[Kid Inspiration]

Gina McClain from jabberfrog.com posts on the Swerve blog:

Read the post here: Guest Blog

…We live in a time when more people exist on this earth than ever before! Today is the day to mobilize the generation that could see more people come to Christ than were walking this earth one century ago.

Children’s Ministry is not tomorrow’s church in waiting… they are today’s church waiting for you to give them the cheap vitamins coupons opportunity to make an impact.

Love it!!!

Isn’t it ironic, dontcha think…

cheap vitamin supplements center”>

The Astrological Magazine site here for the original image!!

Okay… I am writing this on my brand new iphone that doesn’t cheap vitamin supplement quite function as a phone yet.
Owing to my inability to wait until they come to Aus ‘officially’, I have otherwise acquired one from an undisclosed source and have… Worked around the issues you might say.
Next week should bring phone capabilities with a little piece of plastic from Hong Kong.
So no real content in this post… Just one man trying to be cool… in a desperatly nerdy kinda way.

Let me give you the run down from last weekend and camp last week!

A lot of things happening:

• Voltage! We started a brand new age group this weekend (pre-teen; Yr5 and 6 for those in Aus) and had a camp last week – from Wed to Fri, couple hundred kids having a VERY powerful time with God!
• Primary/Elementary age groups are now: Fun House K-1, All Stars 2-4, Voltage 5-6 (not sure how they translate in different countries, but Kindergarten (K) is first year of school)
• 8 Massive services – Phew, I love Mondays!
• Pre-teens are different… a whole new style needed to really reach them!
• Camp can be a really powerful and defining time in a life, set apart from the familiar kids can experience God!
• We will be starting mid-week small groups with Voltage age group, so the only way you can be involved in this age group is to commit to this! Very pumped about that, a greater level of commitment and ministry!
• Parents cheap vitamin e reported some awesome conversations with their kids after camp!
• I talked about Song of Solomon a lot during a message at camp… Song 2:5… look it up!
• Pre-teens need the ‘talk’ at camp! No boyfriends/girlfriends stuff like that! Never thought I would have to deal with hormones in Children’s Ministry!
• Rearranging a room can add big time freshness to a program! Need to do it more often!
• I love camps! The best time of the year you get feedback from parents!

Two weekends brings up our Vision Sunday weekend… that will be huge!

C Ya

Little family update here — you may wish to avoid unless you like cute pictures…

cheap vitamin src=”http://www.davidwakerley.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/brooklyn-one.jpg” alt=”NYE Brooklyn” />

Brooklyn NYE in Sydney 2008

cheap vigrx plus International Leadership College” alt=”Hillsong International Leadership College” align=”left” hspace=”5″ vspace=”5″ />I have never really talked about our Bible College on this blog before… so with the Feb intake coming up now is a great time to give a shout out for our awesome college…

Check them out here: Hillsong International Leadership College

We have thousands of students from all over the world… heaps from the U.S. some from the U.K. lots from Australia (funny that), South Africa, Norway, New Zealand…

You get the picture… there is also a Children’s Ministry Stream which you need to come to — if just for the fact that you get to hang out with me!

If that isn’t enough here is what the website says about the course:

Hillsong Kids, the children’s ministry of Hillsong Church, is a dynamic and exciting program for families with newborn babies to children in Year 5 at school. Students who study in this stream have the opportunity to learn from Hillsong Kids leaders and be involved in a cutting edge children’s program where the children are discipled, connected and have a whole lot of fun along the way!

Students who complete this specialisation will also complete a range of industry approved training units.

This specialisation is available at Certificate IV in Ministry and Diploma of Ministry level.

For more course details please refer to the Certificate and Diploma Courses

See you in Feb!!

Andy Stanley, one of my brain heros… (I love the way he thinks and communicates) writes some solid advice to keep me on track in 08 in Ministry Today Magazine

Andy Stanley – Leading from beneath

The fine art of challenging organization decay-without compromising your integrity.

1. When an instruction is given, follow through now; debrief later.
2. Never verbalize your frustration with the process in front of other team members. Public loyalty results in private leverage.
3. Don’t confuse your insights with moral imperatives.
4. If you don’t learn to lead under, you won’t have as many opportunities to lead over. Your ability to lead others is directly related to your ability to follow others.
   
5. When you can’t follow, then cheap viagra pills it’s time to get off the team.

Read on over at the site for the full article…

(Andy Stanley is a best-selling author and the senior pastor of one of the fastest-growing churches in the country, North Point Ministries in suburban Atlanta.)

Following up from my Rant on Blogging, here is advice from Al Mohler, the President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary:

Mohler emphasized the importance of taking “the new media seriously, not making it a bulletin board for isolated, disconnected, reckless ideas, snarky comments and anonymous diatribes, but rather, a place where seriously-minded Christians do the seriously-minded Christian thing and make serious Christian arguments in a serious Christian way with love and with charity, with boldness and with courage.

“Should Christians go into the wild, wild, west? Yes,” said Mohler. “But we need to go in understanding that there is no sheriff. But that doesn’t mean that we do not have a higher accountability, certainly we do.

