[Kid Inspiration]

Friday afternoon, 3pm in a corporate suite in the Acer Arena Sydney (it’s not what you know, but who!)

High School Musical: The Ice Tour

School holidays were on, so stadium packed with mum’s and kids!

Review: Show is basically movie 1 and 2 in two halves. From where I was sitting all the skaters looked like their movie counterparts. I don’t think that many kids would have realised they weren’t from the movie, unless you had front row seats.

Ice rink/East High School.

Crowd at the Acer Arena

Mirjam, Esther and Beci in our suite.

The Stage again

So a fun afternoon hanging with Troy and Gabriella… what can I apply to ministry?

Well thousands of kids are much easier to manage with their parents sitting with them!

I follow a 100 or so blogs right now (far too many, and I am estimating because it’s midnight and changing tabs on my internet browsers seems like a big deal right now). But every time I open Google Reader I am confronted with 800 or so unread posts!

And over 140 unread Childrens Ministry related posts… which would ordinarily make me a little anxious to catch up with all the posted goodness — but a second emotion flooded my mind which was ‘Yay’… (not really an emotion).

The blogosphere is slowly but surely filling up with more and more blogs relating to the bringing of children to Jesus, the discipling, reaching out to and general focus of the ministry of children… that is why I say ‘Yay’.

So bring it on… the more unread posts the better.

Incidentally, Pudge is running a poll about blogging, so head on over there.

P.S. Blogging is slow here at the moment owing to the momentus effort being rendered to complete our brand new curriculum (hillsongkidsbig.com)

Monday evening… going to to see Harry Connick Jr at the Syney Opera House tonight! Which caps off a great easter!!

Easter was at the Darling Harbour Convention Centre again this year! Which means the rooms for our school age kids has a magnificent view over the harbour… I SHOULD have taken a photo!!! Dang!

Below is a shot of Guy Sebastian performing at our Sunday night concert…

Had a great 6 services really speaking about what Jesus has done on the cross! Saw a number of families who I have not seen for a long time and was able to connect with the kids!

So a great weekend with a record number of kids attending!

New from Citipointe Church in Brisbane Saturate their second Kids Album!

No samples up online???? But I can tell you the songs are awesome and the kids in the recording are ROCKIN!

[v. sach-uh-reyt] – to soak thoroughly or completely

Welcome to the rockin’ worship sound of a new generation. Saturate is a mega all in one worship pack recorded with over 1500 children in Brisbane, Australia. These songs are guaranteed to get your whole family’s pulse racing and heartbeat pumping to the sound of God’s praise. These disks professionally present something historic, powerful, and enthralling – when heaven touched earth amidst the prayers and adoration of a young generation. These kids were Saturated with God’s presence, no question – and we know that you will be too.

Hey, bit late on these… but here are two video blogs from the conference!!!!

Enjoy!

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!

The GMA Award nominees were announced this week!

Children’s Music Album of the Year

• Absolute Modern Worship for Kids 3; Kid Connection; Craig Adams; Fervent Records
• deliberateKids; Phil Joel; Phil Joel; Indelible Creative Group
• My Father’s World; The Praise Baby Collection; Christopher Davis; Big House Kids
• Snazzy; Go Fish; Jamie Statema, Darren Rust; GFK Records
• Supernatural; Hillsong Kids; Julia A’Bell, Gio Galanti, Andrew Crawford, David Wakerley; Hillsong Music, Integrity Music
• VeggieTales Christian Hit Music; VeggieTales; Christopher Davis; Big Idea Records

Yay!

We were nominated in 06 for “Jesus is my Superhero”, and now in 08 for Supernatural!

It’s acutally a good year for Hillsong Church… The Hillsong United guys are up for Group of the Year and Praise and Worship Album of the Year… and Darlene Zschech for vocalist.

To see the full list of the nominees go to doveawards.com

2007 was a great year for blogging, more bloggers about CM than ever… community and friendships started around the world. Although I didn’t blog as much as I would have liked… I managed to put some reasonably intelligent thoughts together in a why that I hope helped.

Here are the top most commented posts of 2007:

We start with:

My take on Family worship — hmm. -  This was a reaction to the ideas people have about worship…

KidsFest 2007 – I put up the promo video for our Kidsfest Event (where we record our kids albums) from Youtube and generated some talk and interest.

Moving on to There’s a kink in my hose.- This post about creativity got some people talking and helped some I hope!!!

The Final Cover Artwork – ‘Tell the World was released and I did the traditional releasing of artwork post… you can order it from Australia right now… (U.S. release 22 Jan 08 I think, U.K. rest of world similar…)

The Purpose of Purpose – Kids need to enjoy and participate in the journey, not just wake up at the destination. This post talked about what we are looking to do with kids! People liked it.

Way back in May I wrote The State of the CM Blogosphere – Presidents, heads of state, royalty all like to present their state of the nation to their people, and so I like to be presumptuous occasionally and present the State of the Children’s Ministry Blog World as I see it!! This one introduced some new bloggers to the party!

An Explosion Needed – Just last week I fired up a little and yelled at everyone to start blogging, I think I will have to write a follow up as to WHY everyone should blog

A quick recap of 07 – have a read if you didn’t catch these the first time… even comment some more.

The bottom line is that I need to announce cool stuff more… and write more really thoughtful and incisive posts about interesting topics to get some conversation happening here…

Sounds like hard work… but I’m up for it!

C YA round in 08!

I’m excited — click below to find out why:

Hillsong Kids BIG

Hey,

Quick update about Kids album 07 –

Tell The World by Julia A’Bell
Message from Hillsong’s Children’s Pastor about the project

Pre-Order Site
Now updated with a couple of downloadble items – Music video preview and ‘My Number One’ preview. You can also download the mp3 and mpegs! Check it out!

You’re the Answer – Video Preview
My Number One – Audio Preview

Enjoy.

P.S. Oh it seems the release date is the 8th of Dec, but I heard whispers it might even be quicker than that!