Effective Children's Ministry

Archive for the ‘Quick Tips’ Category

What do your kids do when they open their Christmas gifts and find:

• A duplicate of something they already have.
• The gift is something they truly don’t like. (Your 14-year-old receives a brown and purple sweater dotted with green squirrels.)
• The gift is for the wrong age. (Your 12-year-old gets a preschool coloring book.)
• The gift is inappropriate. (You might not like your child having toys or apparel promoting a certain TV or cartoon character, but Aunt Jane doesn’t know that.)

Modern Day Joseph, a web site of the children’s ministry AWANA, has a great article with practical tips on how to encourage our kids to be gracious when they receive gifts.

If you are looking for a fresh way to tell the Christmas story, especially to young children, there is a great idea over at Eliab.com.

Using only a soft pillow as a prop, Don Stott demonstrates his method.

While you are over at Eliab.com, have a look round. Don has heaps of really useful ideas and resources available.

Amplify your message with story-telling

We have blogged here before about the value of story-telling. And today I saw a recent post from Steve Fogg on the same topic.

His post tells of a stunning presentation given by his Pastor, which began with the story of a young man sharing his faith with a friend and ended with…

Well, I’ll let you find that out by hopping over to Steve’s post. I know your heart will be stirred.

He writes on the topic 4 Ways To Use Storytelling To Amplify Your Message.

Abraham Lincoln was supposed to have said something like:

If you gave me six hours to cut down a tree I’d spend four hours sharpening the axe.

In other words, he planned to take twice as long preparing for a task than actually doing it. So, what constitutes preparation for a Bible lesson or task in a class or meeting? 

• Gathering together all equipment – visual aids, demonstration items, snacks, whatever you are going to need to fulfil your responsibility. If your memory is as bad as mine make a list and check it off physically as each item is bagged and taken to your transport.
• Becoming thoroughly familiar with what you will be doing – how you will teach the lesson, how the skit will run, or the sketch-board item, how the song visuals and actions will work, etc.
  I find it very helpful to “run a video” through my mind of how the meeting/class will progress. Ever seen the downhill ski competitions? The cameras often pick up an athlete waiting for his or her start, eyes closed, hand in front of them dipping and swooping, bending and stretching, as they replicate in their mind the run they are about to do, with all its turns, dips and leaps.
  By “running the video” of your club meeting ahead of time, you may realize that you have not planned for an important element. You might, for example, imagine yourselve organizing the pre-schoolers hand painting project. Then, as you “fast-forward” to the end of that session, you realize you have not planned a vital ingredient… and you would really regret it if you didn’t take the wet-wipes and paper towels for use after the hand-painting!
• Relying on Christ  – At the end of the day, all your planning, list-making and forward thinking will be of little value if God is not in what you do.
  I realized at one point in my ministry that I was, in reality, relying on my familiarity with the lessons and visuals, human personality and even past spiritual successes. But “without Christ we can do nothing”. Breakthrough in kids’ understanding of spiritual matters can come only as the Holy Spirit does his work. I need to always rely on Christ to anoint me, flow through me and open young eyes and hearts to Bible truth. And that is essential preparation.

Sometimes it is the simplest ideas that work the best. This one from the great resource and idea site,  Youth Leader Stash is tried and tested.

As the writer says, you may already be using this method of quickly breaking up a large group into two or more teams. But it may never have occurred to many who are starting out in  kids’ or youth work or have never come across it.

Using this method you will, in a few second, have divided even a huge group (Youth Leaders Stash say 75 kids and over!) into as many teams as you wish, each with  the same balance of boys and girls, and a similar age ranges.

>> Check it out here.