[Kid Inspiration]

You may have seen it, 3,300,00 people already have, but if not check out a beautiful skit on Godtube.com

Lifehouse, Everything Skit.

So Rob Bradbury at Planetshakers with his team has released 4. This is AWESOME, I got a hold of a copy from last weeks launch at Kidshaper conference. I have had a quick look through it and it is great to see this kind of quality coming out of a local church!

4 is the latest curriculum for kids 6-12. Using video clips with high quality praise and worship, Zing Things that add humour to the week’s less and preaching targeted at children, everything is set for you to add some personal group teaching before the kids disband into small groups. We surveyed children’s pastors around the world asking them what was important to have in a curriculum. ‘4′ delivers on every point and more!

So hop on over to the 4 Resources site and check it out.

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 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.

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).