in issues of justice and poverty locally and globally (I hate using the word glocal :) )
• Community Help children to find where and how they connect into their community of faith and the greater Church community.

Again, these aren’t values exclusive to a missional paradigm but ones I think are important to a third culture way of approaching children’s ministry.

What are your thoughts on these values as related to a missional paradigm of children’s ministry?

What would you subsititue, change or add to the list?

How would you “flesh out” these values to reflect a missional mindset?

Yesterday, I came across this tweet from Larry Shallenberger:

I’m allergic to political commentators. It doesn’t matter if they’re conservative or liberal, I break out in a rash and begin to go into analpylactic shock with my airway closing up. So, I had no idea who this Glenn Beck person was whom Larry was talking about, and I didn’t bother checking. Over the next few hours, my Bloglines became populated with posts about Glenn Beck. When I read the posts, I got that itchy feeling and couldn’t breathe well…

In all seriousness, if you don’t know who Glenn Beck is, here is the Wikipedia page on him. In short, he’s a conservative political commentator with a show on Fox News.

You can listen to what he said on his radio show. Here is a transcript of what he said that is causing all the fuss:

“I’m begging you, your right to religion and freedom to exercise religion and read all of the passages of the Bible as you want to read them and as your church wants to preach them . . . are going to come under the ropes in the next year. If it lasts that long it will be the next year. I beg you, look for the words ‘social justice’ or ‘economic justice’ on your church Web site. If you find it, run as fast as you can. Social justice and economic justice, they are code words. Now, am I advising people to leave their church? Yes!”

You can see similar comments where he links social justice to Communism and Nazis in the video below. (Apparently, Beck doesn’t care or know about Godwin’s Law.)

I don’t have anything else to add to what has already been said by people like Scot McKnight, Eugene Cho and Bob Robinson. What I wanted to do here on Elemental Children’s Ministry was throw out Beck’s comments and get your reactions. You have to admit that helping children love God and love others by reaching out to the under resourced, marginalized and outcast has gained momentum, which I think is a good thing. Do you agree? Disagree? What do you have to say about Beck’s comments? Don’t be shy!

Back in December I was asked by Children’s Ministry Magazine to write an article about what apologetics might look like for kids today. This was a topic I was excited to tackle. For a while, I’ve been bothered by premise behind traditional apologetics that takes the standpoint that our faith needs some sort of defense so we guard ourselves and our children by arming them with “the truth.” We adopt a view that if we simply have enough information and can convince people that our information is truer than any other information out there then they will see the errors of their ways and enter into relationship with God. We live in a era where that no longer happens. In fact, the opposite is more true. People want a relationship first. They want to belong. Then if that relationship seems real and consistent and beneficial, they are open to belief. We handicap our children when we simply try to arm them with knowledge.

Here’s an excerpt from the article:

When we unintentionally give children the message that their faith in God needs to be defended, we imply a faith that’s wimpy at best and devoid of truth or power at worst. Yes, we’re called to equip and empower children to stand firm in their faith, but the strength and confidence they need comes from a source more powerful than information and knowledge. “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. And you will be my witnesses telling people about me everywhere–in Jerusalem, throughout Judea, in Samaria, and to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8).

You can check out the full article here.

If you don’t already do so, be sure to check out Children’s Ministry Magazine. It’s an amazing resource for those in ministry to children! And I’m not saying that because I have an article in there. It wouldn’t hurt, though, to buy multiple copies of the March/April issue and distribute it freely to friends, neighbors, and strangers you pass on the street :)

Go ahead and watch the above video. It’s worth the 9 and a half minutes. It’s from a general session at the Northwest Ministry Conference in 2009 where Leonard Sweet addresses how we look at scripture. I found the clip via the Out of Ur blog.

I like his contrast between taking scripture apart like you would an orange and taking scripture in story-sized chunks. I’ve blogged about it recently, but I do think that there is value in not losing the story aspects of scripture. I do sympathize with concerns over the fictionalization of the Bible, but we do need to be careful. We need both a historical/facts approach and a story/wonder approach to scripture.

• How do you reconcile making sure kids know the Bible is true with capturing their imaginations?
  
• Do you find it important to see scripture as story in addition to chapter and verse? How does that look like in your context?

