Effective Children's Ministry

Archive for January, 2010

Wayne Stocks, over at Dad in the Middle, has blogged about his favourite web resources for childrens ministry workers.

Wayne says:

My struggle in developing this list was not to find adequate sites, but to limit them to just the top three for each category! The list person who dwells inside of me would have given you a list of every site I ever visited ranked by how useful I found them, but I decided to refrain. So, the following is a list of my personal Top 3 sites for various categories related to Children’s Ministry:

So we hope his list of  “Best of the Best – Children’s Ministry Internet Resources” is of benefit to you. Thanks Wayne!

You can make your Bible review games extra fun with this free downloadable game. Using two dice and some numbered laminated skittle images mounted on a board, you can play a game of 8-pin bowling with two teams.

If a team answered your review question correctly they throw the two dice. The numbers they throw determine which of their skittles or pins come off the board.

This game has been the cause of great excitement and a cliff-hanging finish! Sometime one team romps ahead and “knocks off” all their skittles except one. They are looking for the two dice numbers they need to make up that last number for the skittle. As each turn passes, and they do not find the right combination, the team that was so far behind is catching up. A great lesson on not giving up!

Incidentally, we found this worked well in schools, where teachers appreciated the children having a mental arithmetic work-out!

If you download this free add-on to your own review questions, you will find full instructions and printable skittles in a PDF.

FREE 8-Pin Bowling (Skittles) review Game

I didn’t become a Christian until I was an adult, and never found it easy to  learn the books of the Bible in order.  Children, though, have very retentive memories and we can give them a great tool if we help them learn the books in order.

Scripture Lady has a site packed full of fun ideas and excellent tips for children’s ministry. This week I stumbled across some posts she made about games for helping children become familiar with the names of the books in the Bible.

You can find the first 5 games here

Here is the second post, another bunch of games

Making learning fun is a sure-fire way of making it stick.

We once had a few kids round to our flat. Our living room was a tight fit with 8 childrens and two of us adults. But we had great fun with an Olympic games afternoon. We played:
“Discus” – who could flick their tiddly-wink the furthest?
“Bowls” – we used marbles
“Shot putt” – throwing bean bag into a bucket
“Relays” – were “run” by scuttling across the carpet on bottoms!
“Javelin” – baby buds are safe and can be thrown a remarkable distance!

We added our own games like fuzzy darts and “connect four”.

After the games we had an indoor picnic, followed by singing and a Bible lesson with plenty of visuals. Finally a quiz review game.

It was a very pleasant and memorable afternoon and evening that built strong relationships with the children.

Would you like to have the pick of the kids’ ministry – from all over the web – in one place…everyweek?

If the answer is yes, then you will love the weekly roundup at Ministry-to-Children.com.

With news, comment and practical help sources from the many excellent children’s ministry sites online, there is bound to be something to inspire and help you.

Onca again, here is that link to the This Week in Children’s Ministry for 1/20/2010

• Can the Bible be trusted?
• What reason is there to believe that the Bible is inspired by God?
• Has anything the Bible predicted ever come true?
• What does it say about the world today and the future?
• What difference has this Book made to people in real-life situations today?

 These questions are answered in the first part of our PowerPoint presentation The Bible, God and Us.
Eventually this entire presentation series will be available for free download. But for today we have ready the first of two parts about the Bible. We hope that the second part will follow in a few days.

The Bible: Part 1 covers three reasons why we know that the Bible is inspired by God.

• The unity of the authors
• The accuracy of its historical record, its scientific statements and its translation
• The prophecies that have been and are being fulfilled.

Free powerPoint Presentation

Ready for download are:
50 PowerPoint slides (in two batches). These are clear, colourful and attractive slides in PowerPoint Show format. This is a self-running program which will open when you click the file on your computer, and run even if you do not have PowerPoint installed.

Presenter’s notes with clearly marked cues so you will know when to advance the presentation. You will need to print these out before hand, as the PowerPoint show will fill your screen.

Extra notes about:

• Archaeology and the Bible
• Messianic prophecies fulfilled
• Prophecy And Probability

There is enough material in today’s downloads to take several sessions with your kids or youth. But there’s no need to confine it to them! Many adults have benefitted from this series, both for their own information and also as a help in telling others why they believe what they do.

Now to the downloads.

Right-Click on the link and download to your computer. We have broken the slides for Bible Part 1 into two downloads to make it easier for you to successfully capture the whole lot.

If you have any problesm whatsoever in downloading or opening these files, please get in touch with us and we’ll help you all we can.  Just hit the Contact tab on the top menu for our info.

Bible Part 1A PowerPoint slides

Bible Part 1B PowerPoint slides

Presenter’s notes (Printable PDF)

**UPDATE** Part 2 of this section is now available . CLICK HERE.

How do we tell Bible stories without giving kids the false impression that the stories are as imaginary as other stories they are familiar with? How do we convey to them that the men and women in the Bible are not imaginary super-heroes?

