This is the final installment of this little series. Thanks for everyone’s questions – we finished up the main studio time of our latest album and now it’s time to move on to our latest Curriculum filming. It’s that season which I will affectionally call ‘little sleep, much catering’.

Onwards for some questions.

Question 1: Love to hear about your point system or reward system in kidmin. – Cyrstal

I have found myself drifting over to the ‘no rewards’ side of the debate in Kidmin. I like the idea of example and relationship being the great motivator not lollies. But that being said, one of the most important things you need in order for kids to learn is FUN. Prizes are fun so we will use them!

See this post at Ministry-To-Children for an overview of the debate.

Here’s how we use them – we get little points stickers printed that say Hillsong Kids on them. And throughout our services we stick them on kids who are all divided into ‘pods‘ or teams. At the end of the service our ‘pod‘ leaders count the stickers and the team with the most wins a point for the leader board up the front of the room. At the end of each year just before Christmas we announce a winning team and all the kids in that team go into the draw for a big prize (like a Nintendo DSi or something).

This is for our primary school kids, we don’t really do it in our preteen age group, or with our toddlers.

Question 2: “Why do the All Blacks choke at every World Cup?” – Andy ‘I’m a weasel’ Kirk

For my international friends who don’t really follow Rugby there is a world cup going on right now in my homeland of New Zealand… (Even the U.S. has a team there!)

To answer your question Andy, I think I will just bide my time until the result is announced and the All Blacks win.

I am actually relieved that I got some questions from the readers of [Kid Inspiration]. I always get nervous that no one will post a question and then I will feel like Nigel No Friends… but I have friends! The origin of this series is here and we are on round three as I sit here listening to a song called NEW DAY which is sounding fresh and hot and awesome, but you can’t hear it yet because it’s not ready!

Question 1: What have you guys seen that works and doesn’t work for recruiting volunteers? Also, do your volunteers serve in any sort of term/trimester/semester or do they come and go as they please (hope that makes sense) – Carrie.

Of course it makes sense Carrie in the same way that salsa and corn chips make sense.

The biggest secret to building volunteers and growing teams is to simply reflect the leadership of your Church. Out leadership culture here at Hillsong Church is very well defined and there is an expectation that is set across all of our campuses. The basic idea is that you sit in a service and serve in a service (Mary and Martha style). Apart from that is explaining the why behind the what. When talking to prospective team members (which is a good place to start), just sell them the vision of being part of helping kids follow Jesus for the rest of their lives in the only institution that God set up outside of family!

Question 2: sup Dave, how do you transition kids from kids to youth? – Sarah

I’m rocking Sarah, sup with you?

The best thing we have done here at Hillsong Kids in ten years is start a preteen ministry called Voltage for all kids in Grade 5/6. This has meant that we start preparing them to be in our Youth ministry for two years leading up to it! This is highly relational ministry that is all about being another voice in the life of a child. A positive encouraging supportive voice that helps them in every way we can. Did you know that this age group is the most bullied on earth!

At the end of each year we have youth leaders start coming to our weekend services and connecting with the kids so they will know someone in our ‘Fuel’ ministry. We also run an every second Friday night program before Youth that gets them feeling all grown up!

Thanks for your questions!!!!

My last post explains this short series. It is 11:12pm and I am sitting in the studio and suddenly my brain is protesting even considering this idea… “why would you decide to do this now?” it says to me. Well I am gonna do what I said I’d do!

We are well and truly into the mix process and it’s rocking… click here to watch a little video sneak preview from Luke who is producing with me!

Question 1: How do your KDG’s work at Hillsong Kids and how do you transition from large group time to KDG’s? - Braden

KDG’s are an integral part of Hillsong Kids. It stands for Kids Discipleship Groups, our small groups for kids on weekends and Friday nights for our Preteen program ‘Voltage’. In fact it is one of the main things I mention when talking to prospective volunteers and leaders. I explain that one of the most powerful things you can do in the life of our Church is connect with the same group of kids each week. Building relationship and being an example and guide to living for Jesus Christ.

