[Kid Inspiration]

So I had not really heard of John Piper until recently when I started to check out the Desiring God website. They also have a ministry targeted to children.

They make excellent use of the net and apparently the website contains all Piper’s sermons and articles since he started in ministry. I love seeing a dude giving away all his stuff!!!

Messages (audio and written) and books are all over this site.

They have a great blog which is where I found out about the Children Desiring God conference, that was just held in April. And has begun my fascination with John’s writing and speaking.

He talks about kids A LOT.

Just search for children on the site and it brings up over a thousand results of message and articles that reference kids…

So…

To the conference.

Check out the sessions from the conference blogged in great detail! You can listen to John in Session One delivering the message.

Conference Session One

Conference Session Two

Conference Session Three

Conference Session Four

Conference Session Five

I love seeing ministries just giving away stuff… going beyond a ‘podcast’ or free samples… they literally give away the farm…

For an idea to spread it needs to get out to the people. Your idea could be the exactly the right thing the world needs, but if no one ever hears it… it’s just a good idea.

John Piper is taking his ideas to the world.

One of his articles had a great impact on me recently taking a passage from Psalm 78 and building a message about God’s plan to pass on the word to children.

Check out Johnny boy! You could learn a lot (I did)!

Kids really do learn from their culture!

Check out the video below…

Creativity is something everyone possesses.

If you don’t feel you are a creative person, someone probably told you that and it stuck. Or maybe you even heard someone else told they weren’t an artist, or had a good voice and you thought, “Man, I’m not even as good as them! I must suck!”

Creativity is tenuous. Much like self esteem it can be obliterated with a single negative word.

So here is the word of the Lord into thy life: ‘Thou art creative”.

Feel better?

The hose is turned on. The water is flowing, you just had a kink that was killing the flow.

Here’s the thing now: you may have to clear a little deadwood.

Chuck Jones, the great Warner Brothers animation director, once recalled that one of his art instructors once greeted the class by saying “All of you here have one hundred thousand bad drawings in you. The sooner you get rid of them the better it will be for everyone.”

I have written countless bad songs in my life. Only a few are good enough to be presented to children.

There is a significant song in the journey of Beci (that would be my wife) and I that stands out.

I’m Really Happy – From our first Hillsong Kids album “Jesus is my Superhero”.

We had written some seriously lame tunes before this song came along. Finally we both felt we had made a breakthrough and it was one of the first songs to be locked in for the album.

I would like to say that creativity and excellence comes easier now, but there are still deserts between the oasis of great songs (not sure of the plural of oasis – oasi?).

So GET IT OUT!

Clean the pipes.

Unkink the hose.

Keep writing.

Keep singing.

Keep composing.

Keep believing that the ‘Best is yet to come’.

(Thanks Brian).

Religion does seem to be good for young children. The religious attendance of parents and a cohesive religious environment in the home yields significant benefits for children’s behavioral, emotional, and cognitive development, and such outcomes are most pronounced when both partners attend services frequently.”

Early Childhood Longitudinal Study by researchers at Mississippi State University

Article from Rick Warren’s Ministry Toolbox — Church is good for children.

That’s the message of a new study that says young children of churchgoing parents fare better behaviorally, emotionally, and cognitively than do children of parents who never attend church. In fact, the more often the parents attend, the better off the kids are.

Nice.

When I started blogging in November of 2004 there was not much in the way of blogging going on that had anything with ministry to children. I actually blogged only twice that month, but that has since grown to 340 posts, but since then millions of blogs have been added and the list of blogs relating to serving children on this earth has grown.

Technorati lists 1,150 blogs that discuss Youth Ministry, and 232 blogs that discuss children’s ministry. Both those number are lower if we count only those blogs that are strongly focussed on ministry to youth/children.

I now actively follow 50 blogs that relate to CM… some of them loosely related, some fully engaged conversation about how to reach children for Jesus Christ.

