Children's Ministry Magazine Live Conference

We started the conference with a talk about pennies. We guessed how many pennies we had handled in our life, and then we were asked to draw the front and back of one. Needless to say, the drawings were not entirely accurate. The speaker used this illustration to show the concept of "Home Blind". Sometimes we have done something so many times, or handled something so often that we are blind to it. We really don't know all the components or details of it, and we need to re-examine our methods periodically to make sure that we are really serving our children in the best manner possible. I agree. I think a great way to do this is conferences, but more effective I think is reading. Try to read everything you can get your hands on about your chosen field. Reading others' ideas and methods will either inspire you to try something new or to confirm that what you're doing really is the best thing for your church/situtation at that time.

We also talked about the parable of the seeds -- Matthew 13:18-23. The see that fell on the foot path represents the kids that hear the word and can't understand it. A way we can prevent this is to use an easy to understand translation. I reccommend NIV or CEV. I would not reccommend the Message or the NLT because these are paraphrases (the Message a very liberal paraphrase), and not really an accurate translation. Though at times they can be useful to help you rephrase things into kid language, I would use with caution, and with a more reliable translation handy. Make sure when you are explaining a Bible story, to ask questions -- checking for misconceptions. Explain the difficult concepts to the kids, and then have them explain them back to make sure they got it. We did a number of other exercises to reinforce this point, none of which seemed entirely helpful or memorable, so I won't bore you with the details!

As promised in my other hub, The rewards and challenges of children's Ministry, here are the top things influencing kid culture at the present time:

• Hannah Montana
• Computer in their own room
• Multi-tasking
• High School Musical
• Japanese Animae
• Naked Brothers Band
• XBox, Wii, Play Station 3
• Mom is their #1 Hero
• Kids weight is schizophrenic -- some are way too skinny, and others are obese with many girls admitting to unhealthy weight behavior

It's important that we keep updated on kid's culture so we can relate to them, relate the Bible stories to what they know, and so we can warn them about potentially dangerous influences.

We continued the conference with the parable of the seeds. This time, we examined the seeds that fell on the rocky ground. In this situation, kids hear the Bible, readily accept it, and then fall away because they don't have deep roots. Problems and persecutions take them away from God. In order to prevent this, the Speaker suggested engaging children's emotions, actively involving each child, and using interval reinforcement. They suggest emphasizing the same Bible point six times in 30 days -- this will lead to a 90% rate of remembering.

I agree with these concepts, and would highly reccommend a curriculum that already has them built in. It's tough trying to think of ways to actively involve kids each week, unless you're getting suggestions from somewhere. We have recently started coordinating our Children's Church program (Sundays) with our Kids for Christ program (Wednesdays) in order to teach the same Bible point in different ways. Children's church uses FaithWeaver Family which has a lot of hands-on activities and Kids for Christ using Faithweaver Friends, which is more geared to outreach. Both are good curriculums, and pretty easy to use. I would suggest reviewing past lessons with kids at the opening and closing of each night. Say something like "Last week we learned about... This week we learned about... and Next week we'll learn about..." have the kids tell you something they remember. You get the idea!

"The seed that fell among the thorns represents those who hear God's word, but all too quickly the message is crowded out by the worries of this life and the lure of wealth, so no fruit is produced" (Matthew 13:22)

In this section, the speaker covered the ABC's of Bribes. They explained:

B: Built-in Competence -- Make sure that your activities are age appropriate so that kids will feel a sense of accomplishment.

C: Choice -- Find alternatives for kids that may not want to do the assigned task. Instead of Memorizing a verse, they can make a poster about it. I think this is a great idea, and hope to use it more in our Kid's Club.

D: Delight -- Use variety, surprises, imagination, and challenging to keep kids asking for more. I agree with this too. Children's Ministry is not easy work. It takes commitment and creativity. Kids have tons of stimuli available to them everyday. We have to make sure we're not protraying God's word and His Church as boring and dull.

The last session was about the good seeds that were bearing fruit, but honestly I didn't get anything out of this one. We took a personality quiz that seemed to lead to no where, and we talked more about the points we already covered, but nothing Earth-shattering here!