Read the rest of Godblogging cheap viagra kamagra USA

I read a lot of stuff…

In fact in an effort to read more, I am currently reading a book on speed reading… its just taking a long time. (Ha!)

(I cheap ultram prescriptions apologise… now back to your regularly scheduled program)

The music industry is something I have been studying for some time now. I am in some way a small part of it because of our Hillsong Kids Albums, and it along with the Media industries have a lot of cultural impact on our children and families.

So David Byrne’s Article for Wired Magazine is a fascinating read.

David Byrne’s Survival Strategies for Emerging Artists — and Megastars

What is called the music business today, however, is not the business of producing music. At some point it became the business of selling CDs in plastic cases, and that business will soon be over. But that’s not bad news for music, and it’s certainly not bad news for musicians. Indeed, with all the ways to reach an audience, there have never been more opportunities for artists.

Read on

There are so many implications for the kids we minister to. Here is a list of some of them… which may or may not have come from this article:

Dave’s List for a new world:

1. Unlike the consumer culture you and I grew up in , our kids are growing up in a participation/collaboration culture
2. Music is digital and free in our kids minds
3. The ‘experience’ (events, concerts, meetings etc) will only increase in importance
4. Most of the families in your church (and probably you) are breaking copyright law in some way — which suggests to me that the law needs to change.
5. We as ‘grown ups’ need to change NOW, in order to understand the natives in this new world (our kids).
6. The video screen is the 21st Centuries stained glass window
7. Media is being produced where an audience of 100 is success, not just the blockbuster million dollar movie
8. The cost of producing excellent media will only decrease (it’s practically nothing already…if I had the skill, my home studio could produce anything from a music album to a movie score
9. YOU don’t get it yet, (neither do I)
10. Sharing a song by email/or whatever comes/and will come as naturally as breathing to kids (thereby breaking current law)
11. One of the major file sharing websites in the world went down for about a 24 hour period late last year and internet traffic in Europe went down by 35% in the same period
12. Don’t EVER put a computer or a TV in your child’s bedroom, if you do so, you are inviting porn and violence into their lives — kids get lessons before they swim, they need to know HOW and what to avoid online.
13. As kids leave my ‘Children’s Ministry’ and move in ‘Youth Ministry’ I don’t just want them to know about God, and have a deep relationship with Jesus, but also HOW to filter the world around them. Recognise and understand the culture they live in. What is beneficial and what is harmful, and how to engage culture… not to picket and denounce it!!!!
14. Harry, the Compass, Da Vinci… don’t be scared by the boogie man. In fact having your child read the golden compass during their teenage years may be one of the greatest tools to help your child identify other world views and develop a healthy response to them!
15. (What ticks me off about The Golden Compass is that the books have been around for over ten years and yet it seems that cinema is still the great evil of the Christian world, as if other forms of art ie. books, don’t matter and aren’t relevant).
16. God speaks through a donkey, he CAN and WILL speak through Britney, Madonna, The black eyed Peas, Hannah Montana, U2 — any kind of Art can be transformational.
17. Please don’t let your kids treat ‘secular’ (hate that word), art as to be avoided, you just condemned them to a life of irrelevance.
18. I have connected with some kids better through Nintendo DS than any other way
19. Somehow help your parents, to understand that the eyes are the window to the soul.We must protect that window jealously, I still remember vividly remember the first ‘inappropriate’ material I saw as a very young teenager… who was in the room, where I was, who let me see it… your kids will too… especially your boys… PROTECT THEM.
20. I am out of thoughts…

You may be wondering how I got all that from 1 article, the truth is that it was a collaborative effort from the results of much reading and study… especially blogs.

2007 was a great year for blogging, more bloggers about CM than ever… community and friendships started around the world. Although I didn’t blog as much as I would have liked… I managed to put some reasonably intelligent thoughts together in a why that I hope helped.

Here are the top most commented posts of 2007:

We start with:

My take on Family worship – hmm. This was a reaction to the ideas people have about worship…

KidsFest 2007 – I put up the promo video for our Kidsfest Event (where we record our kids albums) from Youtube and generated some talk and interest.

Moving on to There’s a kink in my hose.- This post about creativity got some people talking and helped some I hope!!!

The Final Cover Artwork – ‘Tell the World was released and I did the traditional releasing of artwork post… you can order it from Australia right now… (U.S. release 22 Jan 08 I think, U.K. rest of world similar…)

The Purpose of Purpose – Kids need to enjoy and participate in the journey, not just wake up at the destination. This post talked about what we are looking to do with kids! People liked it.

Way back in May I wrote The State of the CM Blogosphere – Presidents, heads of state, royalty all like to present their state of the nation to their people, and so I like to be presumptuous occasionally and present the State of the Children’s Ministry Blog World as I see it!! This one introduced some new bloggers to the party!

An Explosion Needed – Just last week I fired up a little and yelled at everyone to start blogging, I think I will have to write a follow up as to WHY everyone should blog

A quick recap of 07 – have a read if you didn’t catch these the first time… even comment some more.

The bottom line is that I need to announce cool stuff more… and write more really thoughtful and incisive posts about interesting topics to get some conversation happening here…

Sounds like hard work… but I’m up for it!

C YA round in 08!