I have given myself a challenge for the next 26 days – post the complete A-Z of Ministry to Children.

C… Christ, cooking, craft, cookies, camping…

C is for Culture – Whether we want to accept it, ignore it, or use it–the reality is that our kids are growing up under the influence of a media-saturated culture.

If we refuse to engage young people in biblical discussions about what they’re watching and hearing, we make it easy for them to compartmentalize their faith and put it aside when they move beyond the church walls.

Through discussions that reveal either the gospel’s presence or absence in popular culture, we help young people develop a biblical filter that shines the light of Jesus’ truth on media messages, encourages them to live authentically at school and church, and engages the Holy Spirit’s discernment in their lives.

Knowledge of kids’ culture also enhances our efforts as missionaries within that culture.

I like to USE culture, when you use something you have power over it, you take away fear. I certainly don’t want my kids to be afraid of any forms of media. Book burnings should be left in the past lest they turn into iPad burnings!

Now in an effort to drum up comments… Harry Potter – discuss

(please don’t)

P.S. Hillsong Church now has an official Blog! VIsit Hillsong Collected and read my first post at the site - The Dispenser of Enthusiasm.

So here are a few blog posts I have loved recently.

The UP Plan – From Rob Bradbury: “As family pastor I want to see all of our kids grow UP into strong Christians who love God with the lot.”

Read These Seven Books, and You’ll be a Better Writer – From Don Miller: In the last few weeks Don’s blog has become one of my favourites.

2010 Kids Ministry Blog Madness (Final Round) – I was out in the second round, but make sure you vote in the last round!

Preaching with the help of a mind map – From Ryan Frank: It reiterated an idea I read about a few years ago, using mind maps, which I have found invaluable.

Enjoy.

Over at Ministry-To-Children.com there is a great comp going on.

2010 Kids Ministry Blog Madness

Vote for Your Favorite Kidmin Blogger

Here’s How It Works – Listed on the site are the top 64 children’s ministry blogs arranged in a four division bracket-style tournament. (I guess in the U.S. sports are divided into four main divisions, which is cool… so my blog is in the West Division).

Sunday 21 March 2010 is when round #1 will close and the top picks in each division will advance.

So I have to call in some favours… especially for those volunteers and pastors at Hillsong Church you need to jump on over there and click the vote button in the appropriate spot.

Click here for the comp.

On our Hillsong Kids Big website we added a news item with a fun Video blog, but to save you the chance of a repetitive strain injury I have embedded it here.

Aren’t I thoughtful…

Visit the Follow You Curriculum page here and check out all the bonus material we’ve just uploaded for you!

As always we value your feedback and questions, so please feel free to contact the BIG team anytime.

Today, being Thursday I posted a guest post at The Thursday Blog, which is the blog of a certain Funny Man Dan. He is currently in that season of life that exists between the due date and the baby actually appearing so asked me to post something for him.

Check it out:

A Tale of a womb and a man.

So yes, another life goal completed… to guest post at the blog of Funny Man Dan.

Under increasing international pressure and a well funded lobby group I need to tell you about one of the greatest new blogs online.

You may know Funny Man Dan from our Hillsong Kids DVD’s and as the HipHopAPotamus in Love Never Fails.

The fact is he is also a brilliant writer and a great friend who I have watched impact the lives of so many young people over the years.

So you need to read The Thursday Blog. Yep, he writes once a week on a Thursday.

Please stop by and leave a comment… he is completely obsessed with stats (like most new bloggers) so send some friends.

So after losing a whole bunch of blog posts due to some database weirdness and the backup that my webhost was about 2-3 days before but unfortunately  after the issue and my backup was from 8 Jan so about a month ago I went back into google reader (which obviously cache’s each blog) and pasted each post back into my site…

Phew, although I did feel a little lame about my rather scarce blogging pattern over summer highlighted by the realtively quick time it took to reconstruct my blog.

And I lost a whole HEAP of comments on each of those posts! If I lost one of yours I am truly sorry… it was your work!

So…

1. Backup your work regularly.

2. Backup your work regularly.

3. Regularly is like once a week for me.

The good to come out of this is I will endeavour to post some quality posts with increased frequency.

(write more good stuff)

Dave out.

Hillsong Conference is here! It kinda snuck up on me this year, but it is already having awesome impact. Our new pre-teen age group is absolutely rockin’, in fact all our age groups at conference seem so better targeted and focussed!

Well it’s almost midnight, video of day one below!

So my Senior Pastor Brian Houston has started a blog. Yay!

Although without RSS feed and no real home page… here is the link to his latest post.

My Heart for the House

It’s great to see him writing some thoughts down like this!

[UPDATE] Front runners are: Karl $10 on childrensministrypodcast.com and Andy $100 on childrensministryblog.com | auction closing in one week.

[UPDATE] So no-one wants the podcast domain? You can get it for ten bucks and support a worthy cause!! Auction closing in one week and 3 days!!

[UPDATE] First Bid is in. I accidentally disabled comments for this post!! But they are reinstated now! Thanks Andy!

So I have a couple of domains for sale.

1. CHILDRENSMINISTRYBLOG.COM
2. CHILDRENSMINISTRYPODCAST.COM

I bought these a few years ago to link to my blog and podcast. After moving the blog and stopping the podcast they are just sitting there gathering dust (if that is possible online).

“Imagine being the life of the party, the envy of your friends
and enemies as you blog at these two exclusive domains”

Now domains are worth pretty much what someone will pay for them, but I did go to dnScoop to get an appraisal.

childrensministryblog.com

childrensministrypodcast.com

So I am going to run a little auction for both of them… see the top for updates!

Not that you would notice anything different, but I finally moved my website host over the weekend.

My blog had been unavailable for the last few days of May 08 because I blew through my bandwidth limit (which is admittedly pretty small on account of the cheap deal I had going).

Then after my support request bouncing back, I though it would be better to quit while I was ahead and jumped ship to someone who promises to answer support tickets (tested them already and they passed).

So please let me know I you see any weirdness on the site, otherwise we continue your regularly scheduled program.

Thanks for reading, I really appreciate all three of you

I know, I know, there are actually 7 readers, just wanted to look modest.