Did you know that YOU are a Bible character? It’s true! Consider this. An upcoming lesson in DiscipleTown has the theme “Pray and Obey,” and this is the “Connect with Your Kids” element. I wanted to share it with you early, because I think it is relevant to your lesson every week, no matter what you may be teaching this Sunday. It’s all about sharing when you have done what you are asking your students to do. It’s all about BEING what you are TEACHING. That makes YOU a “Bible Character.”
Used with permission from DiscipleLand.com
It is one thing to tell kids they need to pray and obey. It is entirely another to give them a real world example from someone they know who has done it. Prayerfully reflect on a time in your life when you have needed to “pray and obey,” and then God gave you the power to do the right thing. Share your story. It can have a powerful impact on your students. Don’t underestimate the power of your story on your students. We often tell Bible stories and forget that these Bible “characters” were just ordinary people like us. They didn’t know their stories would end up in the Bible, they just made choices like you and I have. So, in a sense, your story is as much a Bible story as Joseph or Esther or Ruth or Daniel. And your story will mean as much to your students as theirs. Perhaps more, because your kids actually know you!
(Excerpt from an upcoming “Connect with Your Kids in DT21“)
Tweet, Facebook and E-mail this URL to all your friends and family: www.kidology.org/hunt Easter is a pretty big holiday, and while it doesn’t get the attention that Christmas gets, it’s a pretty important event! In fact, all of Christianity rests on this historic event! And yet, often kids don’t know all the important details of this story as well as they do Christmas. So I sat down with my wife a few months ago and we brain-stormed, “What would be a fun game to help kids learn the details of the Resurrection Story in an exciting way?”
We came up with a game based on the classic CLUE game and we think you and your kids are going to LOVE IT! We hired the top artist in children’s ministry, Todd Hampson, who has worked on What’s in the Bible, JellyTelly, Order of the Ancient, Yancy (not Nancy) videos and more – and then got our very own webmaster Steve Tanner, who is a CLUE game connoisseur – and came up with a game that is both fun and educational. Next, I asked a new friend I met at CPC in Orlando, Stanley Mearse, to team up with me on writing twenty short devotionals on the places, objects and people of the Resurrection Story, and he came up with the idea of adding QR codes to the game to add an extra element of interactive fun. Others helped with editing, design, game input and tweaks, and in the end, the collaborative process has resulted in one of the most creative and fun projects from Kidology yet! It is called: Resurrection CLUE HUNT!
At middle school tonight, Pastor Michael, our middle school pastor made a HUGE MESS at church!
In case you are wondering… those are feathers!
Hundreds… no. Make that, thousands of feathers!
HOW did these feathers get everywhere, you ask?
WATCH THIS VIDEO TO FIND OUT:
As you heard in the video, the lesson was on Gossip, and Pastor Michael told an old story about a student of a rabbi who was confronted about gossiping about the teacher and he broke open a pillow and asked the student to collect all the feathers. When the student said the request was impossible, the teacher replied that is what gossip is like. You can apologize and be forgiven, but the consequences still blow around and can’t be recovered.
That “spreading of the gossip” was certainly true with the feathers as they spread all over the church building!
The kids tracked the mess all the way out to the lobby! LOL Oh, the stories I could add of lessons I’ve done that made huge messes, but I’ll save those for another time.
What a GREAT WAY to make lesson’s memorable for kids! These students will long remember that when you gossip, you make a mess of things, and you can’t easily get back the words you carelessly tossed about!
Even if it IS a BIG JOB to clean up after the lesson.
EVEN IF YOU AREN’T IN AWANA! If you are in kids ministry, and if you are in Colorado, let me encourage you to JOIN ME at one of the Colorado Awana Ministry Conferences that I’ll be ministering at this fall!
While there are some workshops specifically for Awana Clubs, most of the training (and all the classes I am teaching) are general Kidmin Training that will apply to ANYONE in children’s ministry!
I am speaking and doing workshops of two of the Awana Ministry Conferences coming up in the Colorado/Utah Region:
AUGUST 17-18, 2012 in Colorado Springs
and
SEPTEMBER 21-22, 2012 in Denver (Wheat Ridge)
MY WORKSHOPS:
Friday Evening:
Making Your Class Rock (extended session training)
Saturday:
Workshop 1 – Teaching Lessons That Last
What makes a lesson memorable? Learn how kids minds and memories work – and how you can teach lessons that last not only through the week, but into their adult life and genuinely impact eternity! Kids love to learn – but they learn best through experience! Create lessons that impact kids beyond just the brain. Get them excited about their faith and walk with God.
Workshop 2 – Object Lesson Explosion!
