[Kid Inspiration]

Cool.

American idol sing ‘Shout to the Lord’ in the cheapest price remeron finale of their ‘Idol gives back show’. Although removing Jesus from the song. But hey, still a great way to include evangelical USA.

Haven’t read this yet… but it’s on the reading list.

From cheapest price diflucan target=”_blank”>Brian Mclaren’s blog, links to research from Dave Csinos about children in the Bible.

BTW reading Brians book at the moment Everything must change.

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

There is a community developing of sorts amongst blogging pastors — which makes sense right? If you are writing a blog on a specific topic you are bound to attract like minded people, and in turn be attracted to like minded people.

I read a bunch of blogs from lead/senior pastors all over the world, guys leading their local church.

It makes no difference their denomination, style or affiliation… the strength of their passion, and their engaging writing overrides the things that may separate them. The thing that unites these pastors is the conversation, the journey (and Jesus).

With a bunch of differences, prejudices and style issues out of the way people are really listening.

This may just be post-services, pre-Christmas ‘Sunday Night’ talking… but we need LOTS more conversations going about kids!

I add every single blog relating to ministering to kids to my google reader… and I hunt them down like a hungry wolf in the dead of winter… and still only find 76 on the whole of the internets.

We need a blog explosion in Children’s Ministry.

This blogging thing is not a passing fad, it could be the end of the ‘lone ranger’ minister, out on the prairie with nothin’ but a passin’ tumbleweed to keep him company.

Blogging, and whatever it will become in the coming years is the future present.

I want to be able to pick and choose in this CM niche, not add them all jus’ ’cause… ‘they were there’… show me passion and a love for kids and I’ll read it… and while we’re at it let’s create community, have a virtual coffee… and while its virtual, an entire cheap sustiva online bag of marshmallows…

If you’re not blogging… do it.

Don’t just leave it to the senior pastors, I want to see more people passionate about ministering to kids blogging! (Not just the paid dudes, the volunteers, the part timers, the parents… bring it on!)

…and <breathe>

P.S. Amen in the comments if I’m preaching well.

I am a massive Nerd.

There is not much about the internets I don’t know.

So bcause of this bias I am hesitant to over hype the potential of the internet to engage kids… I just don’t want to pump resources into developing tools for ministering to kids if they won’t show much fruit.

But we are starting a new pre-teen age group next year and so are developing a log-in website for them (Stole the idea from the Group Publishing Curriculum Grapple).

But this article makes for compelling reading about the potential for online social networks for kids!

Virtual worlds for kids take off

While much media and analyst attention has been paid to the growth in social networking sites, such as MySpace, Facebook and Bebo, the rapid growth in games sites and virtual worlds targeted at younger children has largely slipped beneath the radar.

Yet sites like Webkinz and interactive dressing-up sites aimed primarily at young girls are proving very popular. Cartoon Doll Emporium, for example, aimed at children between six and 16, now has around 3 million visitors a month, while Stardoll, cheap propecia online aimed at children aged between seven and 17, claims 8.8 million members.

And Disney is just the latest of the big media groups to get into the pre-teen market. In 2005, Viacom – owner of MTV and Nickelodeon – bought Neopets, an interactive cartoon gaming site that claims to have 143 million Neopet “owners”,for $150m.

So Phillip Pullman is getting a bad rap at the moment, a lot of Christian blogs warning everyone that the Golden Compass movie, based on some of his books is leading children to atheism… which is his goal of course — being an Atheist, that would be obvious.

So I thought I would try to post something positive about Phil…

I found an interview with Phil about how he writes, and as I am fascinated with how people work and create I though I would post an excerpt here:

Full Interview

Q: Where and when do you write?

A: I write in my shed, at the bottom of the garden. It’s quite comfortable cheap price propecia in there, but because of my superstition about not tidying it during the course of a book, it’s now an abominable tip. I write by hand, using a ballpoint pen on narrow lined A4 paper (with two holes, not four). I sit at a table covered with an old kilim rug, on a vastly expensive Danish orthopaedic chair, which has made a lot of difference to my back. The table is raised on wooden blocks so it’s a bit higher than normal.

I write three pages every day (one side of the paper only). That’s about 1100 words. Then I stop, having made sure to write the first sentence on the next page, so I never have a blank page facing me in the morning.

After lunch I always watch Neighbours. Soap operas are interesting because there’s no limit to the length a story can have it can go on for months, if it’s got some life in it. I like watching the script editors losing interest in one story-line and promoting another instead, and it’s fascinating to watch some characters gaining story-potency as others lose it, and to try and work out why it’s happening. Neighbours is better than EastEnders or Coronation Street for this, because there’s no distracting social comment. It’s all pure story: one thing following another.

Sunny days! The earliest episodes of “Sesame Street” are available on digital video! Just don’t bring the children. According to an earnest warning on Volumes 1 and 2, “Sesame Street: Old School” is adults-only: “These early ‘Sesame Street’ episodes are intended for grown-ups, and may not suit the needs of today’s preschool child.”

