We should be focussed on creating a Church that our Children will want to be a part of and lead.

We need to be creating a ministry where our ceiling will be their floor.

We want them to stand on our shoulders

The next senior/lead pastors of our Churches are most likely in your parenting rooms, or our early childhood ministries.

Which in my mind is the only reason to include chocolate in your weekend services.

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.

Slowly but surely every single person on the team at Hillsong Kids is becoming a blogger…  its my theory on growing a volunteer team… if every single team member will become a blogger, then maybe, just maybe every single blogger in the world will become a volunteer!

Not sure exactly on the logic yet, but it’s a work in progress.

Carlos Dyonisio (aka Cadu), is just one of the most passionate people I know about seeing the lives of kids changed for the better! He is from South America and came to Australia a number of years ago and has found himself serving here at Hillsong Church!

He is an uber nerd… I mean I am nerdy, but this guy has Linux installed on his laptop with no graphical interface… just think back to the days before windows on MS-DOS and you can imagine how he runs his computer.

His new blog is For One Child and already has some great content up.

P.S. Don’t read the post entitled Running the Race unless you really want to read about his bladder movements.

P.S. I am kinda serious about the blogging theory, the more your team can see their lives invested into being a voice for childhood the greater impact your Church community will have!

We have some comedians who read this blog. Just have a read of the comments from the previous post.

I decided against the ‘Top 10 things stolen from other people’s top 10 lists’ from Jonathon Clifforama

So I present to you:

The Top Ten Kids Music Resources.

So the rules for this little list… I am not including any of Hillsong Kids music resources. And will focus on any kind of resource that helps with creating/using/developing/producing/accompanying/pickling/whatevering music for use with kids and ministry.

This is stuff that we have used/loved and found valuable.

10. WDTV – Not the usual subject of such lists, this little device is absolutely brilliant for our multi-campus church. You put all your media… video MPEG files or a range of other formats onto any USB flash drive or an external hard drive and plug it where your DVD player used to be. The WDTV can then be used to playback all your backing tracks for Praise and Worship or curriculum in HD quality. There are a lot of generic brand units around that are similar, but I would trust the Western Digital brand any day.
I simply save an exact copy of our media flash drive on my computer, that way if it ever got lost… 20 bucks later I would simply drag the files over to a new 8/16Gb flash drive. We have this device in locations all over Sydney. It even has a seemingly well trafficked user community online. I paid around $200AU each for ours, but you can find them on special everywhere.

9. iTunes – It used to be that you needed to order CD’s and wait for them to arrive in the mail… I would be happy if I never had to buy another CD for the rest of my life. For a recent conference we needed a backing track for a Hannah Montana song. One search and click later and boom, the track is burnt to CD ready to use for the event! There are a bunch of music stores out there, iTunes is the largest and most available all over the world so it gets the number 9 slot.

That being said, there will always be a place for the humble CD, just like there is a place for vinyl records today!

8. New Wine – Ahh, the Motherland. My Dad is English and I have a British Passport so I thought I should add a nod to my ancestral roots. My connection with New Wine is Simon Parry who we wrote a song with last year called More Than Enough which is on this album right here. The New Wine team, a network of churches and believers across all denominations (from the website) do a great job releasing awesome music for all ages.

There seems to be a strength in the UK for networks connecting lots of churches together, another similar movement Spring Harvest does some great music for kids (and a few Hillsong Kids covers).

7. Doug Horley – Back in the day (which was a Wednesday), we rocked out hard for many months, perhaps years to ‘Put Your Hands in the Sky‘. It was a huge hit with our kids right around the time we started work on Jesus is my Superhero. He also pulls out some very surreal and hilarious puppet tracks on his CD’s between songs that really make me laugh.

6. Radio Disney – Millions of dollars are spent by the House of Mouse to figure out what kids like to listen to, so why not take that research, and make sure that money gets put to good use. Cultural trends are found all over this site, although in a fast paced Google world, Disney is unlikely to be ahead of the curve. They have always found their sweet spot right in the safe, profitable middle zone… not quite pushing the envelope but rarely behind.

There are fascinating discussions that can happen when you talk about lyrics with kids (especially preteens). Actually taking a song apart and dissecting it to see if those lyrics reflect the truth or are contrary to a Christ centred world view is very powerful.

5. Propellerhead Software – Creators of the popular Reason, ReBirth, ReCycle software packages. Now there are a LOT of options when it comes to creating music… on the Mac you have Garageband and Soundtrack Pro and for the Pro’s, Logic. There are a bunch of options for PC as well, but audio production is an industry dominated by Mac’s.

