Our 2008 Hillsong Kids album is called Follow You.

It takes Jesus out of an abstract belief and makes it concrete, a cultural shift from faith being a set of propositions you put your trust in.

A generation ago that album could have been called ‘Believe This’.

Witness the rise of social justice in the Church which (hopefully) gives equal footing to worship and justice in our faith.

Justice takes our abstract doctrine and makes it concrete… we are called to be Jesus’ hands and feet.

Amen.

The mountain our kids are going to climb.

Their working lives/jobs are going to be radically different to ours. How can we help prepare them as the Church?

Every few months a new version of the famous “Shift Happens” video is released, with startling stats and eye opening facts, and bowel moving predictions… here is the latest:

The latest version of the “Shift happens” videos updated for autumn 2009, developed by XPLANE in partnership with The Economist. This Did You Know video focuses on the changing media landscape, including convergence and technology.

Youtube Link: Shift Happens

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 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

Just want to give a shout out to Pioneer Clubs – I have been reading the Mix It Up! blog since it started last November, great content that covers The Jonas Brothers to devotions about Lent.

But you have to watch the video “Window of Opportunity”a great way to cast vision for a ministry.

You can find out a lot from the core values of an organisation and I love these from the site:

We value…

…a God-honoring ministry. We seek to honor God in our curriculum, programs, customer relations, and all other aspects of ministry. As we honor God, we believe he will honor our work by fostering Christ-centered faith in the children we serve.

…the Scriptures as God’s inspired Word, his authority for all aspects of life; the core of everything we do; the tool we use to introduce children to Jesus Christ and disciple them. A primary goal of our curriculum is to help children use, understand, and apply the Bible in daily life.

…children as whole beings created in God’s image with individuality, uniqueness, dignity, and potential. Therefore, we will help create a safe environment where children can meet Christ and choose to live for him. Our materials effectively communicate God’s love for children.

…a holistic ministry for children, because authentic Christianity touches every aspect of life. Our curriculum and ministry are designed to help children grow physically, intellectually, emotionally, socially, and spiritually.

…excellence! We strive for constant improvement in every aspect of ministry. We design our curriculum to be educationally sound and our programs to be of the highest quality.

...relationships as God’s created design. We recognize the significance of children’s building healthy relationships with adults, peers, and children of other ages in the context of the family, local church and community.

…responsible stewardship. We recognize that all we have comes from God. He is the source and owner of all gifts and resources we have. We are merely managers with the responsibility to use wisely all that we have, to bring glory to God and expand the boundaries of his kingdom.

Guest blogspot from Nick Fisk today.

Nick is an awesome ex-kiwi (just like me) on our team whose role (or at least one of them) is to oversee all our extension services from a kids perspective.

He has a massive heart for kids, especially those going through separation and divorce. Here is a quick training thought we used in our ministry.

Communicate Caring in Small Groups – Nick Fisk.

Children are very discerning, even when you don’t expect it. They intuitively know if you love to connect with them and if you love what you’re doing. There are many ways to intentionally connect more deeply with children. For optimal learning and life change in the minds and hearts of children, they need to feel as though you want to hear them.

Children need to know they matter to you! Always remember ‘kids don’t care how much we know until they know how much we care’ Getting to know your kids versus getting through the worksheets, will pay off in the long run. You’ll be able to go twice as deep because relationships are in place and your kids will want to come back for more. Remember, for some children church might be the only safe place they have.

Children need to know they are accepted by you! For children to grow and understand God’s love, they need to know they’re loved, accepted, and cared for. How are you intentionally getting to know your children? Notice a pattern in what children want to talk about. Concentrate on keeping track of what they’re asking about or telling you. Check the percentage of time you spend on active listening, don’t be the one doing all the talking.

You will connect intentionally with your children when you care, stay focused, use the worksheets, communicate clearly and concisely, and challenge them to think creatively and critically.

Following up on my last post about the ‘So You Think You Can… Lead Kids’ promo here at Church.

The website (hillsongkids.com/leadkids) is actually just a small part of the whole deal. More of a way to get more information and to put out some vision.

The big part of this is leaders simply inviting friends to be a part of the ministry.

Anyway, here’s how I put together the page.

[IMAGE] Kathryn Macdowall worked her photoshop magic on an image for the promo.

[MUSIC] Got a great member of our team Paul Stokes to put together the jingle and add in ‘Lead Kids’ in his home studio (You’re the man Paul!)

[VIDEO] Simply recorded the video on my own really cheap video camera at home and edited in iMovie (comes with every Mac). I turned it black and white because it looked classier/artier keeping it colour which looked like a cheap video recorder. Popped in the image and jingle at the beginning. Maybe about an hour from start to finish for editing. Uploaded to Vimeo with a free account… looks classier than Youtube.

[FORM] Free webform from Google Docs… this is a BRILLIANT tool. Puts all data input into a spreadsheet in Google Docs. If you look around online, similar tools can run pretty expensive! The form mirrors the invitation we gave out to all leaders. The Google option is not ideal, but the price is!

[WEBSITE] Simply created a new page on our site and had one of our web boys create a redirect (ie. hillsongkids.com/leadkids points to that page… watch your browser when you click on the link… it changes). This took a little bit of technical expertise on my part but nothing too fancy.

So there you have it, hope it gave you some ideas.

Its great for your wired young people, they can email the link, twitter it and connect with their friends in the same way they always do.

We just started a bit of a leadership promo here at church for the kids department.

We are calling it ‘So You Think You Can… Lead Kids’. Encouraging all of our leaders to invite one other person to lead our awesome kids – Kind of a ‘Double Your Impact’ month.

Check out the page here: hillsongkids.com/leadkids

Now I did this site pretty much myself using free tools online and put them on our site. And the video was edited with iMovie, but comment below if you would like to know the process of the deal and with enough interest I can lay it all down for ya!

Just one question as we head into the weekend.

For most churches, the weekend is VERY important.

So do you know if you have kicked a goal this weekend?

How do you measure it?
What would you feel good about accomplishing?

Then assess if that is what your senior pastor/leadership would feel good about you doing…
If not (or even if you think you know), then find out what they think is a home run, and what are the things they would assume that you would be doing…

Don’t judge a weekend by your own filter. Get the right filter over what you are doing.

This will be short but possibly powerful!

Let’s say you felt that God was calling you to be trained for ministry… and you were waiting for the voice of God to audibly talk to you from the sky… here is that voice

Thus saith the Lord… “You should seriously check out Hillsong International Leadership College“.

If you want to study ministry to children, then as part of the Pastoral Ministry Stream you can ‘intern’ with Hillsong Kids!

Anyway, check it out… you and a couple thousand of your closest friends from all over the world. (Something like 50% of students are from U.S.)