Day 3 – Thankful for My Mom

This is part of a series called 24 Days of Thankfulness. These posts are in RANDOM order, NOT priority order. Each is something I am thankful for leading up to Thanksgiving. DAY #3: My Mom It’s hard to believe this Christmas Day will be 15 years since my mom went to meet Jesus. Yes. The day we celebrate “God With Us” – is the day my mom went to be with God. Peacefully, after my little brother gave her permission to go. Though ill with cancer, she had kept her humor and loving gift of encouragement. My favorite inheritance is the boxes of cards of and letters from all over the world of lives she touched. Those who have heard me speak, have heard her words through me, even when I wasn’t crediting her. She is a part of me. They have heard the story of my call to ministry – when I said at age ten, “I want to me a children’s evangelist when I grow up,” and she said, “What’s growing up got to do with anything? You start next week,” and the kidologist was born! I am thankful for a mother who saw past the boundless energy…

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Day 2 – Thankful For God’s Word

This is part of a series called 24 Days of Thankfulness. These posts are in RANDOM order, NOT priority order. Each is something I am thankful for leading up to Thanksgiving. DAY #2: God’s Word I have loved God’s Word since childhood. I remember being encouraged to mark up my Bible as a boy with underlines and highlights and I got so carried away with it, even illustrating it with stick figure drawings of the stories that my dad once commented, “Karl, it will be easier if you just highlighted the stuff you didn’t like.” I am thankful as well to teachers like Helen Reed and Margret Bramble and Charlie Hann and my Aunt Linda (and of course my parents) who made learning fun as well as challenging so that the Word of God was always relevant to my life. When I turned twelve and became a man (I was never a teenager, but that’s a post for another time) my dad presented me with a Thompson Chain Reference Bible and said now I was ready for a Man’s Bible. I was in awe! 25% of the Bible was study tools, and there were linked chains of references on every…

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24 Days of Thankfulness

Today I launched a little Thanksgiving Project over on Kidology.org called “24 Days of Thanks-Giving” – basically I am providing a simple Word doc you can download and every day from Nov. 1 until Thanksgiving add ONE thing you are thankful for. It’s really just something I need to DO MYSELF – but I thought maybe others might want to join me, and I’d enjoy reading/seeing what others are thankful for. So you are welcome to use the Word doc, or just post in the forum what YOU are thankful for! So let me begin today, with my first post. These are NOT going to be in priority order, otherwise I’d have to go God, Family, etc. and then later on, people might judge me for putting one thing “above” or “before” another – so right out of the gate let me say, these posts will be in RANDOM ORDER of things I am THANKFUL FOR! DAY 1 – Yosemite DAY 2 – God’s Word DAY 3 – My Mom DAY 4 – Photography DAY 5 – Pandora DAY 6 – George Lucas DAY 7 – Breckenridge DAY 8 – Barq’s DAY 9 – Mercy & Grace DAY 10 –…

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Kidmin Coaches Talk Equipping

This week on Kidmin Talk, the Kidology Coaches joined me in California to record my podcast – the topic? How to EQUIP yourself and your volunteers in children’s ministry. Continuing our ABC’s of Kidology, and taking up a Kidmin Key Word with each podcast, I’m on the letter “E” – and this week I had not one, but TWO “E” Kidmin words to Talk Kidmin about! PART ONE of the podcast is already live discussing EQUIPPING, and PART TWO will go live next week when we switched gears to the second “E” of Kidology’s Mission: ENCOURAGEMENT! Be sure to listen each week to Kidmin Talk, join the weekly discussion, and help shape the show with your questions, comments and suggestions – as I am responding to YOUR input in determining the direction the show takes! CONNECTING w/ KIDMIN TALK: E-mail: karl@kidmintalk.com Twitter: @KidminTalk Discuss Kidmin Talk #006 in the Forums

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Impact Kids Globally… NOW

It’s not every day you can DOUBLE YOUR MONEY investing in reaching kids! READ ON! That’s why Kidology gave to this and why I am urging you to help as well! We’ve been friends for several years now, but I must say God is doing amazing things through Gordon and Becki West and KidZ At Heart International. I’m not trying to make a shameless plug here, though you should know what they’re doing… around the world. KidZ At Heart exists to equip people to reach and teach kids for Christ within their own culture. They train children’s leaders here in North America to then go and train others cross-culturally using the principles from 2 Timothy 2:2. Each short-term trip provides practical and culturally-relevant children’s ministry training, and KidZ At Heart is committed to at least three consecutive years of training in the same community. But then, what’s the next step after several consecutive years of training? How can we better train and equip local leaders to then in turn train others in the community year round? KidZ At Heart feels led to launch KidZ At Heart Leadership Academies (aka KAHLA) in India and Uganda. KAHLA will provide in-depth training for…

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