Elemental Children's Ministry

More on Christian Subculture and CM

henryjz — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 05:31:10 +0000

I ran into a new blog a couple of days ago from another person in children’s ministry. It’s called Just Pudge. I found the latest blog entry on Christian subculture interesting, especially since I blogged my thoughts regarding that same topic a while back. Check out what Pudge wrote.

Here’s my comment to his blog post:

I think we do a great disservice to kids (both churched and unchurched) whenever we try to perpetuate a mentality that says, “You have to be a part of my subculture, or you are wrong.” We are called to shape the future and be a part of the culture around us. Now, that doesn’t mean we conform to the culture. We need to be able to communicate God’s timeless truths in ways that can be heard in our time and in our culture. We cannot do that effectively if we huddle in our barracks, speaking our secret codes, and laughing to our insider jokes. We must reach beyond a Christian subculture and be transforming agents in the greater culture around us. That means each Christian context will look a bit differently from another one because each will be flavoured a bit differently depending on the surrounding culture. Now this is a messier way of looking at Christian influence in the greater culture, but I think it has far better chance of being effective than simply perpetuating a subculture that simply does not fit the context it is in.

We need to equip the children and families we minister to to be able to read the culture around them, interpret it, and become culturally effective.

2008 Elemental Children’s Ministry in Review

henryjz — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 23:48:46 +0000

Happy New Year!, originally uploaded by ~BostonBill~.

I thought it would be fun to review some blog stats over the past year.

Here are the top 10 posts that were visited:

10. Roadmaps for Child Spiritual Development
9. Children’s Ministry Leadership Nugget from an Olympic Swimmer
8. My Hope Is Built on Nothing Less
7. It’s More Than Just About the Kids
6. Family Ministry Coversation Day 1
5. Generation We
4. “Why Do Bad Things Happen?” and Other Tough Questions
3. Jon and Kate Plus 8 Go To Church
2. Scot McKnight chiming in on children’s, youth and young adult ministries
1. Christians Rule

Top Ten Search Terms that were used to find Elemental Children’s Ministry:

10. “create a whatnot”
9. “100 films for children”
8. “things to do with cardboard”
7. “jon and kate plus 8 church”
6. “donald miller mentoring”
5. “children’s ministry themes”
4. “elevate curriculum”
3. “elemental children’s ministry”
2. “create a muppet”
1. “children’s ministry”

Top Ten Countries Where Visits to Elemental Children’s Ministry Came From:

10. South Africa
9. Israel
8. Germany
7. New Zealand
6. Kyrgyzstan
5. Philippines
4. Australia
3. United Kingdom
2. Canada
1. United States

It’s been a fun year interacting, discussing and learning from you this year. I look forward to interacting with more of you in 2009. BTW, if you have any ideas for posts or would like to see a discussion on a specific topic, comment below, and maybe it just might show up some time!

Have a great New Year’s celebration. May God bless you all in 2009 as you continue to follow him where he has put you.

Seth Godin on Passion vs. Expertise

henryjz — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 00:12:53 +0000

Toaster, originally uploaded by Always Changing Clothing.

Seth Godin’s latest post talks about what to look for when picking people for different jobs. He poses the question of what is more important: expertise or passion? In the end, Godin leans more towards choosing people more for their expertise over their passion. It’s not that he downplays the importance of people buying into mission. What Godin is trying to say is that, for most jobs, it is far easier to hire someone who is skilled in the area you are looking for and then sell them on mission rather than the other way around. Of course, getting people who have both is ideal! The example Godin uses is fan-based companies or websites. Many times these organizations hire great fans to run the website or organization and then use that as an excuse to have mediocre product.

I couldn’t help but think about how this plays out in church. We are big on mission, vision and values of our churches. We spend a lot of time getting people to buy into them, we put them on banners, print them in our bulletins and on our websites, we even pride ourselves when people can quote them back to us. Because we are volunteer-dependent organizations, we then recruit these “passionate” people and put them where our “need is greatest” with no regard to their skills and expertise. We then leave them to figure things out on their own.

How much more effective would it be to find people’s skills, talents and abilities and then match those with jobs that fit? I know that we all talk about doing that, but do we really do it? Do we recruit that way?

I can already hear the questions, “What do we do when we can’t find people who don’t have the skills we need?” There’s always outsourcing projects. Or you can get people the skills they need; invest in getting them educated or encourage them to get the training they need.

There is a world of difference between something staying “good enough” because the people working on it are passionate about the cause and something starting off mediocre and steadily improving as skills are gathered and honed because those who are passionate about the cause are also passionate about the quality of work that goes into making the cause work.

Elfed by a fellow staff member

henryjz — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 23:33:56 +0000

This past Sunday, Jay Dampier, the adult ministries pastor at Redwood Park Church played an Elf Yourself video in which he put pastoral team (minus himself). It’s a funny video! Of course there were MANY people that Sunday who had fun seeing it and commenting on my mad dancing skills.

Redwoood Park Church Pastoral Staff Team (minus 1) Elf Yourself from Henry Zonio on Vimeo.

I did warn Jay, though, that he had set himself up for retribution times five…

Did any of you play with Elf Yourself or any other stuff on JibJab.com? Post links in the comments if you did!

The Idea Camp

henryjz — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 20:40:51 +0000

I ran across this post on Eric Bryan’s blog about an “unconference” called The Idea Camp. I’m not all sure exactly what it’s about. It seems pretty nebulous right now, but it has piqued my interest. Apparently, registration for this unconference is free and is happening at the end of February at NewSong in Irving, CA.

Go ahead and check it out. I’m sure we’ll find out more about it as time goes on, but the concept of people getting together to share ideas and have the attendees drive the content seems intriguing. I wonder how children’s and family ministries could fit into something like this? You could look at ideas of how to form/create generational cultures at the formative stages of a generation–when they are kids. Or looking at how current missional/emerging theological converstaions are translated into children and family ministry contexts? Hmm… now my brain is percolating!

Take a look at The Idea Camp. What do you think? Initially, I’m somewhat cynical because it seems very church trendy, but that could just be me.

Steve’s 25 Days of Christmas Music

henryjz — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 18:27:06 +0000

My friend, Steve Tanner, has a fun Christmas tradition that he’s done for the last eight years. It’s called Steve’s 25 Days of Christmas. It’s a fun way to countdown the days to Christmas. Each year he’s had a theme to the type of Christmas music he’s posted. This year, the theme is Duelling December Ditties. Each day he is posting two arrangements of the same Christmas song. You can vote for which one you like.

I know that this post isn’t necessarily children’s ministry related. I guess you can extrapolate that since this is Christmas music, it does have to do with kids… OK, fine! I love what Steve has done with this. It’s my advent calendar. My kids have their chocolate ones, I’ve got this!

So, what are you waiting for? Hop on over to Steve’s site and start listening to some fun Christmas goodness!

Scot McKnight chiming in on children’s, youth and young adult ministries

henryjz — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 20:55:23 +0000

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?

Not Just “Children’s” Ministry

henryjz — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 04:39:24 +0000

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!”

Twilight Hits Theatres this weekend

henryjz — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 17:59:54 +0000

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

henryjz — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 05:37:56 +0000

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…