There are SO many options available to you but let me explain why I went with Reason + Pro Tools. The music I record is either creating demos or maybe music mixes for using in our programs. If I am recording a track at home, it is highly unlikely that it will just be left like that due to my limited recording abilities. So I chose Reason for the simple fact it has a HUGE library of Refills (sounds and loops etc) for just about every genre. So I can put something together pretty quick. It integrates tightly into Pro Tools via rewire (I just lost some of you) so I can take to our Church studio (who use Pro Tools) and continue working on it with the fancy gear.

4. Integrity Music – Integrity is a simply massive record label, they distribute all our Hillsong Albums in the U.S. and have a huge library of music! Check out the Kids link for the online store here. There is simply a heap of music here to inspire you and your kids!

3. CitiKidz – Go the Aussies! I love seeing churches rise up and put emphasis, value and effort into ministering to kids, so I have been so pumped to see Luke Harris and the Citipointe church team produce live Praise and Worship for kids! They have two albums out and you should get them for your church. In the U.S. they have partnered with Kidmo, so check out their site to order!

2. Yancy and Amber Sky Records – Yancy is a champion in music for all ages of kids and serves as director of Amber Sky Records which is part of the The rethink Group. She is a great friend and makes fantastic music AND my 4 year old has a big crush on her, although his girlfriend is now Zara and not Yancy he tells me. There are not too many artists from locals churches making music for kids, and hardly any making GREAT music, so give it up for Yancy. I am excited to see the resources coming out of Amber Sky as well!

1. Your Local Church – I have said it before and I will say it again, in terms of teaching, music, any creative endeavour, just roll with your pastor. Take your cues, direction and leading from your senior pastor/leadership team. So many of our themes and songs have come out of messages and teaching of Hillsong Church. Timing is everything… It took over 20 years for Hillsong Church to produce a kids album. I can tell you over the years plenty of people would have wanted to see music for kids produced, but I can tell you, in God’s timing he will make a way and the resources and backing will take it far above anything you could have hoped or dreamed.

P.S. Congratulations JavaJ, I will be sending you a copy of Hillsong Kids Ultimate Collection when it becomes available! (Matt, you were close).

P.S. Of course Jesus/the Bible/God etc. are all a part of this list, but like God’s thoughts are higher than yours and His ways barely comprehensible to your finite mind so is his position on this list.

Helen Burns from Relate Church in Vancouver came with her husband recently and spoke at our annual relationship seminar here at Hillsong.

We captured her talking about Kidsong World at Hillsong Conference, you can check it out below or visit the Hillsong Church Youtube channel here.

Thanks Helen, you can come back any time!

A few #kidmin people have done Top Ten lists in the past few weeks.

I wanna do one too.

Not sure what kind of list to do though…

Thinks to himself… ‘if I want reader participation I should offer them an incentive’…

Okay, if you write a comment/suggestion of the top ten list I should do and I do it. Then you will win a copy of our new, yet to be released kids album. Hillsong Kids Ultimate Collection.

Of course it hasn’t been released yet so I of course be sending it to you after that takes place.

Here is part two of my little series on using media with kids. Part one is here.

I have seen many moments of beauty and love often perpetrated by apparent pre-followers of Jesus (‘pre’ as in God desires that all should receive salvation).

Now how can someone show compassion and love but yet not be a ‘Christian’. The truth is that love is not exclusively the domain of the follower of Jesus, BUT God IS love and so all acts of love emanate from God.

All beauty comes from God. There is no beauty that does not come from the Father through Christ, Himself the embodiment of all beauty. St Augustine, Confessions

I firmly believe that all beauty comes from God. There is no second source for kindness and goodness, so no matter who is doing the act they are, and can only be inspired by God. That goes for the depiction of the loving sacrifice of a father for a son, the compassion of a warrior for an enemy, the integrity of a businessman in the face of corruption.

But no matter how brilliant movies are and how beautiful the moment, it is often in the context of a lifestyle contrary to the word of God — opposite to His Kingdom.

So the sacrifice of a father is surrounded by revenge, or unfaithfulness. The love of a couple results in immorality and adultery. No matter how moving the story lines and how teachable the moments the world view of the story teller is important and affects the story.

As a parent you would most likely be wary of movies promoting a Hindu or Muslim view of the world, but we are used to watching media that represents the family unit as dysfunctional and completely incompetent. Or enjoying with our family a movie about High School Students obsessed with relationships and being ‘fabulous’.

