[Kid Inspiration]

Here are a few great posts I read recently:

Notes from Reggie Joiner

• A lot of kids leave church experience rich but relationally poor
• What is the purpose of kids applying what they learn? So they can see God and others can see God in them.
• No one is more strategically positioned to experience all levels of spiritual growth in a child than a small group leader.
• The reason volunteer leaders are not committed to children is because we’re not asking them to be committed to children. We give them outs every way possible.
• How do we partner with parents? By casting vision to parents and getting parents so bought in that they cast the vision at home.

Speaking the truth in Love

Mark Driscoll with some helpful words about using our words to speak the truth in love.

4 Assumptions during the busy season

Here’s 4 assumptions I asked our teams to make during the next 4 months of ministry…

Enjoy.

Last week our team flew to Melbourne to the Kidshaper conference.

We took most of the staff, and a bunch of volunteers, about 20 people all up.

There is MUCH that could be said about the week. The fantastic input from Glen Berteau, the awesome worship from the Planetshakers band and the team from Citikidz in Brisbane. Being massively inspired by the ever youthful Rob Bradbury who is more passionate about reaching kids for Christ than he ever was!

One of the afternoons we sat down as a team and talked about what we felt God was saying to us and others. I really felt that God is pounding the point into my somewhat slow cranium, that I need to pray, believe and expect for miracles with our kids and powerful encounters with God each service!

It’s not just about teaching the word of God, but it is also His presence!

In a country with very few full time ministers to children I am VERY excited to see over one thousand at a conference like this.

So here’s to next year with the statesman that is Jim WIdeman and daughter Yancy!

Even though I didn’t blog much during the conference, I did twitter a bunch, so check the stream out.

So thanks Rob and Team… and I guess I have to write a book now?

Okay, so as you may be aware we are working at this moment on our first Hillsong Kids Curriculum. So that has me up late writing content and messages and scripts and stuff.

The one site I visit regularly is Desiring God which is the teaching ministry of John Piper whenever I need a shot of Theology. He pretty much has everything he has ever written, thought about writing, or even thought about thought about writing online which makes it a fantastic resource to check out some theology points. Another I will check is Koinonia House (Chuck and Nancy Missler).

So I was over there searching Desiring God for some insight on Adam and Eve. Trying to figure out how to express what happened in the garden to kids.

And I came across quite simply a mind expanding little article that has given me a perspective on what we are doing for our kids as we seek to raise them to follow Jesus.

Preaching As Concept Creation, Not Just Contextualization

As we think seriously about contextualizing the message of the Bible, let’s remember that we must also labor to bring about, in the minds of our listeners, conceptual categories that may be missing from their mental framework. If we only use the thought structures they already have, some crucial biblical truths will remain unintelligible, no matter how much contextualizing we do. This work of concept creation is harder than contextualization, but just as important.

We must pray and preach so that a new mental framework is created for seeing the world. Ultimately, this is not our doing. God must do it. The categories that make the biblical message look foolish are deeply rooted in sinful human nature. “The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned” (1Corinthians 2:14)….

That uses some serious big word with many syllables, but here’s what I got from it.

I strive to present everything to kids in context… like explaining how life differs from the time of Jesus, who would be a modern day tax collector, stuff like that. But what Piper suggests is that (if you read the entire article), is that we need to create structure in the minds of our kids to support that context.

The cool thing is we get to work with kids, the easiest humans on earth to create new paradigms simply because they don’t have to unlearn anything, they are completely open to new ideas.

Piper goes on to say that it is the work of the Holy Spirit, which is also a good thing because I wouldn’t have a clue how to start.

If you haven’t fallen asleep reading this post yet you might just be wired like me! So go read the article and if you’re brave, post a comment below with an example of concepts our kids need to know!

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.

There are VERY few veterans when it comes to ministry to children, especially in Australia… so it was a real honour to meet Dick Gruber last weekend. He was in town for a conference and popped in to one of our Sunday morning services.

Got to meet Dick and his son Tim, both incredibly tall indiviuals.

Although, don’t you hate it when you have guests and after saying farewell you realise you just spent the entire time talking about what YOU are doing and not taking the time to ask THEM questions… anyway I felt like that after they left… and I usually am and inquistive person!

Oh well!

“If there’s one thing I just don’t have time for, it’s delegation”…

No one would admit to agreeing with that statement, but we can often act like it. There are too many people sitting in churches doing nothing, that will find their purpose by serving children. Ask and keep on asking, knock and keep on knocking…

Found these great tips on delegation via churchrelevance.com

From Kevin Moore, the youth pastor at Oneighty from Church on the Move (Tulsa, OK)…

1. Speak it.
   Make an effort to clearly speak to each worker about the details of what they are suppose to do and how those details are important to the vision of the ministry they are serving in.
2. Spell it.
   Make sure that you spell out in writing (a) the vision and goal of the ministry, (b) the expectations and guidelines of the task, and (c) the details of the job.
3. Slowly Release.
   Let your worker watch you perform the task. Next allow them to work alongside of you. Spend some time observing them, giving complements and criticism when needed. Once they have learned from you, they are ready to succeed on their own.

Don’t miss any one of these steps!!

This is a follow-up post to McDonalds and Leadership

I have been developing the pipeline we could use for our ministry… here is the first draft if you will…

Hillsong Kids Leadership Pipeline:

A simple way to explain to emerging leaders how they could continue to expand their influence.

1. Hillsong Kids Leader – (Apprentice leader) Be a part of the team that makes our weekend services happen/run our mid week ministries.

2. K.D.G. (Kids Discipleship Groups) Leader – (Leader of children) Pastor a small group of children during our weekends and midweek in .

3. Team Leader – (Coach of leaders) Oversee a group of leaders.

4. Ministry oversight – (Lead a ministry) Run an aspect of Hillsong Kids.

5. Key Team – (Oversee leaders running ministries)

I think that implementing this could really impact every volunteer as they can see where they are and where they could go!

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.

Dave Ferguson over at his blog posted this last week about the leadership lesson he learned at McDonalds.

He noted a poster describing the seven-step career path that McDonalds offers.

This is a great lesson for all companies and churches!  You need a career path or a leadership pipeline and leaders need to know about it! One of the most exciting things about successful reproducing churches is that they have put a high priority and intentionality on leadership development.  In fact, research tells us that those churches that have a Campus Pastor track or pipeline experience an average annual growth of 25%.  I’m lovin’ it!  And that same study tells us that the biggest mistake that multi-site churches make was “failure of attention to leadership development”.

I have spent the last week thinking about this… if Macca’s can make it this simple, then our children’s ministry can as well. So I am putting together the leadership pipeline for our leaders.

Simple.

Effective.

And Challenging.

What would your ministry pathway look like?

Rick Warren article: How to get more out of your reading time

I may be a little biased about reading here. I never had a TV until I was 12… a curse at the time (very embarrassing to try and do an assignment about your favourite TV show), but a blessing looking back. So I got big time into reading!

A couple of quotes:

Practice active reading. Mark up your books. I always read with a pencil in my hand. Even when I’m reading magazines, I’ve got a pencil in my hand. A book only becomes your book when you mark it up.

Yep… Clean bible, dirty Christian. Dirty bible, clean Christian. Carries over to books… as much as I hate to mark a new book… gotta do it!

The best way to save time in reading is to be discriminating. James Bryce says “Life is too short to spend it reading inferior books.” More than 1,000 books are produced around the world each day.

That’s a lot of reading. Try the books that are recommended to you, not just the ones on sale!