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Village Church Kids Ten Years Ago

Over the last two years I’ve been going through my hundreds of VHS tapes from over fifteen years of children’s ministry as a children’s pastor and came across a video recently that I made TEN YEARS AGO around this time as a children’s ministry appreciation video. This was in my pre-Mac days and so I had a lot of help from the youth pastor at my previous church, Jim Crouter, in making this. It’s been nearly two years since I resigned from the Village Church of Barrington and they have recently hired a new children’s pastor. I’m very happy for the church, but it has made me sentimental about all the many happy memories I have from eight wonderful years on staff there. (Josh, you snagged up the best CP job in the country!) VCB was a wonderful church to work at with a great staff and awesome volunteers and, of course, super kids! I know some of my friends there follow my blog so I thought they’d enjoy seeing what their teenagers looked like ten years ago! I still know the names of most of the kids in this video. Wow, does time go by fast! I miss them…

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A Walk Down Kid U Street

The Kidology Univeristy is coming THIS FALL! (And it will be bigger and better than ever!) In this ToyBox Tales inspired video, meet some of the speakers as Karl does some “man on the street” interviews with just a few of the presenters coming to Chicago this fall! You can also download a higher quality QuickTime version of the video for promoting the event at your church. (19MB) There are a ton of great conferences for children’s ministry but we truly believe you will be missing out if you skip this one! We have put together a Mega-Conference line up for a non-mega price! For our 10th Anniversary Celebration we have pulled out all the stops, and may never do a conference this size again. Kid U 2008 is the year not to miss! Great trainers like Jim Wideman, Greg Baird and more! Extended leadership workshops where the presenter gets time to provide personalized coaching and interaction. Over thirty volunteer workshops on Saturday, bring your team! God Rocks in Concert! Participate in a Children’s Pastor Kidz Blitz Live! Compete in the Sport Stacking Tournament! Small Dinner Groups with speakers and sponsors! AND MORE for under $200! REGISTER TODAY BEFORE IT…

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God, Do Not Bless My Efforts!

How many times have we prayed and asked God to bless our efforts… well, no more! Read on to discover why you should never ask God to bless your work! We want God to look down from heaven, see what wonderful things we are doing for Him, and to bless what we are doing. I was challenged to reconsider this common practice by my written mentor, Oswald Chambers, when he wrote: “Many a Christian worker has left Jesus Christ alone and gone into work from a sense of duty or from a sense of need arising out of his own particular discernment.” This does not necessarily mean we are “sinning,” but that WE are generating the spiritual activity ourselves. Though as we get busy and drift from God, sin certainly can result! Oswald referring to our Christian activity, “There is no sin in it, and no punishment attached to it; but when the soul realizes how he has hindered his understanding of Jesus Christ, and produced for himself perplexities and sorrows and difficulties, it is with shame and contrition he has to come back.” It sounded so spiritual, the old saying I latched onto as a kid: “God can’t move…

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Why Are Christians Afraid of Politics?

Why are Christians afraid of politics? Getting Christians to discuss politics is harder than getting non-Christians to discuss Religion. I know the old saying, “Don’t discuss politics and religion,” but that saying comes out of the fear that we shouldn’t talk about things of which we might disagree. But Christians, of all people, are the very ones who OUGHT to MODEL talking about what we disagree about. I mean, don’t we celebrate how well different denominations can get along and often work together even though they have very sharp differences when it comes to theology? So why can’t we discuss politics nicely? Every time I do a post about politics I get e-mails about them – and very few comments on the post. No one ever e-mails me in response to my blog posts (except a few relatives that don’t know how to do the comments – I love you guys, and its ok!) But when it comes to politics, I get e-mails. And I don’t mean all the e-mails are negative, most aren’t – but I find it interesting that they are sent privately via e-mail instead of posted live on the blog. If Christians stay silent, we surrender…

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My New Obama Logo, I Hope He Likes It!

It seems that I see a lot of Obama bumper stickers, so I’ve been thinking of getting one for myself so I can join the crowd, but I don’t see anything on the stickers that describes Obama’s political philosophy. Yeah, I know “Change” but he offers nothing of real change, only more extreme liberal solutions to problems that liberal “solutions” have created to begin with. (unless you only listen to the mainstream media who have forgotten how to research and report.) And can I just say, I LOVE to hear this man speak! He is the master at saying nothing so well! I always find myself agreeing with him since he says nothing of substance. How do people not see that he is hiding what he truly plans to do? It’s so obvious, it’s like a kid answering his parents questions truthfully when they are trying to get to the bottom of who broke the cookie jar. “Yes, the Cookie Jar is broken. There are far too many broken cookie jars in America today! Something must be done about the lack of cookies in this house. Who is going to clean up the broken the glass? And what about the…

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