Kidologist.com: Karl Bastian’s Personal Site and Blog
Archive for July, 2008
July 31, 2008 at 8:12 pm · Filed under Podcast
It’s been a fun week as Gus and I have been doing several CM Celebrity Podcast interviews! If you haven’t already, subscribe to our podcast and don’t miss out on these upcoming entertaining and informative podcasts coming in the next few weeks. Our interview with Scott Turansky and Joanne Miller from the National Center for Biblical Parenting is LIVE NOW and we’ve got some good ones coming in the weeks ahead, including AWANA’s Executive Director of Global Training, Larry Fowler; Author of Rock Solid Kids and the brand new Raising a Modern Day Joseph. (Do not hesitate, order now!)
Sign ups for this FREE Podcast is growing daily, don’t get left behind! (Tip: If you listen through, Gus will give you $20! Details in the podcast only!)
July 29, 2008 at 10:20 am · Filed under Children's Ministry, DiscipleLand, Leadership
While the word “curriculum” may solicit yawns from many people, don’t underestimate the importance of curriculum on your ministry! The foundation of your educational ministry is your curriculum. Everything else hinges from and is built upon the foundation laid by your educational hour teaching material. How high and how deep and how broad your educational ministry will be is greatly determined by curriculum.
HOW DO YOU CHOOSE CURRICULUM?
THE WRONG WAY:
- Use what you have always used
- Let your teachers each pick their own
- Look at tons of samples and pickone based on what appeals to you
- Depend on curriculum promotions
- Use what some other great church uses
THE RIGHT WAY:
- Determine what YOU would like to accomplish in your Sunday School educational program.
- List your educational goals
- List weaknesses with current material.
- Make a list of what you are looking for.
- THEN look at published materials that match your criteria.
I remember when I started my previous ministry, our curriculum situation was a mess! Here was what we were facing:
- Every teacher used what they liked, over five published curriculums were in use, some taught without any published material.
- Repetition and Omission of Bible stories was not only likely, but expected.
- No idea what was accomplished in the years spent within the Children’s Ministry.
- Lots of good ministry going on, but no way to know what was going to happen, or to evaluate results.
So what did we do? I called for a planning meeting and asked our teachers to determine what we wanted for our children. (without looking at a single curriculum sample!) Here is the list of what these godly and experienced teachers determined we wanted:
- Gospel Oriented
- A comprehensive overview of the entire Bible
- Specific Goals and Objectives for Each Age
- Progressive, and not Repetitive
- Get children into the Word themselves
- Emphasis on Scripture memory
- High Quality Materials and Helpful Resources
- One year cycle (meaning teachers teach the same thing every year)
- Missions Focus
- Flexibility for teaching styles and holidays
- Tools to help parents engage in the process
THEN we hunted to see if any curriculum met ALL of these criteria.
Only one curriculum offered all the things above that our teachers wanted:
NOW IS THE TIME TO EVALUATE YOUR CURRICULUM. We used DiscipleLand long enough to see kids go entirely through the process and could see the results.
They have since added AMAZING on-line tools for kids and parents to further engage in the learning going on at church. You MUST check out DiscipleZone.com
FOR AN IN-DEPTH REPORT I WROTE ON DISCIPLELAND CHECK OUT THE KIDOLOGY SPOTLIGHT MINISTRY RESOURCE: DISCIPLELAND
If you haven’t done so already, NOW is the time to re-evaluate what you are using this fall in your educational ministry. Here is a quote we recently had posted in the forum discussion on DiscipleLand:
We ended up dividing our kids 6-9 and 10-12 and used DiscipleLand with the younger and it was amazing! The kids loved it, which is totally cool because it didn’t have any “high techy” stuff, but kept their undivided attention. I loved that during our review this past Wed the kids retained most everything! This is 2 thumbs up! Thank you Karl for introducing us to this. I would not hesitate to tell anyone to give this a try. They will be hooked.
For some VERY HELPFUL TOOLS for evaluating your ministry, be sure to see the evaluations available on the DiscipleLand Equipping Center. Every ministry ought to work through these tools WHETHER OR NOT they use DiscipleLand, or DiscipleLand will fit their ministry structure or needs.
Check out DiscipleLand, you’ll be glad you did! There is a reason more and more churches and switching to DiscipeLand!
July 27, 2008 at 5:59 pm · Filed under Family, Life, Luke, Parenting, Post via iPhone
There’s just something about a boy and his watermelon. I love how everything Luke does he does with so much joy. There is nothing mundane or normal to him. What is routine for us is pure excitement for him. Whether it be simply getting dressed, taking a bath, picking up toys or eating a watermelon – he approaches everything with such a sense of adventure and joy that I wonder sometimes why we lose the pure satisfaction from the simple things in life. Why do we need vacations or thrill parks or something “new” or risk to excite us?
What if we could find deep joy and satisfaction in something as ordinary as a watermelon?
My boy has taught me that. My joy comes from sharing in his.
The next time you have to do something ordinary or mundane… smile.
Your Heavenly Father is watching and delighting in your life too.
July 26, 2008 at 11:54 am · Filed under golf
HELP! I’ve been invited to a golf outing TOMORROW and, well, I need some quick advice so I don’t make a complete fool of myself.
Below is a picture of my clubs that I inherited from my late grandfather. (from whom I got the name ‘Karl’ for being born on his birthday.) As you can see, they are literally from the middle of the past century when woods actually were made from wood!
So I did go out and buy a new set today. While I could compete on the MPGA tour (mini golf) I have very little experiece with Big Golf. (kinds like Big Church to a kids ministry guy)
I think I have a descent swing that won’t get me thrown off the course for leaving a trail of holes behind me, but any advice anyone might have, IM ALL EARS! Just post away in comments please!
