[Kid Inspiration]

Finally a reason for the decline of baptists

David Key, director of Baptist studies at Emory University’s Candler School of Theology, attributes the declining numbers on Baptist parents having fewer children than in years past, and believes Baptist leaders haven’t been aggressive enough in attracting nonwhite members.

“It’s not just about parents not having enough children, but we also haven’t adjusted our youth programs to target multicultural youth,” he said. “It’s still a very white Southern experience as opposed to incorporating African-Americans, Hispanics and Asians.”

Full Article.

Here are a few posts that I have ’starred’ in Google reader.

They either caught my eye, or my massive nerdy tendencies.

From various blogs all over this earth:

Creating a Healthy Volunteer Environment -Part 2
Yesterday we talked about what an unhealthy volunteer looks like. It’s not as easy as just firing all those who bring a spirit of unhealthiness to our ministries or arena’s; but I can begin to change the environment that all my volunteer exist within.
I present my Top 6 things to Never do or say to a Volunteer

The Elephant Song
If you have young children, or if you’re young at heart, this is the song for you: The Elephant Song by Eric Herman (video created by Eric’s wife Roseann with the help of their 3-year-old daughter Becca. The little girl in the song is Meghan, who was 6 at the time).

Special Needs Ministry for Autistic Children
By its very nature, children’s ministry is challenging, but special needs ministry takes the challenge to a whole new level. Any children’s pastor familiar with teaching special needs children understands the importance of developing a unique approach and relationship with each child. It takes a great deal of effort, but it is well worth it when you can effectively connect and minister to a special needs child.

Ten Questions: Introspection

1. In what area of life have I lost my passion? (What can I do to get it back?)
2. If the enemy were going to “take me out,” what are my three most vulnerable points?
3. What new burden has God given me in the last year?
4. What have I unlearned that has made me closer to God?
5. What new discipline is God calling me to do?
6. What has God asked me to do that I haven’t yet done?
7. Is there something that I think about more than I think about pleasing God? (Money, possessions, ministry, family, recreation, something else.)
8. Do I have an increasing joy in serving Christ?
9. Am I handling the pain of ministry with integrity?
10. Am I still being persecuted for my faith in Christ?

Putting Strength To Work
As always with these meetings, we learned about the child’s performance that has both good and bad. We ended up discussing about the poor results, carelessness, concerns and how to fix them. What Marcus Buckingham shares in this video resonate with us

Cool.

American idol sing ‘Shout to the Lord’ in the 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 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 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 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, 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 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” 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 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.