[Kid Inspiration]

After looking through my DVD’s last week I spotted something that I should have blogged about at least a year ago. Some most excellent praise and worship music for kids!

Citipointe is located in the great city of Brisbane and have alesse buy services in Mansfield (Citipointe Brisbane) Coomera (Citipointe Gold Coast) and Inala (Citipointe West).

Check out their first Kids album All of My Days it is absolutely brilliant! I LOVE seeing churches give their best for children, and this church has done it. Great value with a DVD, CD and Bonus DVD you just need to order it from their site. The site says that they cannot process online international orders yet, but I had a test of the order link and it seems like you can!

I also saw Luke Harris, Citipointe’s children’s pastor lead worship with his team at last years Kidshaper conference in Melbourne, and apart from being passionate worshippers… they have a REALLY great group of leaders!

Go… buy… now…

P.S. Signing off from blog world until next weekend due to Hillsong Conference. See ya there (if ya there).

Kidsong World Promo… It’s going to be the best yet!!

And it starts in just over a week! In Sydney? Get your kids there!

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DISCLAIMER: This post is not in any way directed at any person living or dead. The judges decision is final. No correspondence shall be entered into.

Time for a little Friday Night Rant.

My last post, the purpose of purpose drew a number of responses, (thanks to all who commented!) including one from Sam that got me fired up (not at Sam)… after I let it simmer for a day I have some thoughts on ‘family worship’.

This may be a long one.

I will try and be concise, as I am aware that pages and pages of text does cause ones aldactone price eyes to glaze over.

Here is the statement we shall consider:

Parent – “I prefer to keep my kids in with us in the adult service so we can worship as a family”.

There are many ways in which people can ‘do church’; gather as a house church, spread over a city in a cell church… but the paradigm which most of us operate in, is the ‘modern church’ in various denominations (or non-denominations). So when I talk about ‘church’ that’s the paradigm I am talking about.

I am all for the whole family unit experiencing God together, but so often it comes out of a very set cultural perspective. This often shows up when adults talk about a church meeting as the ‘worship service’, as if there is any other kind of service?

Let’s begin:

1. Worship is a lifestyle, not a service attended once a week. As a family you worship in, and during, your day-to-day life. Being an example and training your children in the way they should go. So for a family to opt out of children’s ministry so they can ‘worship together’ during a service is a biblically defensible stance but probably misguided. You have been worshiping together the entire week, why not give your child an opportunity to ‘worship’ with their peers.
2. The house of God (and worship) is not just about receiving, it is about GIVING! Don’t give your kids a perspective of church that involves sitting without serving. Please don’t create a Mary only child (Mary and Martha Luke 10:38-42) who sits at the feet of Jesus and never does the washing up.
3. Whether your child goes to a Christian school or not, your child needs to build relationship within your church family. The church cannot give your child a thorough/solid/extensive knowledge of the word, in two hours a week (not the churches job mind you)… but give us a chance to teach them that the community of believers is THE place to develop faith and relationships that push you toward God.

Having children together with adults makes perfect sense in a house church, but look at the specific ministry paradigm you are in and judge accordingly. In my mind, the way that most of western Christianity (Europe, US, Australia, Great Britian, New Zealand etc.) structures church, leads in my mind for the need to create separate age specific meetings.

And I’m not saying that just ’cause its my job.

Maybe the children’s ministry at your church doesn’t really look like the above three points… hey… don’t bring me a problem unless you are willing to be part of the answer.

<and breathe>

So what is the purpose of your ministry to children?

We have our annual conference coming up in just two weeks at Acer Arena in Sydney. As well as Kidsong World we run the Children’s pastors and leaders stream. Nathan Mclean and I will be speaking in one of sessions with the leaders about curriculum and developing leadership.

In planning the sessions I am exploring the purpose of our ministry to kids… and more importantly HOW aldactone online to outwork that purpose. One of my not-yet-conclusions is:

“I don’t think it’s just teaching kids the bible”.

The pharisees were the most versed in scripture, but their knowledge never translated into faith.

‘Scope and sequence’ is one of those phrases that simply strikes a chord of… apathy into my heart. It’s just hard to get excited about it. The ultimate goal should not be to get through the whole bible in two or three years… the goals should be to create life long learners passionate and excited to read the word of God. Cover all of the bible you can, but don’t make it the goal.

