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Month: November 2009

A Free Resident CM University?

Over the weekend I finally got to unpacking all my books from Chicago – a lifetime of children’s ministry and the inheritance of two pastor-dads and the heritage of a CE Director mother and as Kidology’s founder (who gets samples from publishers) –  I am blessed with what could be the ultimate children’s ministry LIBRARY! I may have nearly every book and magazine ever published related to children’s ministry – and many go WAY BACK… it’s both incredible and frustrating. Not only because I could never read them all myself, but because I don’t know how to make them available to others. I couldn’t ever sell them, I don’t want to donate them, and yet they are all here sitting on shelves just LOADED with wisdom and ideas and sage advice and pages upon pages of knowledge! I wish I could scan them all and put them on Kidology.org, and yet for many of them, I’m not sure I’d have the right to do so – and researching the rights of each book would be too tedious to under take – and so here they all are – the ultimate children’s pastor library, here available only to me. It got…

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Take Your Life Back From the Church

My heart just breaks for those who are going through difficult times in ministry. Over in the Kidology forums I read of children’s ministry leaders who are going through incredibly difficult times in ministry – budget cuts, conflicts with leadership, church difficulties, etc. But one common thread that surfaces often is how over worked and exhausted leaders are and how many hours they are working and how their family life is suffering and how on the verge of quitting they are. I’d like to be a bit bold and issue a DECEMBER CHALLENGE to all children’s ministry leaders. Church ministry is hard. Church politics is so easy to run into even over incredibly petty stuff – simple mistakes turn into major missteps. A kind favor can end up stepping on sensitive toes. Generosity can be perceived as selfish ambition. You can bump into power control without even intending to. What you think will be embraced can be pushed away and what you think will be received with gratitude can instead be greeted with skepticism.  It can be incredibly hurtful and discouraging if we allow it. It takes constant, even daily reminders of WHOM WE SERVE to keep sane. People will…

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Watering Young Spiritual Fruit

Now that the third DiscipleTown unit, How to Grow Spiritual Fruit is available, I can’t help thinking about what a privilege it is for me to literally join with hundreds of children’s church teachers around the country, and some even farther away, in helping  children learn the secrets to growing genuine spiritual fruit. It is my prayer that each teacher who uses this material will find it challenging and encouraging in their own spiritual journey as well. I know that as I have studied for and prepared these lessons I have been reminded again that I need to work less at “being good” and more at drawing closer to God to let His goodness shine through me! I have to tell you, when I set out to start this series, I did not want to write just another series on the same old familiar “fruit of the spirit” stuff. I told the good folks at DiscipleLand, “teaching kids about the fruit of the spirit is like teaching someone how to be a banana. I’d rather teach someone how to grow bananas, or how to grow spiritual fruit, than do another series that just described the individual fruits of the Spirit.”…

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The Secret to Navigating the Evolution Debate

As I was surfing the web tonight, I stumbled upon an article about how deep the Congo river is: Evolution in the Deepest River in the World. As often happens if the word “evolution” is used, an evolution debate broke out in the comments. I get both amused and frustrated reading such conversations. Both by ignorant or arrogant evolutionists as well as overly simplistic or dogmatic anti-evolutionist. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind disagreeing with evolutionists. I have a honorary evolutionist friend who reads my blog (and will most likely jump on this post) and is now a friend on facebook (you know who you are) who I’ve enjoyed sparing with because he wasn’t arrogant or condescending even as he sharply disagrees with my theology and science – in fact, I’d rather argue with him than many Christians who I find petty or too quick to quote a Bible verse rather than use their brain. So for the sake of knowing someone will read it, I want to re-post here, my soap-box comment that I posted on the article linked above. Feel free to add your comments below: (I was limited to 2000 characters, hence the brevity) I love…

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Buzz Buzzed CAPTION THIS CONTEST Winner!

As promised on Facebook and Twitter, here is the picture I posted and the captions that were entered in my “CAPTION THIS” contest: OTHER ENTRIES: To manyz donutz hurted my tummiez… (Allison Waters) “i said KRYPTONITE!” not krispy kreme! (Barbara Neiger) Luke became overwhelmed after learning that Buzz Lightyear – not Darth Vader – was his true father. And to think, the clues were there all along. (Jordan Bastian) To infinity and beyond…the Krispy Kreme! (Todd Liebenow) Buzz asked Jr. to taste test his new recipe that he got from Karl’s new cookbook! (Tammy Jones @vbscrazy) Toy Story 3: No Doughnut Gets Left Behind (@alyssaglick) To Immodium and beyond! (@marc_romero) the evil pirate Zorkons were approaching us from the aft vector to raid our donut loot, but I was able to prevent them. *burp* (Glenn Woods @thurios) Donut try this at home, I’m a trained professional (@samluce) EXPOSED: Buzz Lightyears secret desire-join the police. (@j_doss) To Naptime and Beyond! (@fathershousekid) This is what happens when those intergalactic cops have their fill of doughnuts. (@franktan) AND THE WINNER IS: “To infinity and….oh, are those doughnuts? Um….never mind, saving the galaxy can wait. MMMMM….. doughnuts……” (Rob Siebert) Rob: Twitter or FB message…

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