I have met over the last few years a large number of incredibly faithful kids pastors and leaders. A large percentage of the people who lead children’s ministries in Australia are volunteers and give a large chunk of their time to their local Church to see the ministry to children move forward.

I think these leaders have a HUGE amount to say to everyone involved in ministering to children. I am fascinated with the different forms that our little world of ministry takes on. Just last year a network that had seemingly languished here in NSW was resurrected and is finding it’s feet again. I have been able to be a part of a few of the gatherings and it has been such a blessing just to connect with leaders from other denominations across the spectrum of ministry in Australia. The Salvation Army people, Anglicans, Baptists and representatives from World Vision.

Now I don’t travel around very much except perhaps to the Kidshaper conference each year. But mainly I get to invite hundreds of pastors to the kids stream at our annual Hillsong Conference. So for me the net is a vital connection to leaders around this sunburnt land.

Maybe it’s the Tall Poppy thing in our culture – but my experience is that very few leaders in Australia a good at telling their own story.

There is so much God stuff going on with our kids in Australia I want to read some more about this, I want to hear more about this.

The most significant thing we have done in the last few years is start a preteen ministry. I wrote about it here: Re: Ideas for Children’s Ministry and have spoken about it everywhere I get the chance. What a WASTE if I had never shared the experience of starting this program and the blessing that it has been (I think I should talk more about it actually), and simply kept it to ourselves.

Right now someone is sitting on a story that will inspire me (or anyone) to greater effectiveness and new vision but they choose the path of least resistance and keep it to themselves. That’s not humble, that’s irresponsible.

<And Breathe…>

Here are some people telling the story of what God is doing in Aus:

Rob Bradbury is the Godfather Children’s ministry in Australia of has a new blog.

Children’s Ministry 1234 – The Planetshakers kids team

Brendon and Cathie Clancy – Kids worship leaders and pastors

Chris Neal – Keep writing Chris

Nathan Mclean – On Hillsong Kids staff at our Hills Campus!

Andrew Shepherd – 25 years in ministry and passionate as the day is long!

Funny Man Dan – My very own muffin of mirth keeping you smiling since 1984

Kathryn Macdowall – Hillsong Kids staff and the worlds greatest curriculum writer

Uniting Church – News from the Uniting Church in Australia

This was a pretty quick list and far too small. I am sure it needs to grow. If you know of others please leave a comment below and I will edit this post!

P.S. This is kinda like a part two of my last post Blogging Matters.

HT to TSK on this one.

Seth Godin & Tom Peters on blogging

I have tried to put into words the impact and point of blogging to many people over the years. These two influential business leaders put it brilliantly!

If you are leading anything like a ministry or team I want you to understand that you have a voice and a platform. You are called to steward that responsibility and privilege! If you don’t record and share what God is doing with and through you in this age of information I believe you are missing something quite profound.

Paul recorded his life and it turned into the New Testament.

That opportunity is not really open to us today, but who knows what could happen if you took steps to present your voice to the world? At least have enough respect for your calling to treat it as precious and important.

A book is simply a container for an idea (what makes a book a book?).

After you are gone, where will your ideas be contained? If you don’t do something about it… nowhere.

At the very least give your future generations the inspiration of discovering your story, your journey with God!

A lot of noise has been made (in our little but colourful corner of the the internets) about the 2011 Ministry To Children Blog Madness competition.

I was up in one of the divisions in the first round (there are four) but owing to our Colour Women’s conference and all that was happening it just passed me by without much comment on my part.

Unlike the 2010 comp. where the prize was just winning, this year Tony Kummer put up an iPad as a first prize!

I couldn’t let the whole thing happen without saying how awesome that was, so kudos to Tony!

The four final blogs are all worthy of winning and I love reading all of them.

Sam Luce

Small Town Kidmin (Jared Massey)

Justyn Smith

Leader 2 Leader (Jim Wideman)

There is more diversity each year in our world of kidmin blogging and I am so happy to see that!