Catherine and I have always taken time to state clearly that we believe the Bible story we are about to tell really did happen.  We also took time in our curriculum/schedule to teach the reason why we know the Bible is true; why we can be sure that it is God’s message to us and not just the thoughts of men. This need not be tedious or dry and it can be done as a “spot” in the class/meeting over a number of weeks.

Here are a few more thoughts.
1. We should always preface the lesson by saying “We know this really happened, because it is in the Bible and the Bible is true” (unless you are teaching a parable and then you can say, “This is a story that Jesus told .”

2. We should use our imagination in recounting a Bible story, to dramatize it and make it relevant to the lives of our children. But we need to preface the “imagined” details with something like: “We can well imagine that ……” or, “We can’t be sure what happened then, but I expect……”.

3. When telling a fictional story we should always say that it is “pretend” or “made-up” or “imagined”. There is no harm in telling such a story to illustrate a Bible truth. But after we have finished, we must be sure to add something like: “Well, that story about X and Y was a pretend one, but there is something in it that is absolutely true!” And then re-emphasise the biblical theme that the story illustrated.

4. We need to make it clear that miracles are not magic, nor are they illusions like entertainers can do. They are the power of God at work – real answers to real problems in real lives.

5. We can use elements of our own personal story, or that of a helper, or someone else the kids know, to illustrate the lesson. Doing that anchors the truth to real-life and shows that what “worked” for the Bible people “works” for us. It shows that we have trusted in the Bible as God’s message and guide for us and proved it to be true.

7. Point out the flaws in the character and actions of the people in the Bible lesson. That is proof that this book is inspired by the God who sees all, and not a make-believe story about super-heroes.

8. If we have a Bible prominently displayed, and if we handle it carefully and reverently, the kids will pick up that this is a very special book, not like any ordinary story book.

9. If we continually live out in our own lives the truths that we are teaching, that adds credibility to what we are teaching from the Bible.

In all these varied ways we will build up an attitude in our children of reverence and trust in God’s Word.

I was prompted to post on this subject because of a forum thread over at Ministry-to-Children.com

It also gave us the impetus to upload some PowerPoint material on this very subject. So watch out for it coming in the next day or two!

Thanks to  julosstock for the image.

With all the snow and ice we have had lately (at least here in Scotland!) we thought it would be nice to upload our new Scuba Diving  review game.
It is a colourful way of boosting the level of the fun, because there are surprise bonuses to be won.
It all depends on whether the children pick an exotic fish, shells, or polluting rubbish!

• Ask a question on the Bible lesson. If a child answers correctly, they receive points for their team (say 50) and then they choose a number card to see how much of a bonus they get.
• Bonuses are collected by the child choosing a number, which is taken off, leaving the underwater item behind on the display board.
• Depending on what the item is, bonuses are added to the team’s score. No bonus is added if rubbish is found.
• Bonuses are suggested on the printout and you might like to cut out and laminate that card as a permanent reminder to you and for all to see as they play the review game. 
• The winner is the team with the most points after all the items have been revealed, or when time is up.

Full instructions, visuals and a suggested list of bonuses are included in the free download.

It is a hefty file (just over 2 mb) so we have zipped the files. You will need to extract them when you have downloaded the zip file.
If you are not sure how to do that, just let us know and we’ll send you an uncompressed file.

Right-click on the link below and then save the file to your computer.

The Scuba Diver review game: a free PDF download

Whether its pointing at someone and laughing at them, picking up litter, writing a thank you letter or drawing graffiti, most good or bad things we do involve our hands.
The review game Helping Hands or Hurting Hands explores these every-day choices kids have to make.
It’s free to download. Just print it, cut it and laminate it.
There are some scenarios suggested, but there is plenty of scope for you to develop it in a way that your kids can identify with.

We first made it to add a bit of zip to a review of the lesson of Moses – murdering an Egyptian then helping the shepherdesses. It would be equally useful to review Zachaeus – taking money, then giving it away.
You may think of other Bible lessons where this review game will emphasis a theme in your teaching.

It is easy to set up and play. The “hand” cards are mounted on a board using Blu-Tac or some other removeable method (eg. magnetic strip). Then you:

• Ask a question on the lesson. If a child answers correctly, they choose a hand card to see if they get a bonus.
• If the scenario on the back of their chosen item demonstrates helping hands, they score the bonus.
• Anyone choosing the hand which has the Helping Hands gold star logo scores a double bonus!

Right-click on the link below and then save it to your computer.

>> Helping Hands review game: free PDF download.

Just after publishing my previous post, I came across another blogger who agrees.
Neil McQueen, over at SundayResources.net writes:

There are GOOD FREE ALTERNATIVES to Microsoft Word 2007 and Microsoft Outlook 2007. And with the new versions of Microsoft Office costing over $200, these free alternatives are much appreciated. They download rather quickly, install easily, and have setup wizards. Their features are very similar to those found in Microsoft products.

>> See what Neil has found and uses here.