Effective Children's Ministry

Archive for April, 2010

Once again our friends over at Ministry-to-children.com have come up with a practical and sensitive article.

To quote from the introduction:

Some of the children in our classrooms may not have a mother present in the home due to death, abandonment, military service, incarceration, custody issues, or various other circumstances.Parents can also be dealing with Mother’s Day grief, especially for those who have lost a child or their own mother recently. These feelings often will affect all the children in the family. So how can we approach the day with compassion? 

You can find  Mother’s Day & Kids Who Have Lost Their Mom here.

There is also a companion post on Father’s Day & Kids Who Have Lost Their Dad

Would you like to see a video of two of the cutest kids on the planet showing what they have learned about the Crucifixion? They use finger gestures to help recall the “5 mighty miracles of the cross”.

Hop over to FreeCMStuff.com .

I defy you not to grin from ear to ear when you watch the girls and then try to remember the gestures so that you can teach your kids!

Cullen Wood is an experienced Christian pre-school worker. She has her own channel on YouTube with sections for children’s action songs, activities, stories and Christian songs.

Cullen shows us how to help kids remember Bible truths and songs by using finger play. She interacts with Gator the puppet, encouraging little ones to focus and follow the teaching. She demonstrates craft and other activities that she has used successfully with tinies and shows how you can set up these fun times for your children.

Her site, Cullen’sABC’s is rich with all sorts of inspiring stuff. It’s ideal for anyone who has young children in their family or Sunday School class.

Every time I watch Cullen and Gator, I end up with a big smile! They are not only informatiove, but very uplifting. Best of all, from the comments made by her users, Cullen has quite a fan club of toddlers and tots!

Great prizes from a brilliant kidmin freebie site. Do check it out! The thought of those PowerPoint Bible story pics is  making my mouth water!

Go to FreeCMStuff 

Catherine and I once turned up at a children’s service with the wrong bag of visuals.  We had identical bags for a youth event and a childrens event – not a good idea! Fortunately Catherine is a tremendously good story-teller! So the loss of the picture cards was not an enormous handicap to her telling the Bible story.  She used her gestures and voice to dramatize the lesson, and gripped us all.

But from that day onward we kept a list of everything that was needed, and before we loaded the car we eye-balled each individual item. Oh yes, and we colour coded the bags!!

Lists are invaluable. Most of us use them when we go shopping, pack for holidays and  plan for Christmas. They are equally useful (and for us older folk, essential!) in kid’s ministry.

Doing craft? List every required items. Then you won’t find yourself without wet-wipes to clean hands after a messy activity.

Leading worship? List your visuals and equipment. I once forgot the amplifier for my electric guitar! I have also left behind electrical extension cables and overhead projector slides.

Giving a powerpoint presentation? List all the connectors, extension cables and projector screen, if required. Put your presentation notes on the list too, if you work from a sheet of paper.

Teaching a Bible lesson? List all your visual aids and presentation equipment, together with any objects or demonstrations you will be using.

Even after all our years in kid’s ministry, we still find making lists one of the best ways to ensure a trouble-free setup and a smoothly run meeting.
You might even like to transfer a list onto your computer, so you can print a checklist each time to leave to take part in a meeting.

This review game can be played three ways, according to the age of the children.
For preschoolers it is simply an adding on game – each correct response adds a coin to the treasure chest.
For older children it becomes a game with secret bonus points, and encourages mental arithmetic skills as they add the final scores.
The third way of playing is so exciting  that kids want to play it again and again. Will they amass a huge score with their turn, or will they go “bust”?

Here’s how it is played with the third method.
1. The child who answers correctly receives 50 points for the team. These points are immediately “banked” and cannot be lost.
2. He or she then selects as many coins as they wish. Picking one coin at a time, the value is revealed as it is chosen.
3. At any time they can stop and “bank”, what the score they have in their hand, or they can carry on. But if they choose a FAKE, they go “bust” and lose all the points in their hand from that round. They do not lose the 50 points earned from answering the question.
4. After each turn, be sure to rearrange the coins in a random way, so that the children will not learn where the high scoring coins are!
The teams get the same number of questions and the winner is the team with the highest score at the end.

Useful life applications
To counter-balance any sense of grasping for money, it is useful to spend a few minutes discussing which charities or projects the children would donate the money to, if it were real. Or, how else they might spend it for the benefit of others.

The link below will give you a PDF with full instructions (including a page showing how the game board should be laid out) and printable game pieces. All you need to do is cut out and laminate them.

To download the file, Right-Click on the link below and save to your harddrive

Download the Treasure Chest Review Game [PDF].

If you are looking for an idea for decorating your class room or club room, a  great idea has been posted by Tony Kummer at Ministry-to-Children.com.

Here’s how Tony introduces it:

To complete our new children’s church decorations, we used the children’s painted hand prints as leaves to complete the tree mural. The project was not too complicated, but it took real coordination on the part of our adult volunteers to pull it off…

There are full instructions on the site, and even a video showing every stage very clearly. It looks fun!

Seth Godin is a successful and respected entrepreneur and business author. In his blog he wrote:

I stumbled on a great typo last night. “Staff in the lobby were wondering around…”
Wandering around is an aimless waste of time. Wondering around, though, that sounds useful. Wondering why this product is the way it is, wondering how you can make the lobby more welcoming, wondering if your best customers are happily sharing your ideas with others… So many things worth wondering about, so few people actually taking the time to do it. Wondering around is the act of inquiring with generous spirit.

Colin Peckham, preacher and author once told us, “In God’s work you’ve got to have time to dream.”

In kid’s ministry we can spend time preparing our crafts, planning the décor, selecting or making our visuals, studying the lesson…and a thousand and one other good and vital things. But what a joy when we have time to dream!

A relaxing environment can be hard to come by, but if we find it, then coupled with a sanctified imagination and an intimacy with God, we can dream his dreams, catch his vision, think the impossible. As Seth Godin said, wondering around can be very useful.

He calls it his Children’s Ministry Blog Patrol. But we call it Wayne’s Bumper Bundle!

Every month Wayne Stocks, over at the Dad in the Middle blog gathers links from around the blogging world related to Children’s Ministry and issues important to those who work in Children’s Ministry.

The massive list is categorized, so you can go immediately to the sections most important to you. Wayne has gathered the “creme de la creme” of children’s ministry comment, information, free stuff, news, tips and advice.

We are honoured to have been featured on the list, but that’s not why we are sending you there! It is simply because it is a wealth of excellence for you to browse as you want.

Do visit this month’s Children’s Ministry Blog Patrol, and bookmark the post; you’ll want to visit it several times to take advantage of  the links that will benefit you and your ministry.