At our official Hillsong Blog ‘Collected’ I just had a post of mine go up. It’s a quite a strong piece about not outsourcing only what we can do as parents. And also a call to take Church seriously. I would love you to visit, have a read and at the least click the like button at the bottom. But at the most write a comment/response. It would be GREAT to get conversation going about this topic on Collected…. it would say so much to have the topic that is often a discussion on kids pastors blogs get some major recognition on our wider Church blog! Thanks in advance.

Here is the post:

I have outsourced my child’s swimming development.

You see, I’m just not an expert on the subject. I haven’t studied swim theory and I am completely unfamiliar with what it takes to learn how to become a swimmer even to the most basic of levels… which I would assume is ‘not drowning’. Click to read on!

So Tony Kummer at Ministry to Children has put together a evista without prescription target=”_blank”>top 100 list of kidmin blogs.

It took him a huge amount of effort to put this together, so hats off to you Tony!! I would be blogging about it even if I didn’t come in at third place… just because of the hours he put into it!

I have been blogging since late 2004 and all I can say is that there is something about longevity and persistence. Just showing up is 90% of success I think. It will be a big milestone to see this blog at the ten year mark!

Bring on 2014!

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Over at Ministry-To-Children.com there is a great comp going on.

2010 Kids Ministry Blog Madness

Vote for Your Favorite Kidmin Blogger

Here’s How It Works – Listed on the site are the top 64 children’s ministry blogs arranged in a four division bracket-style tournament. (I guess in the U.S. sports are divided into four main divisions, which is cool… so my blog is in the West Division).

Sunday 21 March 2010 is when round #1 will close and the top picks in each division will advance.

So I have to call in some favours… especially for those volunteers and pastors at Hillsong Church you need to jump on over there and click the vote button in the appropriate spot.

Click here for the comp.

Slowly but surely every single person on the team at Hillsong Kids is becoming a blogger…  its my theory on growing a volunteer team… if every single team member will become a blogger, then maybe, just maybe every single blogger in the world will become a volunteer!

Not sure exactly on the logic yet, but it’s a work in progress.

Carlos Dyonisio (aka Cadu), is just one of the most passionate people I know about seeing the lives of kids changed for the better! He is from South America and came to Australia a number of years ago and has found himself serving here at Hillsong Church!

He is an uber nerd… I mean I am nerdy, but this guy has Linux installed on his laptop with no graphical interface… just think back to the days before windows on MS-DOS and you can imagine how he runs his computer.

His new blog is For One Child and already has some great content up.

P.S. Don’t read the post entitled detrol la cheap Running the Race unless you really want to read about his bladder movements.

P.S. I am kinda serious about the blogging theory, the more your team can see their lives invested into being a voice for childhood the greater impact your Church community will have!

Today, being Thursday I posted a guest post at The Thursday Blog, which is the blog of a certain Funny Man Dan. He is currently in that season of life that exists between the due date and the depo provera generic baby actually appearing so asked me to post something for him.

Check it out:

A Tale of a womb and a man.

So yes, another life goal completed… to guest post at the blog of Funny Man Dan.

I just added a Subscribe by email box on the right hand column cymbalta cheap of this blog (looks like the box below).

So now you can receive edification and justification through email every time I post!

Yay.

Here are a few posts that hit it out of the park in the last few weeks!

Pudge on Leading for Tomorrow

A bunch of posts from Henry Zonio about the Conspire Conference Rewiring Ministry for the Digital Learner,  Spiritual Formation in compare prices nexium Children

Fascinating stuff from The Connecting Church and Home Conference from Jared Kennedy via Doug

Shane Hipps on Technology from the Q blog! MUST WATCH! Hipps discusses how technology shapes your faith and offers a critique of the cliche “the methods change but the message doesn’t.”

How to Blog 101 from churchrelevance.com