[Kid Inspiration]

There is pretty much one conference I attend each year that I have nothing to organise and that is Kidshaper. It is the national ACC children’s ministry conference in Melbourne Australia.

I get to just attend and enjoy it!

Except this year I had the honour of speaking as a keynote to the hundreds of awesome men and women of God who sow their lives into the kids of Australia and New Zealand and the world!

You can read a report from the official blog of Kidshaper CM1234

And follow Rob Bradbury (national grand poo-bah of Kids R Us) on twitter.

But from a personal perspective it was such a great few days receiving leadership and wisdom from Papa Smurf himself Jim Wideman and so many other leaders around this nation.

I really felt God speak to my heart about great steps forward both personally and for our church. It was a profound week and I love seeing the same faces each year knowing there are so many volunteers out there running ministries with a heart for God and kids.

If you are one of those people who perhaps is out there running your ministry as a volunteer without a big network of like minded people around you:

1. Find out who is close by you from Kids R Us… make contact and make yourself known. I know Rob and his team would love to support you.
2. Contribute – it’s the greatest way to connect. Write a nice comment on someone’s blog, reply to them on twitter. Connection is not all about the phone and face to face anymore. As you give you will receive. Send a resource to another Church, help them out. You may just find a lifetime ministry friend.
3. Come to Kidshaper next year and say hi.

Thanks Rob and team!

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.

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.

I am fascinated with this phrase: “Attention is the currency”.

Because I think that in this age it applies SO much to our kids.

I have a LOT of choices when I put my son to bed at night… so much else I could be doing rather than reading him a story or spending time with him. My father had a lot less choices, no mobile phone, only two channels of TV (this was the 80’s in New Zealand).

So more than ever our love is measured by time and attention.

So with the many distractions that our kids face, it is so easy to stand out in our culture. Even the bare minimum will make you stand out in the mind of a child!

Here are some very interesting thoughts from the blog of Tim Ferriss

So a dude by the name of Michael Chanley started a site called cmconnect.org

You can see his page on the site here http://www.cmconnect.org/profile/MichaelChanley

This site is part of the Ning.com network which simply according to them is an “online service to create, customize, and share a social network.”

Which is a fantastic way to start a site. They provide the technical expertise and support and you focus on the connections and building the network.

So far they have over 2,000 members which is great for such a niche site online!

This is turning into one of the great sites online to connect with others of same heart and focus. Kidology.org is the biggest one of these with 20,631 members in the forum (although, I am not sure how many of those post regularly… I know I am a slacker recently).

So here’s what you do, hop on over to cmconnect.org and create yourself a profile. invite me to be your friend! http://www.cmconnect.org/profile/DavidWakerley

Well done Michael!!

So the latest Hillsong Church started meeting today in Capetown South Africa!

They are meeting in the Cape Town International Convention Centre. And have had five services on their first Sunday!! The auditorium sits 620 people so this is a MASSIVE start for the church!

Service times | Sunday 9am, 11am, 4pm and 6pm
*PLUS EXTRA ONE-HOUR SERVICE @ 8pm*

The kids team over there already has gotten the curriculum we are doing right now, they have the same tee-shirts we have in Australia, and are running programs for every service over the first Sunday!

I’m not even sure who is running the whole kids programs yet but it is very exciting to see the church establish itself over in Capetown!

God is good!

In my blog you write posts and can save them as a draft without posting them online. So this post here has been a draft for over a year now, so I thought I would just end it’s loneliness and make it live… it’s about a book I making my way toward reading:

Revolutionary Parenting kind of a new book by George Barna as a followup to Transforming Children into Spiritual Champions.

Article on the Barna website about the conclusions the book has made:
Research Shows Parenting Approach Determines Whether Children Become Devoted Christians

Check it out!

Thought I would post a reply to an email enquiry we just got, might make for interesting reading if you are that way inclined! (edited for brevity)

—– Original Message —–
From: D G
To: David Wakerley
Sent: Thu May 15 06:04:47 2008
Subject: Ideas for Children’s ministry

…We are trying to enhance and improve our children’s ministry so we would like to learn more about what you do and seek your wisdom… we want to learn even more so that we can increase, and we know that’s exactly what continues to go on at your church… INCREASE! Are your age groups separated or together and what do you think has worked best for you? Also, how many volunteers do you usually try to have for each service and if you don’t mind me asking, how many payed staff do you have on your children’s team? We would love to learn as much as we can from you! Your ministry is an incredible blessing to churches world wide!

——– Reply ———-

D,

Thanks for your email, I hope I can answer your questions!

Little bit of background: We have two major campuses and 14 extension services (at present) We don’t have permanent facilities here at any venue, except for a couple of ‘nursery’ rooms. So at this point we work with what we have… We separate age groups as much as possible for each campus.

Parenting Rooms 0-12months
Cubbyhouse 1-3 years
The Ark 3-5 years
Funhouse 5 & 6 year olds
All Stars 7,8,9 year olds
Voltage 10,11 year olds

We started Voltage (preteen) ministry this year (10-11 year old) and it has been an incredible momentum builder. A bunch of kids that weren’t really engaged are now LOVING church and building relationships with other kids and
leaders.

We try to break down each age group as much as possible, one of the goals we are working toward right now is to get every child ministered to through small groups, not just on weekends, but that they would know and identify one leader as their KDG (Kids Discipleship Group) leader.

Okay there are 8 services in the City campus on a weekend and 5 at the hills campus (almost 30 services with all extension services), so the number of leaders varies widely depending on the time… (9:30am in the city is large, 7pm Sat is not etc.)

There are 9 people on the kids staff, a bunch more if you include interns etc.

Your ratio of kids to adults is about 14% on a weekend which is great!

Check out http://hillsongkidsbig.com for our curriculum coming soon!

Not sure how helpful all that is, but please email me anytime!

Kind Regards,

David Wakerley
Children’s Pastor – City Campus

Hillsong Church
188 Young St
Waterloo NSW 2017
Australia
Ph: +61 2 9775 3642

So the Children’s Ministry Today site is really rocking out some great content recently! (Which is run by Willowcreek and I guess by David Staal – anyway I give him the credit).

Check out two recent articles:

Community—The Other Key Ingredient

Just imagine how a strong small group experience sticks in the hearts of kids. Imagine the “super strength” of children’s ministry that mixes community kids love with creative, relevant Bible teaching.

Make God Real to Your Kids

Many of us feel we’re not doing that great a job at the most important task facing Christian parents. But before you don sackcloth and ashes, consider the hands-on approach advocated by child-education specialist Karyn Henley.

“Kids can learn from the direct teaching approach,” she says, “but they really learn better in other ways.”

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!