Elemental Children's Ministry

(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?

Alright, I’m taking a cue from my friends Amy Dolan and Dan Scott and posting about my reasons for choosing my answer for What Matters Now in Children’s Ministry.

I chose the word Ingenuity.

Why that word? Well, I didn’t start off with that word. I knew what I wanted to write about. I just didn’t have a word. Back in December, I wrote a post about innovation in children’s ministry. I then followed that up witha series on being dynamic in children’s ministry. Those posts were my response to the love affair that we have with wanting models and programs and systems to follow so that we can do children’s ministry well.

I’ve been to my share of CM conferences and networking meetings and have perused so many books and articles and curriculum. The main thrust of these is to give “practical” models to adapt and/or follow. While I know that practical advice is important, I think that we limit ourselves to only searching out the practical.

We become too fearful of “reinventing the wheel” because we think it’s a waste of time. We follow the axiom, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” because we don’t want to mess with a good thing. If those are your philosophies, then great. But don’t pretend you’re being innovative or ingenious.

I’m not saying we ignore the past or not learn from those that have gone before us. What I am saying though is that the wheel always needs to be reinvented and if it ain’t broke, then maybe your aren’t trying hard enough. True ingenuity isn’t afraid to reshape, re-engineer and rethink what children’s ministry looks like. We need less people worrying about what curriculum or model they are using and more people experimenting with what they already have as well as daring to incorporate ideas and elements they’ve never considered using before in their children’s ministries.

(picture was originally uploaded to Flickr by vancouverconvention)

With yesterday’s release of the FREE eBook What Matters Now in Children’s Ministry, I thought I’d share my contribution here at Elemental CM. The word I chose was Ingenuity.

Following a recipe is easy to do. It takes little skill. One only needs to follow directions.

Short order cooks follow recipes. World-class chefs create mouth-watering masterpieces.

Creating a culinary work of art isn’t so easy. It takes finesse and the understanding of how ingredients combine to create a dish that is tailored to the specific palate of an individual.

Why is it that you attend conferences, read books, network with others, and buy curriculum? Is it simply to gather and trade recipes for ministry? Or is it to gather inspiration, taste something different and discover ingredients you’ve never tried before?

True creativity, innovation and reformation in children’s ministry will only come when we dare to step beyond the tried and true recipes and are willing to experiment with new strategies and practices.

What are your thoughts on Ingenuity? I’d love to hear!

What word would you choose to answer the question, “What Matters Now In Children’s Ministry?”

Back in December, Seth Godin released a free eBook entitled What Matters Now. He had gathered 70 leaders from various disciplines and asked them to share an idea each thought people should think about in 2010.

In a matter of days of Godin’s release, I get this DM from Matt Guevara asking if I’ve seen Godin’s book and proposing that he, Amy Dolan and I put our heads together and come up with something similar for children’s ministry. My answer was a wholehearted “Yes!”

Fast forward a few months, some Skype calls, emails to a number of our friends, uploading and downloading files to Dropbox, and working with the generous people at Imago… and what started as tweets among 3 friends has evolved into an eBook which we believe will help shape conversations in children’s ministry for the next year.

Introducing “What Matters Now in Children’s Ministry!” The best thing about this eBook is that it is completely FREE! Feel free to download the eBook here and distribute it to everyone you know. Use it as a conversation starter in your children’s ministries, your church staff and children’s ministry networks you are a part of.

I don’t want to say too much about the book other than you need to download and read it. For those of you who will be tempted to use up your ink cartridges by printing out the eBook, there will be a print version available come June 14th.

A huge thanks to Imago for donating their time to design and set up both the eBook and the print versions! Please check them out and see if they can help your ministry.

One other thing… we’d love to hear your favorite quotes and thoughts. You can interact with others about the book on Facebook, Twitter (use #wmnkidmin as the hashtag), Kidology, CMConnect, and on the various blogs that are showing up (hey, you could even blog about it!).

We do have some plans to take these conversations further so stay tuned in the next days and weeks!

(photo originally uploaded to Flickr by Mastery of Maps)

If I had been a good scheduled blogger, then I would have written a bunch of posts that would be scheduled to show up over the next few days. I’m not that good right now :) I’m going on vacation to the Magic Kingdom as well as some of the other parks at Disney World. So hold down the blogosphere for me while I’m gone.

I may go through withdrawals…

Unfortunately, that is not a pic of Anthony at the Orange Conference. I do have a couple, but they’re more candid shots. I had meant to get a pic of me and him, but alas… This one is off his Facebook page.

Anyway, I sort or met Anthony at The Idea Camp in February 2008. He had attended the workshop I had facilitated. Soon after that, I began interacting with Anthony via blogs and Twitter. He was even a host on a CM Edge podcast (I’ll eventually start those up again). Anthony is the Director of Children’s Ministry at Glenkirk Church in the foothills of Los Angeles.

I’ve been looking forward to meeting Anthony in person because he is a leader with A LOT of passion. I also love his desire to connect and collaborate with others in ministry. He started the West Coast Children’s Ministry blog with the vision to see it as a place where those on “the left coast” could contribute to the children’s ministry conversation. If you are in children’s ministry on the west coast, I encourage you to contact Anthony and become a contributor to that blog!

It was neat to hear him talk about the journey God has had him on concerning how to partner with parents without overwhelming them to the point of scaring them off. I look forward to hearing how that journey evolves over time. I also look forward to the potential of more interactions with Anthony since we are moving to the northern section of the sunny state of California.

On the last night of Orange 2010, I was sitting with the other bloggers up in the nosebleed seats next to one of the Orange volunteers. I asked here where she was from. She said, “I’m from Virginia, and I bug all these guys on their blogs!” All of a sudden, the rusty gears in my brain turned, I looked at her nametag and realized, “Are you Theresa Haskins? I’m Henry Zonio!”

Theresa is very gracious and could make any person feel 10 feet tall because her answer to me was, “No way! No… way!”

When I started hosting chapter-by-chapter book blog projects with different contributors and then the whole book blog tour thing, one of the people who enthusiastically raised an e-hand when I put the call out for people was Theresa. I loved her excitement at being part of these reviews and enjoyed her input into the conversations.

What I love even more about Theresa is that she is a volunteer in the children’s ministry at her church. She is so passionate, though about ministering to children that she has jumped into the blogoshpere and is adding her voice to the children’s ministry conversation. I love it!

It was so cool to meet Theresa in person and experience her infectious enthusiasm for God and families. If you have a chance jump over to Theresa’s blog and experience her excitement for ministry to children and families. I look forward to interacting with Theresa more online and hopefully more in person!

(picture originally uploaded to Flickr by mike.in.ny)

Being a blogger and a social network addict (I can stop whenever I want, though), I get to interact with a lot of people online and build some relationship with some of those people without physically meeting them. I know that can be a hard concept for some people, but it can happen (I’ll have to make that a whole other blog post!). As I started meeting many of these people at Orange, I felt the need to blog about some of those interactions. I wish I could blog about each person I spent time with, but I’d be blogging about just that for the next few weeks. So If I don’t blog about my interaction with you, I hope you’ll forgive me.

What are some of your stories of connecting with people in person that you only connected with online?