New curriculum for Easter

It's the day after Easter. What a great day, week and month it was! We used a new curriculum resource called Truthopolis for the month of March. We were impressed with the content of the lessons as well as the "family study page" that was included for each lesson. We thought there were good visuals and object lessons, but it definitely stretched our kids who had just come off of a video series from Elevate.

We made an effort to have kids really use their Bibles in large group time. It was encouraging to see their eagerness to get their hands on God's Word. I was pleased with the skills that I saw as well as the attitudes the kids displayed.

We're going back to another video series from Elevate this week. The "hands-on Bible" stuff will move back to small group time. I hope that we modeled some good stuff for the small group leaders, so that they can continue to uphold our value of having kids reading the Bible for themselves.

Some new things I experienced this month:

1. With the help of this curriculum, we did a really thorough job of teaching about Christ's last week, his death and his resurrection. It was 5 weeks worth of material rather than just one. This was positive!

2. Having kids programming on Easter Sunday. For the past several years we haven't had classes for kids and have encouraged families to "worship together." Our kid numbers were down a bit, but we saw a lot of new faces and some that we hadn't seen in a long time. For the sake of those kids, I am glad that we had a great hour planned for them. They would have had a very different experience sitting in big church with mom and dad!

3. Teaching about Communion. After a huge, mind-stretching lesson on passover, Old Testament sacrifice and Christ's Last Supper, we taught about how our church celebrates communion. Then we brought the kids up to the worship center to observe it being served. This made a big impact on kids and adults! And I was thrilled to work in partnership with the worship staff so that it could happen.

4. The reality of spiritual warfare. Boy, were there times this month when I felt under attack. I'm not sure what to make of this and it surprises me. But I think there is a lot for me to process!

Easter Egg Hunt

I just got back from an Easter Egg Hunt at a friend's house. They invited their neighbors to a really great party with brunch, egg hunting, coloring, door prizes and the Easter story. It was so neat to see the effort they put into creating an event where they could build relationships with their neighbors and share the story of Jesus in a non-threatening way.

A lot of churches, ours included, do big Easter Egg Hunt events. They invite hundreds of church and community members to come out to do the same thing that we did at my friend's house. The church builds bridges to the community, and people hear the real Easter story of Christ's death and resurrection.

Both are good. Both serve their purposes. But I can't help but to wonder how much more effective we could be in ministering to others by taking these events back into our neighborhoods. What if churches trained and equipped people to do Easter Egg hunts on a small scale in their own neighborhoods? Through personal relationships and the intimacy a home provides, the gospel may be sown on more fertile ground.

Ditto for VBS and Fall/Halloween alternatives!

Something for Everyone

"Something for Everyone" was a trend that I noticed during our teams's fall visit to the Mall of America.

Many of the stores at the mall cater to the entire family. H&M, a trendy clothing retailer, has departments for men, women and children. This is nothing new for clothing retailers, but to see a store as hip as H&M doing it made me take another look.

The Apple Store had a little area in the back, just for kids. A kid sized table with funky little chairs and 6 computer stations with kids software. Something for mom, something for dad and something for junior!

Lego does this well too with toys for babies, toddlers, preschoolers, school agers, teenagers, my 35 year old husband, boys AND girls.

All of these places serve family units with their unique brand or product. They are creating generational layers of consumer loyalty which will keep them in business for years to come. The baby that wears GAP clothing grows into a child that wears GAP clothing which grows into a teen that wears GAP clothing which grows into an adult that wears GAP clothing which grows into a parent that buys GAP clothing for their baby.

I think kids ministry can learn a lot from this. It encourages me to think more about whether what I am doing with elementary kids has correlation to what the adults do in big church and to the larger church's vision. It makes me think about cooperating more with other age division within Kids Ministry to have more unity. It reminds me that some of the new initiatives (like ORANGE) to see birth through high school as one unit have a lot of validity. It causes me to consider the importance of creating loyalty in those who use our programs so that they will stick with the church over a long span of time.

Blog buzz about Easter lesson

In my blog reading tonight, I ran across this really interesting discussion about the way one curriculum company (First Look) is handling Easter with preschoolers. The comments that follow go into an interesting philosophical conversation about the validity of using secular cognitive psychology in Christian education. I sense that this blogger comes from a pretty conservative position, but it is an interesting discussion on many levels.

When a kid surprises you

My nine year old son has been causing me a lot of worry and frustration this winter. He is negative, moody, emotional, and sensitive. He calls school "jail" and hates to have babysitters at home. Now this is also my oldest child, so I know that I tend to over react to everything that happens with him. Sometimes I see the same behaviors in my other kids and it doesn't concern me nearly as much!

Last night at bedtime we were doing devotions using a Holy Week devotional we had gotten at church. We were in the girls bedroom and my 7 year old (a spiritual champion already) was using her Bible. Justin surprised me by running to his room, grabbing his Bible and finding the passage. He said, "Emily, you read the first five verses and I'll read the last five." He followed along and jumped right in when it was his turn.

What's up with that? My sullen grumpy kid, who goofs off through Sunday School and refuses to go to midweek clubs, is choosing to participate and take leadership in family devotions? "There's hope," I whispered to my husband!

It's spring break this week. This morning we are watching some extra kids. Justin has gone out of his way to be sweet, helpful and kind to the visiting three year old. He helped her with the craft project we were working on. He helped her pick a Princess movie and put it in the dvd player. He's always been gentle and good with little ones, but to see it in action with someone outside of our family made me say, "There's hope!"

How many times do we feel like giving up on a kid in our ministry or in our family? A kid who is so tough to get through to, a kid who doesn't respond to anything we try? The lesson for me today is, "Keep trying. There's hope! God isn't done with this kid yet!"

Oh no, gotta go! He just hit his sister in the head...

A long break!

I've taken a long break from blogging. I think I'm back! I've had a several month stretch of burn-out, frustration and disillusionment with ministry. Surprisingly this has been a good thing. It caused me to step back and get things into better balance. I really had gotten to an unhealthy place of obsessing about my part time job in ministry. It had taken over in a way that was making me unhappy and making my family suffer a bit. I said "no" and "good enough" to a lot of things during this time. But now I'm ready to move forward. Thanks to all the bloggers in the kids ministry world and other areas of ministry who have helped to keep my head in the game!