Effective Children's Ministry

Archive for February, 2010

What will keep kids returning to our classes and clubs week after week?
Do we need to add more pzazz to our meetings, more fun, more technology?

Wayne, over at Dad in the Middle says:

No matter how relevant…no matter how exciting…no matter how deep…no matter how much fun your children’s ministry is, the key ingredient in successful children’s ministry is love.   It is more likely to bring kids back to you ministry week after week than virtually anything else you might try. 

Check out what else he has to say  about how this love can be implemented

Why we can believe and trust the Bible is covered in Parts 1 and Part 2 of our free PowerPoint teaching series About the Bible.

Here is another presentation, dealing with such matters as:

• What sort of things are in the Bible?
• What are the Old and New Testaments?
• What is the difference between them?
• How did the books that are in the Bible get there?
• What are “verses” ?

The presentation gives opportunity for you to share your own real-life experience of God helping you through the Bible. Or perhaps you have a helper you would like to involve in this way.

The presentation  finishes with an open-ended challenge, which you can develop to suit your group’s age and development.

We have found that children, teens and adults alike have valued this sort of information.

Full presenter’s notes are included and you are free to adapt and develop them to suit your group. To  download these files, Right-Click on the link and save the file to your hard drive. When you open this file, the presentation will self-run.

The Bible Part 3 : PowerPoint presentation  (10 MB .pps file)

The Bible Part 3 : Presenter’s notes   (PDF)

Here is another way of scoring your review quiz. While suiting the Easter theme of new life, this game is enjoyable any time of year. It is very simple , and enjoyed particularly by younger children.

Two hens each stand beside their nest, in which is a clutch of their eggs.  As the teams answer questions correctly, the eggs “hatch” and are replaced by yellow chicks. Which hen can hatch 6 eggs first, to win?

This free downloadable game is in a PDF file, with all the pieces ready for you to print , cut out and laminate. Full instructions are included.

Right-Click on the link below and save the file to your hard drive.

Download the Hens, Eggs and Chick game

What if some of the children in your meeting have no family in the church? What if Christian church life is a foreign culture to them? How can you relate Bible principles to their life experience? And how might you engage their parents with the Christian message, so that they feel welcome and comfortable in church?

Reaching beyond the church walls, out into a culture which is not familiar with Christianity, is not easy. But Gary Newton has tackled these issues in a thoughtful and thorough way, over at ChristianMinistry.com.

There is a lot of food for thought in Drop Off or Drop Out? Spare five minutes to check it out. And if you have longer, there’s a wealth of good things elsewhere on the site.

I know Easter is a little bit away yet, but Catherine and I are trying to roll out some suitable resources in good time.

This game is a simple PowerPoint “Concentration” game. Matching pairs of decorated eggs are lined up behind numbers. (Thanks PeHaa for the free use of your beautiful designs!)

We have found that children of all ages enjoy this style of game as the bright illustrations make it an attractive way to review your Bible lessons.

At present this is available only in PowerPoint format. But we realize that some of you may not have access to a projector. If you would like the visuals for this game in a printable format, we might be able to arrange that.

Visuals suitable for printing and laminating could be secured upright on a board, or used as a floor game for a small group of younger children.

If this is something you would like, click on the contact tab above for our email address and get in touch. We’d love to help if we can.

Full instructions are included in the file which you can download below.  If you do not have PowerPoint on your computer, this presentation will still run. It’s ideal for playing with a child in your family while at the computer!  Or maybe giving your own little grey cells a work-out!

Right-Click on the link and save to your own computer.

Download the Matching the Eggs PowerPoint review game

Free children’s bible ministry lessons are always welcome.  So we thought that we would post from time to time about such resources, as we become aware of them. Have a look and see if anything is suitable for you.

Posting about these resources is not  an indication that we have read  and approved everything . We simply want you to know about them and use your own judgement concerning their suitability for your work.

After mentioning today a free 3-year curriculum plan from Kidology, we have just seen a blog post from the excellent FreeCMStuff.com site.

There you will find news of a free 13-week course outline for children’s bible lessons. Made available by Children’s Ministries University Online, the course marries principles from the book of Hebrews to lessons from the Gospels.

You can download and review the course here.

Look for “The Book of Hebrews: 13 Weeks of Children’s Church Lessons”

I just picked up a Tweet from Karl at Kidology. He says: “  

Missionaries around the world: Are you aware of this 100% FREE Complete 3 Year Bible Curricula? http://kidology.org/opensource 

The Kidology web site tells more: 

Kidology Open Source Curriculum is a collection teaching tools you download, remix, and share with others!

Kidology is excited to offer a complete 3-year children’s ministry curriculum for FREE.     

This collection consists of three 1-year programs: Old Testament Chronological Study, New Testament Chronological Study, and Value Keepers of the Bible.  We’re big fans of the collaborative power of the Internet to take something and make it better, so we’re “open sourcing” these studies written with extensive detail by Susan E. Harper, author of our popular The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe Companion Study. Whether or not you are a Kidology Member, you can download and use all the units from this series with grades 1-6.

To download the material you need to be a member of Kidology, but there is a free membership level which qualifies you for these downloads.
Sign up is quick and easy and you get instant access to this material. If you are on a budget, and would value the suggestions of this structured curriculum, with ideas for activities and games as well as Bible teaching, then check out the information page.

Can the Bible be trusted? What reason is there to believe that the Bible is inspired by God? What difference has this Book made to people in real-life situations today?

 We began answering these questions in the first part of our PowerPoint presentation About the Bible.
Now part two is ready!

In part 1 we covered 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.

In the Bible Part 2, this Free PowerPoint Presentation gives three more reasons to believe that the Bible was inspired by God and can be trusted.

• All attempts to destroy the Bible have been averted
• The Bible is relevant to all ages and cultures
• Lives have been transformed by believing the Bible.

Ready for download are:
54 PowerPoint slides . These are clear, colourful and attractive slides in PowerPoint Show format. Even if you do not have PowerPoint installed on your computer, this is a self-running program which will open when you click the file on your computer, and run . You control the presentation at your own speed, by clicking the up and down arrows on your computer.

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.

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.

If you have any problems 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.

The Bible Part 2 Powerpoint presentation

The Bible Part 2 Presenter’s notes.

An excellent article on Inside Northpoint Kids blog is entitles The Making of a GREAT Preschool Storyteller.

But all the points mentioned are relevant for story-telling to kids of any age, not just pre-schoolers. 

We may not all be born story-tellers or communicators, but this article will help us all to improve our skills.

Read here about the six steps to story-telling skills.

Today we used Wordle to create a word picture of this blog. The challenge was thrown out by Wayne Stocks over at Dad in the Middle.

Apparently the image shows words which you use most frequently in larger type than others. Despite being featured in only one review game, somehow Pizza and Cake figure large in our image! So did Kids – just as prominent as they are in our hearts and ministry.