Could you imagine a world where the media we watch reinforces the teachings of Jesus and sets up ideals that our kids aspire to… and… doesn’t… suck.

It is a rare movie that accomplishes this without being preachy and cringe-worthy.

Find the song, the movie, the media that does this well and show your kids!

P.S. One of the most important skills the 21st Century kid needs is to be able to recognise and filter out this media (I did enjoy High School Musical), so I am not saying get rid of the TV and move into an Amish community, but what a blessing it is to consume media that doesn’t give you heartburn and indigestion on the way down.

P.P.S. The Church stopped creating culture and started consuming culture many decades/centuries ago. I have great hope this is the generation that will reverse this!

I would love to highlight one of the main reasons we use media with our kids during weekend services.

When I grew up in New Zealand there were only two TV channels, the appropriately named One and Two, so my friends and I watched the same TV programs:

Macgyver and Knight Rider

(I cried when Kitt ended up in the acid pool and they had to remake him. Episode 314 Junk Yard Dog).

It united us as kids and has given us a common language and reference.

This has all changed with the stunning width and breadth of media available today. Our media choices are used to differentiate and separate us into tribes/groups. Are you an emo kid, do you like Hip/Hop, or are you a fan of ?

One of the many reasons we use media in our services is to create a shared experience.

No matter which campus I go to, which of our extension services I attend there will be children who I share a common language with… not about just Disney or Nickelodeon but with our curriculum and the Big Message videos. We could talk about Funny Man Dan and his latest exploits or some song they saw last week and as the media is created to point towards our theme and (hopefully) toward Jesus the relevance to their lives should immediately obvious.

And just like today as the mist of time clouds my eyes as I think about Macgyver diffusing a bomb with a toothpick, or Michael Knight foiling an international plot I hope that our kids today will remember with fondness and hopefully understanding what they experienced as a child.

(This may turn into a series methinks)

WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?

No seriously, you’re reading the blog of a Children’s Pastor… and seemingly remaining interested… unless you just searched for the term ‘Don’t Do Normal’ and this page came up, which raises two very important points… 1 Thanks Google, and 2 Why can’t people who are searching for ‘How to give away one million dollars’ come here?

(Hmm… just writing that down has increased my chances)

So what are you doing here?

You are set apart not just as a believer in Jesus Christ, but a person who may be called to minister to children! You are like a statistic within a statistic, a piece of a piece of a pie.

• You are unusual
• You are counter-cultural
• You are different
• You are standing out
• You are separate, distinct and set apart
• You are peculiar, unconventional and too some, strange
• You are contrary not to the Word of God, but to the world
• You are an visiting alien here for a specific purpose and goal
• You are opposed, not to the world but to anything that exalts itself against the Kingdom of God
• You are anything but average

YOU’RE A DEVIATION FROM THE NORM

Once you become a follower of Jesus normal just isn’t good enough anymore. You are part of the world that is to come… The Kingdom of God is here… and yet to come. The Jews were not expecting Jesus. They expected a conquering king, a strong soldier. He would free them from all their enemies. He would change the way that they lived. There would be freedom from the rule of their enemies.

This is what the religious leaders got in Matt 5… the beatitudes

• The way up is down
• The way in is out
• The way first is last
• The way of success is service
• The way of strength is weakness
• The way of security is vulnerability
• The way of protection is forgiveness
• God’s power is made perfect… in our weakness
• Want to become great? Become least.
• Want to discover yourself? Forget your self.
• Want to ‘get even’? Bless and love them.
• Jesus didn’t just tell us to turn the other cheek we have to turn our hands and heart toward the other and do good.

You’re not normal, so don’t pretend to be.

Anyway, different is far more interesting.

Totally copied this from Kidology

But this is just an example of the gold in the site which has been redesigned and added a heap of new features and exciting content! Check it out!

The mind of a 6-year old is wonderful. First grade… True story: One day the first grade teacher was reading the story of the Three Little Pigs to her class. She came to the part of the story where the First pig was trying to accumulate the building materials for his home. She read, ”…And so the pig went up to the man with the wheelbarrow full of straw and said, ‘Pardon me sir, but may I have some of that straw to build my house?’” The teacher paused then asked the class, “And what do you think that man said?” One little boy raised his hand and said, “I think he said… ‘Holy Crap, a talking pig!’” The teacher was unable to teach for the next 10 minutes.

From the Humour section.