Bible Dude Prince Dastan?

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…

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The Gospel According to Flying Chickens?

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 –…

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Hey Hartland Campers!

Hey Hartland Campers! I’m finally home, after spending a week in Yosemite with my family. I had a Super Duper GREAT time with you at camp! I enjoyed traveling back in time and pretending to be…. Count Karl deBastian We played our own Medieval Times Battles! I even celebrated when I beat the kids (I know, it wasn’t even fair) But then it was time for your favorite knight: Sir Arty Learnalot (from Sure Word Forest) Of course, you guys liked his RAPS best of all! I felt bad about his “arm rod issues” but its hard to wear armor when you’re a puppet! Of course, Arty’s job was always to correct the bad teaching of my Arch Nemesis who would come out early in the worship time and write a non-virtue on my white board… you know his name… The Duke of Defiance! He left his evil note all over camp trying to ruin my lessons and throw you off from the Nine Virtues we were learning. In case you forgot… here are the nine Vices “The Duke” tried to teach you, and the Virtue I was teaching later in the lesson: Here is the Duke’s Virture, followed by…

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Blog Tour Interview with Brian Haynes

Brian Haynes, author of the Shift, has a new book coming out titled, “The Legacy Path.” I was honored to get an advance copy and enjoyed reading it. I was also giving the opportunity, as part of a Blog Tour, to ask Brian a few questions, and get his answers. Here they are: 1.            What do you think are the biggest challenges children or family pastors face when attempting to “partner with parents” in raising children to be fully devoted followers of Jesus? There are several challenges that we face when attempting to partner with parents.  One is that parents feel completely inadequate to disciple their own children. Another is the battle for time to equip parents in the busyness of every day life. Maybe most practically is the reality that children’s pastors or family pastors likely have to change the way they work in order to partner with parents. The mindset shift is the change from just creating ministry processes to equip kids verses creating processes that disciple kids and their families when we have access to the parents. It is impossible to do it all, so children’s pastors and family pastors have to learn to focus, equip, delegate,…

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Drawing the Bible; Turn Off the DVD Player

I’m speaking this week at Hartland Bible Camp in California. It’s my first time here, but I am really loving the experience. I’ll post more about the camp at the end of the week. I wanted to post a few pics about one of my favorite teaching methods… Bible Story Drawing. Besides drama, illustion, and some of my other usual techniques, for the actual Bible story segment, I am illustrating the Bible Story by drawing it as I teach it. Since the drawing gets erased each day (Actually, by my arch nemesis before the next lesson, more on that in a future post!) I take a picture to save my works of art for posterity! Here they are, perhaps someone else might enjoy them… as you can see, my artist skills peaked around the second grade. As for the lesson content, I am covering The Nine Virtues and teaching Bible Characters that displayed them. I’ve done four so far: Courage: Displayed by David: (Click image to see full size) HONOR: Displayed by Young Jesus (Click image to see full size) TRUTH: Displayed by Peter (Click image to see full size) LOYALTY*: Displayed by Esther (Click image to see full size)…

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