This is a fun, interactive, objects-in-hand, hands-on workshop. Give ANY object to the Kidologist, and he will instantly create a biblical object lesson from that object – and then show you how to do it too! Discover why teaching with objects is so effective and why Jesus used object lessons when He taught! You will learn how to start with an object and form a spiritual lesson from it, or how to start with a topic and determine what object or visual will
Workshop 3 – Kidology 101: Effective Relational Ministry to Kids
Kidology is the study of kids and their world. To be an effective minister to today’s children, one must learn to do it from within the context of their culture. A working knowledge of a kid’s world is an inroad to their heart. Learn how to relate to kids and keep up with their ever-changing culture.
Workshop 5 – Bringing Stories to Life
There is a reason Jesus used stories. Life IS a story. History is “HIS Story.” Learn the secrets of how to be an amazing story teller and how to have your kids on the edge of their seats when you tell stories!
Closing Keynote Session: YOU, The Missing Piece in a Child’s Spiritual Journey
You can get complete details at www.Awana4Kids.org – you don’t need to come both days, you can choose just Friday evening (I’m the only trainer) or just Saturday (Lots of workshops to choose from, myself and many others) or come for both!
VISIT THE WEBSITE and click on the options to the left under CONFERENCE for INFO, REGISTRATION and WORKSHOP LIST for downloads with all the details.
I got into cooking shows while researching for the Kids Church Cookbook, and I was amazed at the wide variety of shows on the Food Network. One I discovered was called Dinner: Impossible! Loosely hinting at the 1960’s show Mission: Impossible, the host is given a challenge that includes some kind of meal he needs to prepare, some obstacles he has to overcome, and a time limit. He doesn’t know what the challenge will be until he arrives, and then the clock starts counting down. If I were put in that situation, I’m sure everyone would either starve or be forced to eat terrible food.
I would love to be the host of a show called Kid’s Church: Impossible! I think it would be a wonderful challenge to be given a Bible story or Biblical topic, some limited props or supplies, and a time limit and have to come up with a complete lesson and then teach it. Perhaps that sounds like a nightmare situation to you, but the reality is, it happens all the time in children’s ministry. Maybe it doesn’t happen on Sunday mornings, because you ought to be planning your lessons weeks in advance.
But you don’t have to be in children’s ministry long to learn that there are many situations in which you find yourself suddenly needing a lesson. Perhaps your senior pastor comes up with a special program and asks you to provide “child care” at the last minute and even says he’d like you to teach on the same topic as he will be teaching to the adults. Or maybe one of your volunteers calls in sick the night before and can’t send you the lesson plan but says, “we are learning about Joseph and are right up to the point when he becomes second in command and his brothers show up.” You’ll need to pick up right where last week’s lesson left off. You may even be out of town on vacation and visiting your family’s church when the children’s pastor gets ill, and they say, “Aren’t you a children’s pastor? Can you do Kid’s Church? It’s Missions Sunday, can you take over?” No sweat! You can jog your mind through the C.R.E.A.T.E. mental triggers or whip out your CREATIVE IDEA THING-A-MA-JIGGER*, and you will be good to go!
I hope that you have been encouraged to start flexing your creativity muscle. The more you create, the better and faster you will become. Soon you will be amazing yourself and your students with your creative ideas. And don’t forget, you can share your ideas on Kidology.org so that other teachers all over the world can use your them too! Imagine…children in classrooms all over America, literally in classrooms thousands of miles away, laughing and learning because of YOUR idea!
Because Jesus Loves Children,
Chef Karl D. Bastian aka The Kidologist
*The CREATIVE IDEA THING-A-MA-JIGGER is a device that comes with the Kids Church Cookbook Part 5 that I invented that helps you trigger creative ideas… Here are some quotes about my little invention and how it has helped people who didn’t think they were creative:
Looking for FREE Online Training? Looking for help to be better equipped as a teacher in your Sunday School or other children’s ministry venues?
Did you know that DiscipleLand.com offers FREE Online Training Webinars?
Dick Crider and Karl - Kid U 2005
My good friend and a very wise and experienced children’s ministry guru, Dick Crider, who has decades of teaching experience both as a professional and as a father and grandfather, provides LIVE online training seminars via DiscipleLand that you can sign up for and attend FREE of charge.
HOWEVER – attendance is LIMITED so it is important to sign up in advance for the online workshops that interest you.
For a complete list of the ONLINE SEMINARS or other training opportunities available from “Professor Crider,” visit DiscipleLand’s Training Events Page for complete details.
I just got home from a week at Walt Disney World after CPC Orlando. I was lucky enough to be at Magic Kingdom the same day as the President of the United States! (or was I?) When we entered the main gates we discovered that Main Street was closed to normal low class citizens such as myself and my family:
A nice wall said, “You are not important enough to get to see Main Street today.” (See the metal detector door?)
Secret Service agents and other White House personnel roamed around where we were unable to go. So how were we to get to the rides? We had to enter through a side gate and go around the ugly backstage of Main Street… not the best of circumstances… right?
But leave it to Disney to make a bad situation into something fun and unique!