Our best example of this is on Sunday morning services when our primary (elementary) program is a large group/small group format. The last 20 or so minutes we break down into small groups of about 10 kids, depending on campus and service time. If I am MCing (every service has an MC leading) I would literally get the leaders standing around the room and send the children to their leader. They are usually in the same area each week so they know the drill.

We have ‘worksheets’ (horrible name I know… should be funsheets not work sheets), that relate to the theme, but we place a high emphasis on relational connection and pray and talking about real issues. The younger the kids are the more we rely on the sheets as a general rule.

Question 2: Dave. What rules do you have at kids church? how do you explain them to the kids? – Lisa

We have rules but we don’t call them that. At the front of our primary programs we have a “When At Hillsong Kids” sign.

1. Always be kind to others
2. Listen when others are talking
3. Put your hand up and wait to be asked to speak
4. Be Involved
5. Have Fun

We reinforce this with a ‘Welcome Video’ played at the beginning of each service that goes through the rules, points system, toileting procedure etc. About 1:30 long?

Thanks for your questions! More to come!

For the next week I would like to try something on this blog.

We are going to mixing our new Preschool Kids Album all week long, which means lots of sitting around punctuated by bursts of intense activity as we lock in a song (The mix process is basically taking all your recorded songs, balancing all the different instruments and adding lots of Autotune to make my singing sound passable… yep I’m actually singing).

So in order to keep my sanity and around my regular job of keeping Hillsong Kids moving forward I would like to answer questions with a “Here’s What I’d Do…”, Or even a “Here’s What We Do…”

For example:

• Dave. I have a two year old that brings a light saber to Church each week and we have had three hospitalisations, what would you do?
• Or; Dave. I love country music, what’s wrong with me?
• Or; Dave. I read a blog that disparages country music, what would you do?

At Kidshaper Conference this year we were introduced to a team from ImagineNations Church in Penrith, Sydney.

INK is the band from ImagineNations Kids and they are awesome! They were playing songs from their CD Not Too Young and generally rocking out.

Our Churches need to be producing more praise and worship for our kids. The ratio of adult albums to kids is exorbitant, I would guess 100 to 1??

Well done Allyson Parker (Insert twitter link or similar social media site hopefully soon?) and the team!

And it seems that I may have an exclusive on this, because I cannot find a page or website or even a twitter mention, other than my wife?

So, by the power invested in me by the interwebs, I name this blog post as the official site of NOT TOO YOUNG by INK.

So not sure how to buy it, and not sure how you can listen to it, but I am hopeful that someone from the team will post a comment as the official site emerges!

UPDATE: So as the official Album Page, I thought I better add the track list and some credits from the album…

Track List:

1. Not Too Young
2. Get Up
3. My God Can Do Anything
4. Only One I Live For
5. Yours Alone
6. First Love
7. Super Awesome God
8. You Never Change
9. To The Rescue
10. Follow You Heart
11. Change Their World
12. You Are God

Righto, so blog posts are meant to be reasonably short. This is not a format for essay’s or novels — so this is part one of my thoughts about the Annual Kidshaper conference this year.

It is Saturday right now and I am enjoying my own house with my boys and some quality time with my laptop.

First of all I would like to say thanks to Rob Bradbury, Children’s minister and legend veteran inspirational leader man for inviting myself and our Hillsong Kids team to speak and be a part of this conference. I was excited to share all about ‘Makin’ It Up’ (outline to come soon), and some of our team shared at the electives in the afternoon.

Second of all it is so great to hang out with our Hillsong Kids Staff and lots of key volunteers/students and leaders. You are honestly remarkable and I love the passion and heart for our Church you have. I love the longevity and consistency that each of you already have!

