OK, as a peace offering to all my friends (and Canadians) who don’t share all my conservative Republican views, here is a tribute I think we can all agree with! GOD BLESS AMERICA… ALL OF US! (even the weirdos) HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY! Thanks to Tannerman on Twitter for the link!
Over the last two years I’ve been going through my hundreds of VHS tapes from over fifteen years of children’s ministry as a children’s pastor and came across a video recently that I made TEN YEARS AGO around this time as a children’s ministry appreciation video. This was in my pre-Mac days and so I had a lot of help from the youth pastor at my previous church, Jim Crouter, in making this. It’s been nearly two years since I resigned from the Village Church of Barrington and they have recently hired a new children’s pastor. I’m very happy for the church, but it has made me sentimental about all the many happy memories I have from eight wonderful years on staff there. (Josh, you snagged up the best CP job in the country!) VCB was a wonderful church to work at with a great staff and awesome volunteers and, of course, super kids! I know some of my friends there follow my blog so I thought they’d enjoy seeing what their teenagers looked like ten years ago! I still know the names of most of the kids in this video. Wow, does time go by fast! I miss them…
The Kidology Univeristy is coming THIS FALL! (And it will be bigger and better than ever!) In this ToyBox Tales inspired video, meet some of the speakers as Karl does some “man on the street” interviews with just a few of the presenters coming to Chicago this fall! You can also download a higher quality QuickTime version of the video for promoting the event at your church. (19MB) There are a ton of great conferences for children’s ministry but we truly believe you will be missing out if you skip this one! We have put together a Mega-Conference line up for a non-mega price! For our 10th Anniversary Celebration we have pulled out all the stops, and may never do a conference this size again. Kid U 2008 is the year not to miss! Great trainers like Jim Wideman, Greg Baird and more! Extended leadership workshops where the presenter gets time to provide personalized coaching and interaction. Over thirty volunteer workshops on Saturday, bring your team! God Rocks in Concert! Participate in a Children’s Pastor Kidz Blitz Live! Compete in the Sport Stacking Tournament! Small Dinner Groups with speakers and sponsors! AND MORE for under $200! REGISTER TODAY BEFORE IT…
How many times have we prayed and asked God to bless our efforts… well, no more! Read on to discover why you should never ask God to bless your work! We want God to look down from heaven, see what wonderful things we are doing for Him, and to bless what we are doing. I was challenged to reconsider this common practice by my written mentor, Oswald Chambers, when he wrote: “Many a Christian worker has left Jesus Christ alone and gone into work from a sense of duty or from a sense of need arising out of his own particular discernment.” This does not necessarily mean we are “sinning,” but that WE are generating the spiritual activity ourselves. Though as we get busy and drift from God, sin certainly can result! Oswald referring to our Christian activity, “There is no sin in it, and no punishment attached to it; but when the soul realizes how he has hindered his understanding of Jesus Christ, and produced for himself perplexities and sorrows and difficulties, it is with shame and contrition he has to come back.” It sounded so spiritual, the old saying I latched onto as a kid: “God can’t move…
Why are Christians afraid of politics? Getting Christians to discuss politics is harder than getting non-Christians to discuss Religion. I know the old saying, “Don’t discuss politics and religion,” but that saying comes out of the fear that we shouldn’t talk about things of which we might disagree. But Christians, of all people, are the very ones who OUGHT to MODEL talking about what we disagree about. I mean, don’t we celebrate how well different denominations can get along and often work together even though they have very sharp differences when it comes to theology? So why can’t we discuss politics nicely? Every time I do a post about politics I get e-mails about them – and very few comments on the post. No one ever e-mails me in response to my blog posts (except a few relatives that don’t know how to do the comments – I love you guys, and its ok!) But when it comes to politics, I get e-mails. And I don’t mean all the e-mails are negative, most aren’t – but I find it interesting that they are sent privately via e-mail instead of posted live on the blog. If Christians stay silent, we surrender…
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