Too bad a camera doesn’t capture sound (Apple, are you working on that?) There was lively music playing, employees with Micky gloves on waving us through, giant flags and floats from the parades to see.
Disney took what could have been a very negative situation and made it into something fun and festive!
They even set up some photo opportunities along the way:
Luke posed in front of a Treasure Float that was very shiny and glittery and…
I posed in front of a Giant Crocodile!
By just putting a little creativity and energy into it, they turned a boring walk through the backstage into a fun detour. Later, Main Street was open again, but we felt like we got to see some things that most visitors to Magic Kingdom don’t get to see… so it was special instead of a bummer.
(And we got to see President Obama later from the People Mover posing with the Royal Family in front of the Disney Castle, which was kinda cool!)
When things go bad in ministry, instead of considering it a negative – instead, think of it as an opportunity to be creative! People will end up thinking it was a special Sunday instead of a bummer if you just put a little time and creativity into creating an environment and experience that is unique.
Let’s suppose you had to pack for a week of teaching and ministry and all you could pack was a small “Kidmin Toolkit” – what would you pack into YOUR travel kit?
A Bible? Naturally. An iPad? Perhaps. A yo-yo? A small puppet? I’d pack a bag of jolly ranchers and a sling shot! Some action figures? Remember, this is ALL you will have for a WEEK of ministry. What will you need?
I’m gonna mail the best responses in COMMENTS a prize and then I’ll post what I’d put in MY Kidmin Toolkit – and then I’d encourage you to PACK YOUR OWN Kidmin Toolkit and have it READY TO GO, because you never know when you might just need it!
UPDATE:THE $50 PRIZE PACK Very soon… someone in comments, is going to WIN this prize pack I’ve assembled:
(Note: It all packs flat to fit in your Kidmin Toolkit!)
UPDATE: I was overwhelmed by the response to this blog post. Everyone submitted Great Ideas! However, I could pick but ONE winner, and the Kidmin Toolkit Winner is: Joan Eppehimer
SEE ALL THE RESPONSES & COMPILE YOUR OWN KIT!
We have compiled ALL THE RESPONSES into a single list so you can create your own Kidmin Toolkit! Download as a PDF or Word Doc:
I’m always on the look out for ministry tools in the most unusal of places… as I explain in the Kids Church Cookbook, you can’t wait until you NEED a ministry tool to looking for it, you must already have it when you think, “I wish I had a… oh! I do!” Because you are a collector of odd ball #kidmin things!
Well, on vacation I went to an antique outlet mall and saw this action figure from the semi-recent Disney release Prince of Persia (which was a pretty cool movie, by the way, if you didn’t see it.)
Now, if you’ve been a fan of ToyBoxTales.com you know I’m a collector of action figures and have a wall of them labeled by their usefulness in teaching videos. (The site now features Object Talks on the home page, the videos featured in DiscipleTown, the kids church curriculum I write, so search the archives for nearly 100 videos with action figures!)
I picked up this dude because I think he looks like he could be a Bible Character!
MY QUESTION TO YOU: Which Bible Character do YOU think Prince Dastan could play in a ToyBox Tale? And why? Who does he look like, biblically speaking?
I’m currently speaking at Camp Timber-lee, and posted on Facebook that I got to share the Gospel with flying chickens this morning!
Gave me the idea… I wondered if anyone might like to take a stab at guessing how one might share the Gospel with flying chickens! For the BEST “Gospel Presentation with Flying Chickens” provided in comments, whether it is the one I used, plain funny, or another great original idea – I’ll mail you one of MY flying chickens!
I’m teaching this week on Spiritual Climbing, a topic I have done here many times, so I wanted to a take a totally new approach (my past series is available on Kidology) so I am going through the Awesome Adventure Series (gave a copy to each camper) adding an object lesson with a piece of hiking equipment I use when I go hiking and comparing to spiritual growth, but for the game, I created 12 games with these flying chickens I got on sale at an outlet store! The store couldn’t believe it when I took every chicken in the store up to the counter!
But when you find something that is usually over $10 for only $3 – a smart children’s pastor buys them all! Every game is now an object lesson that fits my lesson! The campers are going nuts over these flying chickens, and they even make noise after they hit the ground. You HAVE to have unique games like this when you are a camp speaker, it ends up being the high light. Of course, I have a new puppet as well, he is a monkey name Pogi, who sounds like Yogi Bear, but Pogi is a Filipino word. Go ahead, Google it.
SO THE CONTEST IS ON!How would YOU share the Gospel with Flying Chickens? Share in Comments? (or just comment for fun!)
I am personally convinced that one person can be a change catalyst, a “transformer” in any situation, any organization. Such an individual is yeast that can leaven an entire loaf. It requires vision, initiative, patience, respect, persistence, courage, and faith to be a transforming leader.
~ Stephen R. Covey