Thirdly to every leader of children in the Church of Australia. You have a voice and experience and something to contribute! You have a calling and a passion and don’t allow anything to dampen what God can do through you!

Fourthly, to my own Church Hillsong and my Senior Pastors Brian and Bobbie Houston and to Joel and Julia A’Bell, I appreciate your leadership so much. You have taught me that focus, singular vision and keeping your heart with all diligence will take you a long way, in fact all way to your calling.

Lots more to come.

This little tradition started a couple of years ago in our Voltage (Preteen) ministry in the City Campus.

You get a canvas, get someone artistically inclined to write your ministry name on the board and then for the rest of the year get every student that comes through your services to sign it!

It’s a simple idea, but a wonderful keepsake for each year of ministry and a reminder to the students that they are the Church! And also a great way to identify the extroverts in your group. The larger the name, the larger the personality!

We have neared the end of May 2011, a month remembered for its apocalypse (May 21) and Hillsong One Days (in my mind anyway). In this second installment about May we continue our story where we left off. After a great weekend in Church (I remember some of it with the help of caffeine), we returned to the road for a conference in Melbourne and Adelaide. I have visited Melbourne a few times, but had never been to Adelaide so was looking forward to that! (Note: Adelaide reminded me a lot of New Zealand, which means I loved it)

Hillsong One Day: Melbourne

Monday morning even before Jesus gets up we were flying down to Melbourne for One Day number 3. This was going to be held at Hisense Arena which was by far the largest venue we were using. Again my wife Beci and our Kids Event’s coordinator Eva were with me to rock the event. Additionally in an act of inspiration, (or perhaps insanity) a bus came down from Sydney with a bunch of our leaders to support the conference owing to the size of the venue.

Side note: this is actually quite a good venue to run a kids program in. Lots of smaller conference rooms around the auditorium made for a great experience for the children. A huge parenting room (for kids 1-2 years old), and two adjoining rooms for a preschool and primary program. But the greatest blessing came from the teams we were working with in Melbourne from Crossway Baptist, Eastside Church and Careforce Church. Thanks to Magaret Spicer and her team, Rebecca Buckle and baby (still womb bound – Rebecca you are a legend!)

It was a huge night with a crowd packing the arena for the night session with Hillsong United!

Hillsong One Day: Adelaide

Then it was onto Paradise community church in Adelaide for the final hurrah! Darren Fowles (that’s not him in the picture btw) and his team were brilliant, alongside a group from Edge Church with the living legend Andrew Shepherd. It was nice to be back in a Church venue with everything setup and ready to go! And I do get a little jealous when we go to churches with permanent facilities with fancy kids rooms! Once again a packed house for the night rally but our team was able to squeeze everybody in!

It was a lot of fun seeing all these venues around Australia and has given me inspiration for what I need to implement and also appreciation for what we do have! In all our One Day events the theme was the same Under the Psalm Tree, a week of teaching from our New Curriculum SUPERNATURAL… coming soon!

Thanks to every single volunteer and Church that partnered with us to make these event brilliant for children all over Australia. I certainly pray and believe that God was glorified and kids were blessed.

All that is left for May is to hang out with our awesome Hillsong staff at our annual staff retreat this week… looking forward to it! I

Thanks!

This May has turned into a big month. A whole lot of events and conferences which efectively means I am not in the office at all in May except for weekends… Putting a lot of trust in my iPhone battery!

I have some idea now of what it takes to travel like some of our team do. I like living near our airport but not having to use its facilities very often… this month I am a regular at the security check point at Sydney Aiport!

First up was our annual:

NATIONAL ACC CONFERENCE

The month started with the National ACC conference in Brisbane. It is our pastors conference for the AoG in australia. This was a great time to just sit/receive and connect with a whole bunch of people from our movement here in Australia. We had Reinhard Bonnke and Steve Murrell speak to us and just spoke some brilliant encouragement and a lot of gold from their wealth of experience.