But I have been pretty pumped to see the rise in recent times of quality blogging exploding like a coke bottle full of mentos… like an out of control object lesson involving baking soda…

So here are my top ten blogs, some of these are new, some are ancient (more than a year old):

• Jim Wideman’s Blog – The legend, the man, the blog… Brother Jim joins the blogosphere. It seems like Jim has exploded online in the last month or so, first by starting a Podcast, then joining Kidology and posting voraciously and now to top it all off a BLOG! Jim is the Children’s Pastor at Church on the Move and a veteran… the ‘Camp Dad’ of children’s ministry. Generous both with his time and words I love seeing a dude stick around for so long. Staying and building the local church.
• Just Pudge – Just like the aforementioned coke, Pudge Huckaby exploded with some of the best written posts on ministry I have read in ages! Pudge is the Elementary School Pastor at Newspring Churches Children’s Ministry ‘The Majestic‘ (love that name!). After an initial flurry of brilliance, the blog is taking a break, but I fully expect Pudge to return to his former glory and join the pantheon of greatness that he is destined to become a part of!
• Children’s Ministry and Culture – The blog of Larry Shallenberger and Keith Johnson, this sucker has been around almost as long as my own blog. Both are authors of a number of books and contribute to CM Mag. They have great insight into the culture of children and are particularly bright individuals prone to finding obscure research and applying it to work with children and then causing me to think long and deeply about it.
• Karl Bastian (the Kidologist) – Karl… where does one start. The creator of Kidology.org, possibly… okay not possibly… hands down the best forum online to get answers from your peers around the world. The blog is a mixture of personal entries (beautiful adoption story), and a bizarre fascination with Mountain Dew and almost beats me out in the oldness stakes, but not quite (March 2005).
• The Remix of Children’s Ministry – The Children’s Pastor of Horizon Community Church in Ohio, US. Matt is not the most prolific blogger but has some very nice things to say about me, so I thought I should give him a shout-out But seriously when he speaks, I listen.
• Phil Vischer -The creator of the Veggies. Not really a CM focussed blog, but Phil has VERY cool things to say about the media industry and is very intelligent.
• Multi-Site Kids – Tammy Melchien serves as the Executive Director of Kids’ City, the Children’s Ministry of Community Christian Church. CCC is a multi-site church with 8 locations in the Chicagoland area. She has great insight on how to duplicate ministries and blogs very candidly and openly about it.
• P2 – Family Pastor of Ridge Stone Church in Canton, Ga. Another old man in the blog world (Started June 2005), and doing cool things in a relatively new church plant.
• Children’s Ministry by Design – Stephen Posey is one of the Children’s Pastors at Church On The Move in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It’s great to see not only Jim blogging, but his staff getting into it as well! A baby blog started in March 07 but STACKS of great content already!
• Glen Woods – Currently the volunteer Children’s Pastor of Portland Open Bible Church. Another brainy dude who is writing about the intersection of theology and culture in the practice of children’s ministry… I like that… theology and culture.

So there you have it. I have a bunch of other favourites, but they have all been punished because they don’t write enough

The message is clear… if you are reading this and don’t have a blog. Get one… and start writing.

UPDATE: Corrected link to Matt McKee’s blog.

If you are in Victoria or even close to Vic — Rob Bradbury has an event going that you need to get to!

REV 2007 – RX3

Friday, 4 May 2007 to Saturday, 5 May 2007 REV is a two day state training opportunity for all children’s pastors and leaders to grow in their ministry to children. Commencing on Friday night and concluding on Saturday, Rev 2007 – RX3 is looking to be a powerful two days of ministry.

It will give a fresh vision for your ministry and inspire you with ideas on how to better reach the children in your community.

But don’t just bring yourself, bring your team!

It truly promises to be two days of fun, information, inspiration, and impartation.

Pastor Rob Bradbury, the Kids R Us National & State Director, is looking forward to partnering with you and your team to do all we can to reach this generation for Jesus Christ.

God is wanting to do something big in the children’s ministries across Victoria, and He wants your team to be apart of the adventure!