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A Happy Grace-Filled Easter to YOU!

Happy Resurrection Sunday… Hello Friends. Grace = Getting what we don’t deserve. (vs. Mercy = Not getting what we DO deserve!) That’s what this weekend is all about. It’s about the Grace God showed us by looking past our short-comings, our failures, and our imperfections… and loving us anyway. It’s about wanting us to be Family in spite of us. It’s about Him DYING to make us Family, even though we were wrapped up in ourselves and our needs. We’ve all got people in our lives (and families) and drive us nuts and who are wrapped up in themselves. People who have let us down. People who don’t deserve a second chance. People who don’t deserve forgiveness. People who are a “lost cause.” Christ was demonstrating for us what He expects of us by what He did for us. While WE were a lost cause, beyond hope, undeserving, selfish and wrapped up in OURselves – He died for us, and then did the biggest “come back” in His-Story to redeem us. We have no excuse to hold anyone at arm’s length or hold a grudge. Those who have truly experienced Grace, find it so much easier and natural to extend…

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Help Wanted: Workers or Volunteers?

On Kidology.org right now there is a discussion right now titled Alternative Names for Volunteers, and folks are discussing what we can call those who staff our kids ministry besides “Volunteers” because that word can often not capture the commitment we are seeking to have. The word “worker” came up, and it reminded me of something funny from my college days. As a Moody Bible Institute student, I always got a kick out of the evolution of the weekly volunteer “PCM” requirement. It stood for Practical Christian Ministry assignment. My ‘kick’ wasn’t that it was a bad thing or required, while lots of students complained, I loved it and learned a lot as they required a wide variety of assignments over the course of your college experience. What I thought was a little funny was that when my parents attended MBI in the 60’s it was a PCW assignment: Practical Christian Work assignment. Over the years Moody dropped the unattractive word ‘work’ for the more appealing ‘ministry.’ Now, I could just as easily defend the change and see the benefits of the word “ministry” over “work, BUT we ARE called to WORK for the Lord! I just think we sometimes…

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Just Thinking About Kids… and Behavior

Children get enough discouragement from adults telling them constantly what they are doing is wrong or needs to be better. They need to hear more often how they are loved, forgiven and believed in. They need to be encouraged and reminded that while their behavior may not always be good, their value and worth is good beyond description! They are good kids in God’s eyes because He made them and whatever God made IS good! After all, every day of creation God finished by saying, “It is good.” As we shepherd the children in our ministries it is critical that we focus on their hearts more than their behavior. When we see bad behavior, our impulse needs to be not to correct the behavior, but to mold the heart that determined the behavior. There are plenty of techniques out there that can shape children’s behavior, but if we only succeed in changing behavior, we will have only created little Pharisees who know how to behave at church. But it will be unlikely that we will impact much how they behave at home and even less how they behave at school and after they outgrow children’s ministry. But if we reach…

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The 30 Percent Rule

I loved Christine Yount’s “from the editor” in the latest edition of CM Magazine. She admits, as we all would (or should!) – those unsettling moments when we feel out of control when everything isn’t going the way we think they should. No matter how hard to try, there are constant crisis’ and struggles and things going wrong in our life and work… and we just can’t seem to get a handle on things. It can be really frustrating. We have to look like we have it together for our staff and volunteers, so we let it out finally leak out to our spouses. (My poor wife!) Which Christine says she did on a walk with her husband, who gave her the following advice: “You need to understand that one-third is going to be icky – and just accept it.” Too often we focus on what we CAN’T CONTROL, instead of on what we CAN. We can spend a lot of time complaining to our spouse about what we can’t change – instead of making changes we CAN make, or pursuing excellence in the areas we CAN control. What can you change? What do you need to change? What are…

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Coming in Next to Next to Last

I’m excited to announce I came in in Next to Next to Last on the Church Leaders Top 200 Church Blogs on Two Websites! (Actually, it’s the same list in two places) and Yup, I was Number 198 on a list of 200! Barely made it! Whew! But what an honor to be noticed and because they did the ranking based on Google ranking and subscribers to Google Reader and RSS feeds, I must say: THANK YOU to those you YOU who read my blog, because it must mean you find my posts interesting, helpful, encouraging or something in order to keep coming back. I often say “I’ve been blogging since before there were blogs” and so it’s nice to know there are people reading! I don’t often post (or concern myself) with awards or recognition (my dad raised me to not give much thought to such things) but as long as I am here to say “Thanks”, I should mention Tony Kummer’s Blog List – not because I’m on it – but because so MUCH WORK goes into creating these lists, and he has 99 OTHER great Kidmin Bloggers on it, all worthy of checking out, in addition to…

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