So we were out of the office in the lovely Gold Coast of Queensland. Probably one of my favourite places to have a conference

HILLSONG ONE DAYS

Then in the second week we began our Hillsong One Day conferences which were conceived to bring the annual Hillsong Conference to cities around Australia and celebrate the 25th birthday of the event!

There would be kids programs at each of the conferences, not a ‘Kidsong’ like we would run in Sydney, but some sort of experience for our little ones. We decided to create a parenting room for parents with kids up to 1 years old, a playgroup for two year olds (families provide carers), a preschool program (3-5 year olds) and a primary school program. Each conference would be customised to make it work within the rooms provided.

HILLSONG ONE DAY: BRISBANE

It all began in Brisbane on Monday night. We arrived with a small army of production team, Hillsong United, Events team and me overseeing our kids program along with our Hillsong Brisbane Campus team.

The truth is we didn’t know what to expect really. School is still on during the event but who knew what parents would do? Bring ‘em along or organise care for them. We had limited registrations pre-event so I was prepared for big/small, young/old. What we got was volunteers from our absolutely fantastic kids team in Brisbane turn out and give of themselves to bless the children coming along.

A far larger contingent of primary/elementary kids came along (numbers of home schooling and out of towners) and a great little group of preschoolers. I led a rally/worship experience for the little ones in the morning and at night, both preschool and primary. Thanks to the kids team at Citipointe kids staff (Sam & Karolina Gunsser) who oversee the kids and youth ministries making them one of the few ‘family ministry’ pastors I know of in Australia.

Special shout-out to Richard Leworthy our Brisbane kids pastor who pulled the whole volunteer team together and Petter Klaar and Tony Moshudis who came together to form the key team to make this event happen! Thank You SO MUCH!

HILLSONG ONE DAY: PERTH

I had never been to Perth before. Unlike the East coast of Australia where everything is within 1-2 hours, it is quite a flight and change of time zone to get to Perth. We arrived to Challenge Stadium to find a venue which proved to be ‘interesting’ to say the least. It has a fully functioning Pool and multiple Gym’s throughout which would be running during the one day event. Usually we have exclusive use of a venue we hire which makes it much easier safety wise, age group room etc. to plan a program for kids.

So we were working with that, but thank the Lord my wife Beci and our Kids Event’s coordinator Eva flew in to help oversee this one.

A lot of the success of this one day would be reliant on the teams we were working with to make it happen, and the great news was we got to work with a Brilliant team!

Sam Sheedy of Sunset Coast CLC and Harvest West Bible College, Zheng Kon from Perth CLC and Jocelyn Jayasooria from Kingdom City formed the key team for Perth and bought together the most passionate and willing to serve team! If it was not for this group of Perth-ites we would have never been able to make the conference the huge success it was. In fact the reception and expectation of the Perth people was inspiring and such a blessing for us Sydney-siders.

This event was even more of an unknown for us because we were working with people in some cases have never met before and Churches who just came to serve with a willing heart! I was over the moon with every single volunteer and so grateful to God for each of them!

It was also nice to use a venue after Justin Beiber

What we have learnt so far

• Just doing one of these events gives a great idea of what to expect and where you need to put strength in the teams.
• I feel a real passion developing for preschool praise and worship. There needs to be excellent leadership of this area modeled, demonstrated and developed right now!
• It all comes down to the team and volunteers
• I have very few frequent flyer points
• Perth has some brilliant people at brilliant churches!

“The local church is the hope of the world.” - Bill Hybels

I get excited about opportunities to present Christ in media, culture, music and through the influence of politics and entertainment. But most of my enthusiasm is reserved for what I believe can be accomplished through the local Church. YOUR local Church.

It’s the relationships of your Church community as the representatives of God on earth that make the quite confronting reality of heaven and hell seem important right now.