Live-action cows also charge the 1969 screen — cows eating common grass, not grain improved with hormones. Cows are milked by plain old farmers, who use their unsanitary hands and fill one bucket at a time. Elsewhere, two brothers risk concussion while whaling on each other with allergenic feather pillows. Overweight layabouts, lacking touch-screen iPods and headphones, jockey for airtime with their deafening transistor radios. And one of those radios plays a late-’60s news report — something about a “senior American official” cheap prednisone and “two billion in credit over the next five years” — that conjures a bleak economic climate, with war debt and stagflation in the offing.

Who knew Sesame Street was so R-rated back in the day?

Great article — read on here: Sweeping the Clouds Away

This article via Ryan at Brewing Culture (a blog you should read).

I wasn’t allowed to watch the Simpsons back in the day (around ’93/’94… which was back in the day for me). I gues my parents thought the show taught insolence instead of respect for parents? I suddenly realised one day (could have been an article I was reading) that in the whole of TV, here was the Simpson family who actually attend church together… and quite cheap plavix regularly! A vary rare Hollywood occurance.

So from the Times Online:
There’s nobody like him… except you, me, everyone

He has a distinguished ancestry. There was Shakespeare’s fat, lying but ultimately fabulous drunkard Sir John Falstaff. There was Sancho Panza, another fat, worldly character, the foil to Cervantes’s crazed Don Quixote. And there was Wilkins Micawber, the hopeless but hopeful spendthrift in Dickens’s David Copperfield. Every age needs its great, consoling failure, its lovable, pretension-free mediocrity. And we have ours in Homer Simpson, the greatest comic creation of our time.

From Michael Coggin, a licensed counselor at the Resurgence. A great blog to read for some very deep thoughts, and blog posts long enough to double as books.

Listening for Life: Picking Up on Verbal and Non-Verbal Signals

…As we look at today’s generation we see a generation of adolescents that are deeply wounded. We live in a culture that is permeated by relational brokenness. We see the fruits and consequences of no-fault divorces and researchers who 30 years ago were writing of the resiliency of children of divorce and even the benefits of parental separation who are now having to come to terms with the reality. We also live in a sexually addicted society. Rise in eating disorders, the prevalence of sexual, physical, and emotional abuse, and the overall neglect of today’s youth.

His article is written primarily about adolescents, but a midwife and friend of mine has been involved with a pregnant 11 year old in the last few months, so we know puberty is coming on fast for our kids!

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure

So have a read of this post and learn how to LISTEN to kids and the barriers to listening.

Article Summary:

Listening for Life

We see in Scripture that Jesus understood the importance of listening. Even as a young boy he was sitting with the teachers in the temple, “listening to them an asking them questions and everyone was amazed at his understanding” (Luke 2:46–47) … The word listen occurs more than two hundred times in the Scriptures.

Listening Unearths Hidden Feelings
Actively listening allows a context for teenagers’ hidden feelings to come to the surface.

Listening Creates a Safe Environment
Free from evaluation, listening creates a safe environment.

Listening Leads to Intimacy
To listen to another human being is a relational posture that invites as well as fosters intimacy.

BARRIERS TO LISTENING

Landmines of the Heart – Landmines Are Relational Wounds
[In Europe] Shells and landmines from [WW1] accidentally explode and kill people to this day.”… The landmines, or the relational wounds of our heart, keep us from being able to enter into adolescents’ lives and earn the right to listen to them and speak God’s gospel of grace into their lives.Personal Sharing with an Agenda: Sharing to Give Something vs. Sharing to Get Something
…sharing to get these questions answered by the adolescents in their lives as opposed to being concerned about what God says about who they are.

The Importance of a Non-Anxious Presence
It’s important for teens to know that you’re not going anywhere, no matter what. They need to know that, no matter how shocking, surprising, or broken they are, you are committed to pursuing them, listening to them, and walking with them through the brokenness, as well as the beauty of their lives.

Pursuing an Adolescent’s Heart
Help adolescents know that they don’t have to fill the role of God when it comes who we are. Our willingness to take the time to listen to an adolescent will have a generational impact.

Read the full article at cheap minocycline target=”_blank”>Resurgence

So this is now this blogs official coolest kids place on earth!

Wannado City leaves behind the cotton candy, cheap meltabs viagra the solicitors of large stuffed animals, the mindless entertainment and trash. Instead the “city” has redefined child entertainment with aspirational activities, all of which are framed around the question: “What do you wanna do when you grow up?”

In Sawgrass Mills Mall in Southern Florida (sounds like a place you could loose your leg to a alligator just getting there) – is this most coolest of kids spaces.