(picture originally uploaded to Flickr by American Red Cross)

Many of you, like me, are heartbroken by the pictures of the devastation caused by the earthquake in Haiti a couple of days ago. It can be overwhelming and disheartening thinking of how we can help. Then you hear about something a public Christian figure says in response to the earthquake, and you want to bang your head on the wall… (BTW, I won’t waste any time here responding to those comments other than referring you to read posts by the following people: Don Miller, Susan Isaacs, Eugene Cho, and Larry Shallenberger. They do a much better job than I ever could of responding.)

At times like this, I always hear questions from kids about why things like this happen. Why do bad things happen? Why do so many people have to die? Each time I have no good answers for them. The world is broken. It’s not what God intended it to be. So what do we do? What do we say to children when stuff like this happens.

Let me offer what I believe is a missional response… First, I listen to what kids are saying. I ask them why they think stuff like the Haiti earthquake happens. I listen. I don’t correct or steer. I listen. I then ask them what God might be wanting them to do in order to help. What can we do to bring God’s Kingdom to a dark and devastating situation? How can we pray for what’s going on there? How can we give to help those helping? How can we bring light to that situation?

I think we get so caught up sometimes in trying to explain why bad things happen. We forget that question is more of a distraction sometimes. The real question is, “How can we help God’s Kingdom come in the midst of pain and disaster and darkness?” We need to empower kids to take a look at the world around them and all that is broken around them and ask, “God, how can I be light? How can I be a part of your Story of redemption in this situation? How can I love you and love others in this?”

This weekend, we will be helping children to respond to the images they’ve more than likely seen on television and online. We will give them tangible ways to respond through prayer (by setting up stations where they can specifically pray for specific situations) and through giving (of money, encouraging cards, and art). Those are our ideas right now.

• What are you doing to help children respond?

BTW, if you are looking for some organizations to give to for the Haiti relief effort:

• Compassion International
• World Vision
• Red Cross

You can also check out your local denomination to see if they have a fund set up for donations towards relief in Haiti.

Here’s a video from Tony Kummer with tips on giving towards Haiti:

IF YOU ARE LOOKING FOR A WAY TO IMMEDIATELY IMPACT LIVING CONDITIONS IN HAITI BY PROVIDING TENTS, CLICK HERE!

(video taken from Buckhead Church blog HT: CatalystLeader)

Living in Canada now, I miss out on all the Black Friday craziness that ensues the day after Thanksgiving (um, that’s American Thanksgiving and not Canadian Thanksgiving, which for some odd reason happens the first Monday in October… but, hey! I get two excuses a year to eat turkey and pumpkin pie!). I remember getting up really early on Black Friday morning and joining the throngs of people to grab the best deals on stuff. Actually, I really didn’t care too much about the deals–I had more fun watching all the crazy people buying tons of stuff that wasn’t even on sale and running through stores to beat people to the cashier lines. Over the past few years, though, there’s been a greater awareness at the silliness of it all–the mass buying of stuff that we don’t need just because it’s on sale.

This year, why not consider doing something different. Now, I’m not saying you can’t go out on Black Friday. What I am saying is not to get caught up in the buy, buy, buy, get, get, get, more, more, more mentality that possesses people on this crazy-weird day. A friend of mine, Charles Lee, offers some great advice when it comes to Black Friday. Hop on over to his blog and read his post. Here are some highlights from it:

• Plan Ahead and Minimize Compulsive Shopping
• Consider Who You Are Buying From
• Consider Alternatives for Good

At my church, we are adapting curriculum from the Advent Conspiracy to help the children here put more thought into what they give for Christmas and why they give and what they are celebrating. We are encouraging families to spend less by making gifts or coming up with creative gifts that can be given. We are also giving families the chance to take the extra money they aren’t spending and peruse World Vision Gift Catalogue and purchase something that will go to help communities in underprivileged areas of the world.

There are lots of ways to make the upcoming Christmas season more meaningful. I encourage you to find those and follow through with them.

Are you doing something to help families and children make Christmas more meaningful this year? What is it? Share your ideas with the readers of Elemental Children’s Ministry!

Take a look at this video from Advent Conspiracy (BTW, Advent starts this weekend!):