The most exciting occupation on this earth has got to be joining in with what God is up to, and whatever he is up to will have something to do with the local Church. In Matthew 16:18 Jesus makes it pretty clear what he is going to be doing in the foreseeable future, ”…I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.”

There can be no greater life that one spent involved in what Jesus himself told us he will be building — His Church.

“In the beginning, the universe was created. This made a lot of people very angry, and has been widely regarded as a bad idea.” – Douglas Adams

No matter who you are or what you do, get involved in ‘THE’ Church.

In the late 1840′s, Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis was an assistant in the maternity wards of a Vienna hospital. He noted with alarm that the mortality rate in a delivery room staffed by medical students was up to three times higher than in a second delivery room staffed by midwives. Women were terrified, and rightly so, of the room staffed by the medical students where up to twenty five percent of women died of ‘childbed fever’.

Semmelweis observed that the students were coming straight from their lessons in the autopsy room to the delivery room. In a flash of insight (obvious to us today), he surmised that the students might be carrying the infection from their dissections to birthing mothers.

After ordering doctors and medical students to wash their hands before examining women in labor the mortality rate in his maternity wards eventually dropped to less than one percent!

What needs to change in your ministry to kids?

Last week we held our annual summer camp for our preteen group (Voltage). It was rad as usual with a whole bunch of fun and good times!

For the first time ever I decided to do a session with the kids on purity. Not that I wanted to lead it myself, I attempted to get one of our brilliant pastors who is a grandfather himself and would have bought a great authority to the message… but it was not to be, so I prepared to do it myself!

…It was brilliant…

The KDG (small group) time afterward (kids are divided into cabins) was probably the best I have ever seen. Kids sitting and talking with their leaders about things that REALLY matter!

I highly recommend it… here was the process.

• The registration letter that was sent to parents included information that we would be doing this session and this link: http://hillsongkids.com/purity
• Two parents contacted us with questions about this. We talked to them and which they found very helpful
• I made it very clear that I wasn’t going to talk about sex (especially the ‘mechanics’ involved).
• I make it clear that our small group discussions needed to focus on purity as well.

Here are some notes from my message (I didn’t use all of this and will see if I can find the KDG notes):

PURITY

This post has nothing to do with monkeys and wedding dresses.

But what if it was!

I know one thing, when you search “monkeys and wedding dresses” on google later this week, this post will definitely appear in the top results!

But that’s because there is not much competition for the search phrase. In fact I may be one of the first people to search for it this year (so we’re only five days in, there are a lot of weird searches happening right now let’s be honest).

There is more competition in the phrase “children’s ministry blog” but I manage to squeak into 5th place in Google. But still, not many people in the world are searching for that term. So what if I am number one in the term “david wakerley”, no one is searching for that.

Interestingly I get a lot of traffic at Christmas time for the term “whoville names“. It seems a post I wrote in 2007 still appears at the top of Google.

Anyway.

As I start 2011 I want to make sure that I am scratching where people are itching. Where is the need? Being a computing expert specialising in Windows 3.1 is an exercise in futility. It’s irrelevant.

Being an expert in what everybody needs right now is helpful, but still not the goal. We need to be ready to help where people don’t realise they need help yet.

• Where is the family going to hurt in the future?
• What is the child going to go through soon?
• How will our culture affect people?

God bless the scratch.

In our latest curriculum: Supernatural, we are trying something different — the first two series had memory verse segments using actions and spoken word. In this one we have gone for songs that teach straight scripture.

So I can identify with a brand new album from Seattle Dads Tyson Paoletti and Greg Lutze, they have created the Rizers (short for Memorizers).

Writing songs to straight scripture can be quite restricting flomax mg and a challenge and these guys have done a magnificent job! I love music that comes out of local Churches, especially responding to a need, in this case teaching their kids scripture.