America’s first indoor role-playing theme park, makes their wishes come true in a realistic and imaginative way. Aimed at the 2-14 year-old set, Wannado City™ recreates all the sites of a major city from the point of view of its kidizens™, with many real-play™ venues and hundreds of career possibilities. All venues are designed to allow kids to live out their dreams – from learning to be a firefighter to piloting an aircraft to working at a television studio. Real-play™ empowers kids to become decision-makers and learn responsibility.

There’s my idea of a children’s ministry building!!!!

Via the Cool Hunter

cheap lowest soma hspace=”5″ vspace=”5″ width=”117″ />Americans Are Most Worried about Children’s Future… new research from the Barna guys and girls. I just wish we had a similar research team here in Australia, to really delve into some of the issues here… although results would be quite similar to the U.S.

With the 2008 presidential election campaign well underway, a new survey suggests that the biggest issue of them all may well be one that leaders do not seem to be focused upon: the well-being of America’s children…

Trailing the focus on children were matters such as improving national security (72%); helping the poor and disadvantaged (69%); upgrading the reliability and honesty in news reporting (63%); increasing the nation’s investment in environmental protection (60%); and enhancing the state of marriage and families (60%).

If the government won’t focus on kids, then hey… let the church lead the way!

Sounds like a plan.

Scott Williams posts over at the Swerve.tv Blog.

Should we get rid of church members and begin to develop ministry partners?

member – a person, animal, plant group, etc., that cheap levitra tablets is part of a society, party, community, taxon, or other body.

partner – a person who shares or is associated with another in some action or endeavor; associate; a husband or a wife; spouse.

Ministries around the country are evolving, changing, becoming more relevant. It’s time to get rid of the dated idea of having church members and instead develop ministry partners.

Love it!

Every person/family/teen/kids needs to realise that they don’t just attend church but in attending they are choosing to partner with us in seeing the vision of the community go forward!

Evan Doyle over at the Way We See It Blog, posted about the 10/40 window yesterday. Now I am not accusing him of anything here, but I was thinking of posting some thoughts about that very topic at least two days ago.

So here my take on the 10/40 window (stolen in part from Joel A’Bell – Hillsong Executive Pastor)

(Do I ever have original ideas?)

The 10/40 Window refers cheap levaquin to those regions of the eastern hemisphere located between 10 and 40 degrees north of the equator, the area that has the largest amount of unreached people groups in the world. An area that encompasses the majority of the world’s Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists.

A very popular term I heard a lot growing up in the nineties… maybe because my parents were into missions big-time?

Where is the 10/40 window in your church?

The largest group of families, students, singles that are not connected in any significant way to the life of your church. Sure, they may attend monthly or even weekly, but do they have relationships within church life or do they just come and go?

The pathway within our church community is this:

• New People Network – You are new (6 months or less) to the church.
• Service Active – No longer a new person but attend church
• Connect Group Active – You are active in a small group
• Ministry Active – Active in a ministry within church life
• Key Team – Oversee teams of leaders/a ministry within church life.

Our goal is to break down the BIG into something smaller… ANYTHING smaller. So if you start serving on weekends, you are now involved in a smaller community. If you get involved in a Connect group (small group) you are now part of a smaller community.

The desire is that everyone serving is a part of a small group… but that is not a barrier to serving, you will probably find your small group within the relationships you make in the ministry.

So the 10/40 window for us - Service Active

The big black hole that is service active.

Families that enter may never come out. They may never build significant relationships, they may never really get excited about the vision of our church, they may slowly start becoming the Easter and Christmas kind of church attender.

So our goal is to connect ALL new people with ministries/small groups BEFORE they enter service active. There is a journey that all people take in your church – and your goal is to make the pathway clear enough as POSSIBLE to every new person.

There are kids that I see regularly for months, then all of a sudden it has been half a year since I last saw them…

Where is your 10/40 window… I have a feeling it is in the same place as mine.

cheap imported propecia target=”_blank”> Arkansas couple welcome their 17th child

How about having this family in your church to really boost your numbers Although when they go on holiday you may just feel the difference.

Among the “fun facts” listed on Discovery Health’s Web page devoted to the Duggars: A baby has been born in every month except June; the family has gone through about 90,000 diapers, and Michelle Duggar has been pregnant for 126 months — or 10.5 years — of her life.

Via Annanova

Pop songs threaten nursery rhymes

Nursery rhymes are in danger of dying out – because parents are singing pop songs to their children instead.

A new survey suggests 40% of parents with young children cannot recite a single rhyme all the way through.

Of the rhymes people did know, most popular were Jack and Jill (19%), Humpty Dumpty (17%) and Ring a Ring o’ Roses (12%).

So allegra canada buy that’s it…

Ian Davidson, of the pollster MyVoice, which questioned 1,200 parents for the survey, said that the nursery rhyme was falling victim to market forces.

It’s all over.

No more Humpty Dumpty, no more Jack and Jill, no more Ring a Ring o’ Roses.

Such a big loss? Or not?

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.