Home Archive by category "Kidology Update" (Page 5)

Category: Kidology Update

Don’t Be the Kidmin Who Misses This!!

There is an amazing new animated movie coming March 2018 that will only be in theaters ONE WEEKEND! I got to enjoy a an early screening with my family and it is amazing! Imagine Frozen, Lord of the Rings and Narnia blended into a wonderful children’s story that is a beautiful parable of the importance of not forgetting ancient Truth. It has adventure, catchy music and a powerful message for all ages. A fallen angel is trapped in the form of a dragon, known as the Ice Dragon, banished as long as the people remember the Song their Creator gave them. But as time goes by, Truth fades into legend with only a few believers left – and the dragon breaks free! How will the villagers defeat the mighty dragon? You’ll have to find out for yourself! From the creator of God Rocks comes this delightful story that was written by the creator, Bruce Stacey, decades ago for his own children and has now been brought to life in a spectacular animated film. As children’s ministry leaders – we need to both celebrate and support creative efforts like this to engage our culture and share the Good News! Instead of…

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Sending Kids on a MISSION!

Kids come to church, listen, learn and then go home. But how do we impact how they live? It is so important to give children practical things they can do to live out what they are learning at church. Your curriculum likely calls that the “Application.” But just telling kids an application, doesn’t mean they’ll remember to do it! So how do you break into the routine and busyness of their week? Just like your lesson, you need to make the application fun. As we teach kids to share, give and be generous, we need to also provide them a way to DO it. How? Send them on a Mission! Our church is currently collecting school supplies for teaches and students at an inner city elementary school our church has partnered with. That is their mission. My mission is to make collecting these supplies fun. So last week, my son and I went to Walmart to demonstrate the Mission we want to send our kids on. Here is the video we made to get our kids excited about collecting these supplies. Making your own promo video is easy. I needed only an iPhone, a little bit of planning, and less…

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Creatively Reaching Kids, with Spinners!

We must constantly be looking for new ways to reach kids. The best way to get new kids to come to church is to get the kids we have to invite their friends. We can challenge them constantly, but like us, kids need incentives. So I decided to tap into the latest craze and create some excitement with spinners. You know, those silly spinning things that every kid is carrying around and driving adults nuts with. I ordered some custom ones for my church and am launching the effort this Sunday with this video: The idea is that kids who invite a friend who has never been to our church BOTH the guest and the friend who brought them will get one of these “exclusive, limited edition, available-nowhere-else custom Highpoint Kids Spinner!” I’ll let you know how it goes! I’ve got several hundred to give away! UPDATE: We’ve had over twenty visitors, here are a few pictures:

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Stop Trying to Bear Good Fruit!

For years one of my “pet peeves” theologically has been how much I hear kids being taught to “work on the Fruit of the Spirit.” There are countless kids church series that go through each fruit helping kids to work on them, one by one. I’ve even seen sermons to adults admonishing Christians to work on being more kind or gentle or self-controlled. But there is a serious flaw in this approach! Fruit produced by our effort, isn’t Fruit of the Spirit – it is fruit of the flesh, even if the end result is good. Stick with me for a moment before you start yelling at me! I know the Bible says to produce good fruit – we should! But too often our approach is backwards. In our church’s scripture reading plan, I find my self in the book of Matthew, and was struck with this truth again as I read the following passages: By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? Likewise, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good…

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So Long Summer Party! Break the Mold!

This past Sunday I had a gift – an extra week between the lesson series I am doing. I finished up my summer series based on Rock Solid and will be starting GO! I love when I get a chance to break the mold and do something completely different! It is exciting for the kids and refreshing for the volunteers! So last Sunday, at my wife’s suggestion, we had a So Long Summer Party! We moved outside, played games, did acoustic guitar worship, ate popsicles and enjoyed using no multi-media! What a treat to not have to set up the computer, if only for a week! I planned the whole thing on one piece of paper! I gathered all the games I could find from my house and the church, and created a fun obstacle course where several teams could play at the same time. (I did a short Facebook Live with my drone if you’d like to see it from the air!) When is the last time you broke the mold and did something completely different? Shake things up. Do something new. Try something different. Don’t get stuck in a rut!

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