Here is a preview of some of the tracks:

And a vid of the creators talking about the project:

Youtube: The Rise of the Rizers

Check it out at their website therizers.com

I love that like Gorillaz it’s basically a virtual band. Gracie (lead vocals), Matty C. (guitar and vocals), Mei Mei (keytar) , A-Yo (drums) and Johnny Danger (bass). This is a cool way to help kids connect with the group while keeping the focus off personalities/superstars.

Anyway, enjoy!

It’s time.

Time for something serious.

I don’t do too many posts like this, but I hope this opens up some serious discussion in the comments, because controversy is what gets lots of comments in the blog world and I am unlikely to write something truly controversial like… suggesting that we produce a VBS based on the twilight series of books.

So we are in the middle of creating our next children’s ministry curriculum – Hillsong Kids Big: Supernatural. I have been writing scripts like a madman and one of the weeks includes the story of Jericho. I send the scripts off for a little theology inspection (as usual) to one of our lecturers in our Bible College, Duncan Corby… it comes back pretty good, a few tweaks here and there, but I haven’t yet become a heretic. Yay.

But we start a discussion about something I hadn’t really expected, here is the question:

Should we be teaching/telling our kids the ultra-violent exelon prescription assistance stories found in the Old Testament?

When you get to the end of Joshua’s army walking around Jericho, the walls have fallen, they then proceed to kill every single man, woman and child in the city and burn it to the ground. This is all apparently sanctioned and encouraged by God (rinse and repeat for many other OT stories).

Now he was really thinking out loud and not endorsing the idea, but I need to (even if for my own sake) investigate this idea.

Let me present two perspectives as precisely as I can, because I don’t want this to be an essay.

YES: We should be teaching the whole counsel of God, and we can teach these stories in an age appropriate way. As children grow in understanding they can then begin to explore these issues further. We have to present the Bible as a narrative, the story of God dealing with his people over thousands of years so that our children grasp the big picture of faith. After all the New Testament is the Old Testament revealed.

NO: Exposing our kids to these stories has aided in creating our violent culture. Where Christians quite happily support capital punishment and can justify war in a heart beat. In much the same way that it is said that Jewish young men would not be allowed to read the Song of Songs until they were 30 years old our kids should focus on the life of Jesus, who was non-violent figure, until they are able to reconcile a jealous God in their hearts and minds.

I would love for you to post a pro/con thought in the comments, keep it short, focused and don’t try to present dozens of ideas in one go. Especially if you can point me in the direction of some resources/books that cover this thought.

Almost a month ago I began an epic quest – to write a complete A-Z of Children’s Ministry.

I started at A (funny that) for Adults and finished with Z for Zeta. Along the way I hope that I was able to surprise you and make you think about the world of ministry to children.

If you have enjoyed it or found it insightful or even remotely helpful then please push the retweet button on the side of this post, or the facebook ‘like’ button at the bottom. Feel free to blog about it, tell your neighbours and your enemies, which of course you don’t, for you love all humanity and would want them to read this blog.

Here is the complete list with links:

• A is for Adults
• B is for Bible
• C is for Culture
• D is for Delegate
• E is for Encouragement
• F is for Fun
• G is for Growth
• H is for House
• I is for Inclusive
• J is for Journey
• K is for Kidology
• L is for Longevity
• M is for Mystery
• N is for New
• O is for Obedience
• P is for Paradigm
• Q is for Question
• R is for Respect
• S is for Sabbath
• T is for Teaching
• U is for Unexpected
• V is for Visual
• W is for Welcome
• X is for Xenogague
• Y is for Yahweh
• Z is for Zeta

Now this was the most epic mission I have attempted on this blog since starting in 2004, so in order to make me think it was worth it, please write your adoring comments below. Even if you post a simple, “Dave you’re the greatest” I won’t mind.

But feel free to write a long discorse on just how much this blog series has impacted your life and caused your Church to double in size because of all the kids in your children’s ministry.

But really, I hope it has been helpful to you, I know that I have learnt a lot putting these ideas to paper (digital paper).