I’ll post later how it goes!
PS This is the first post I made directly from my iPhone, with picture! Hey, it’s exciting to me, ok?
UPDATE: I did OK. The advice to swing at 3/4th power really was the secret. I hoped to be under 10 on each hole, and only got double digits once (an 11 on some stupid putts), and averaged under 8, so I was pleased! It was the first time I golfed in over ten years, and I’d been less than 10 times before that. I ended up with 66 on 9 holes. (we didn’t do 18, but doubled that would be like 132 and I wanted to be under 180!) Plenty of room for improvement! 
)
July 17, 2008 at 7:56 pm · Filed under Children's Ministry, Kidology
If you know the old worship song, “Lord, You are more precious than silver…” then you’ll like this new version for kids that I wrote years ago. It came out of Kids Concert of Prayer. We were singing this song, complete with “more costly than gold” and “more precious than diamonds” and it occurred to me that kids probably don’t care much about gold, or silver or diamonds, and even if they did, they don’t HAVE any, so its easy to sing about how God is better or more desired than these. On the spot, God gave me a new song – it just flowed out, and the cool thing was that as I sang it (quite seriously, not in a funny way) some kids cried out “NO WAY!” on lines like “more awesome than all my toys” or “more than Nintendo 64″ or “better yet than my virtual pet.” Which helped teach the point, do we really love God more than these things?
It reminded me of Jesus’ words to Peter, “Do you love me more than these?” My song would have to about loving God more than my Mac or my iPhone or my GPS or my convertible… would my heart say “NO WAY!”? I sure hope not! But it proved the point! (What would your song include?)
However, since I am leading campfire worship tomorrow night at a family camp out I realized I need to update the song for this new era
The words I wrote ten years ago were:
Lord, You are, more awesome than all my toys,
Lord, even more, than Nintendo 64.
Lord, You’re better yet, than my virtual pet…
Well, as you can see, todays kids may have never even played on a N-64 and most don’t know what a virtual pet is, at least not, the keychain ones. (They are now ‘virtual’ online!)
If you don’t know the original song, here are the original lyrics, followed by my revised kids version.
Lord, You are, more precious than silver,
Lord, You are, more costly than gold.
Lord, You are, more beautiful than diamonds,
And nothing I desire compares with You.
Lord, Your love, is wider than oceans.
Lord, Your love, is deeper than seas.
Lord, Your love, encompasses the nations,
And there’s nothing more I’d want inside of me.
So here is my new version of the complete song, and YES, you are welcome to use this!
Lord, You are, more awesome than all my toys,
You mean more to me, than my Nintendo Wii.
Lord, You’re better yet, than my Webkins Pet,
And nothing I desire compares with You.
Lord, Your love, is higher than the Sears Tower,
Your love is wider, than a giant plasma TV.
Lord, Your love, is better than Barney’s,
And there’s nothing more I’d want inside of me.
You really have to crone the “better than Barney’s” line, you can even slip in a “I love you boys and girls” in Barney the Dinosaur’s voice right after that and before the final line! Oh, and I did change “screen” to “plasma” to update the second verse, but other than that it’s the same. (Although way back the original version had “wider than the ‘Fridge”, something only Chicagoians would get from when the ‘Fridge’ played on the Chicago Bears.)
ANYWAY – just wanted to post these new words. Perhaps some others can use them in children’s church. The kids really enjoy singing a version they can relate to. And if you hear a “NO WAY!”, well, then you have an opportunity to teach what it means to love God more than everything else.
July 15, 2008 at 12:14 pm · Filed under Children's Ministry, FREE Stuff, Kidology, Podcast
ChildrensMinistryPodcast.com is now live, as is my second podcast with Gus.
The topic: Making Your Ministry F.U.N.!
You can even subscribe via iTunes so you don’t miss an episode! MUCH THANKS to children’s pastor and voice and technical talent Scott Neubauer for his help in bring my podcast from the dream stage to reality. That’s his voice you hear in the intro and closing, and who is doing coordinating all the technical aspects of the podcast with Kidology’s web director, Steve Tanner. I’m very blessed to have such a technically skilled team here at Kidology so I can focus on the ministry side of things (and sit and talk with puppets!)
Check out the latest podcast today!
July 14, 2008 at 1:16 pm · Filed under Children's Ministry, Puppets
Hey, jump over to www.jellytelly.tv and see what Phil Vischer is up to now. (sorry, doesn’t work in Firefox, use IE or Safari)
It’s exciting to see what is coming, and his message is right on! We need to engage new media to reach today’s kids, especially the ones that don’t go to church.
July 12, 2008 at 1:15 pm · Filed under Luke, iPhone
ok, testing to see if I can now post pictures from my iPhone to my blog with the new iPhone 2.0 software and a combination of applications, well, here’s to the test…..
(hope it works!)
July 4, 2008 at 10:17 pm · Filed under Blog World, Kidology, Leadership, Podcast
The time has finally come! I’m launching a Children’s Ministry Podcast this summer, and as usual, my blog readers get the first peek! So here is very first episode:
Episode 1: What Are Your Red Sneakers? In this very first episode of Children’s Ministry Podcast, Karl and his faithful sidekick Gus ask listeners, “What Are Your Red Sneakers?” Tune in to learn helpful insights and tips to help you and your children’s ministry become more effective.
DOWNLOAD HERE: Children’s Ministry Podcast w/ Karl and Gus – 001 (MP3 14.5mb)
Let me know what you think! And any ideas for direction/topics along the way.
UPDATE: You can now listen and subscribe at Kidology.org/podcast