Kids need to enjoy and participate in the journey, not just wake up at the destination.

An hour and a half a week during your weekend services is never enough to cover the whole bible thoroughly. But it can be accomplished with the hundreds of hours a year that a parent has.

Provide an opportunity to experience God and connect with others this weekend.

This one snuck up on me! Rob Bradbury from Planet Shakers in Melbourne Australia. He and his team have started a podcast and a blog!

Check it out at: childrensministry1234.com

I have mentioned Rob in the past on the blog, for a nominal fee, ’cause he is a brilliant leader in Children’s Ministry in Australia!!

He oversees Kids R Us which is the kids department of Australian Christian Churches.

I’m not sure why he hasn’t told me about this… the only reason I can think of is that he was try to test me and my geekness… ‘how long would it take Wakerley to find my blog…’

Yeah that’s it.

Regardless, check out the podcast on iTunes (search for planet kids) and add the blog to your reading list.

Oh, his children’s ministry website is at affordable cheap propecia target=”_blank”>planetkids.com.au Nice site with a great layout… the main page has three options… Parents | Kids | Leaders. Which is a awesome simple way to layout your website.

What a fancy title… ‘Engaging with Trends’… let me subtitle even fancier…

Engaging with Trends
“Why using relevant pop culture elements can help
you create a ministry that kids refuse to miss.”

I started two new elements in our weekend services last weekend. It got dozens of kids excited, engaged and begging to attend church.

We have a bunch of ‘stations’ setup before we start the service so the kids can hang out and interact with the leaders before we start.

Craft stations, Air Hockey, Playstations, Xbox etc.

Well I added two new stations last weekend.

1. Nintendo DS Station
2. Tazo Station

The biggest selling portable gaming system in the world is the Nintendo DS… Especially with kids.

And one of the coolest things to do is collect tazos… especially Footy Tazo’s. It is so popular advocare vitamin online various schools have banned them from being traded at school!! (You know something is engaging kids when they ban it!!)

Listen, you may not live in Australia and have NRL or AFL Tazo’s, but I would place money on the fact that your kids are trading some kind of sports collector cards!

So I create an area where kids can play each other on their DS’s (over Wi-Fi) and trade tazo’s… it is amazing the kids that come out of their shell when you start trading with them.

Of course as a leader you don’t just create an area for kids and not get involved yourself… so I am now the owner of a Nintendo DS with Diddy Kong Racing and have a huge pile of NRL Tazo’s (research I tell my wife!).

As a minister to kids you do not bring in your KIDS toys… you bring in YOUR toys!

I don’t tell the kids that I have bought a DS for my little boy Brooklyn, I tell them it’s mine! (And it is… Brooklyn is allowed no where near it! – he’s 1)

Your mission is to find out this weekend:

1. How many of your kids have a DS
2. What cards are they collecting

OK…

This is not a post about technology (none of your kids may have a Nintendo), it is about getting into your kids world!

So you can bet at the beginning of next years footy season I will have a whole corner devoted to Rugby League and will be finding out the most popular games so I can buy it and practice enough to whip all my kids at it!!!

FOR AUSSIES: Go onto ebay and search for ‘Tazo‘, you can buy a whole set without having to go through the hassle of collecting them in chip packets. While you’re there, buy a second hand DS!

I am:

• Building credibility with kids
• Building a bridge to speak into their lives
• Creating a cool environment to participate in
• Staying young
• Creating topics I can talk to kids about
• Redeeming technology
• Bringing ‘new and fresh’ elements into our services
• Having fun!
• Finding excuses to buy stuff
• Training my hand-eye coordination
• Supporting Australian sport
• Creating opportunities for introvert kids to be admired (who has the most cards/highest score is the ‘man!’)

It’s a win-win situation!

NOTE: Don’t get too attached to your collecting cards… make a point to give away your best and rarest to your kids. I don’t care about collecting the set… only helping my kids to get every card.

I think I stole this from Jim Wideman’s Blog… but I just had to post something on this because the last entry was written while Jesus was still turning water into milk.

“It doesn’t take leadership to change something that not’s working. It does take leadership to change something that’s going good and make it great.” Willie George

So true!

The test of leadership is to take a Ford and turn it into a Ferrari. advair diskus prices