All week, we have been reviewing and commenting on Ivy Beckwith’s newest book called “Formational Children’s Ministry.” You can find previous installments in this review here:

• PART 1 of 4 – FORMATIONAL CHILDRENS MINISTRY by IVY BECKWITH (A Dad in the Middle Review)
• PART 2 of 4 – FORMATIONAL CHILDRENS MINISTRY by IVY BECKWITH (A Dad in the Middle Review)
• PART 3 of 4 – FORMATIONAL CHILDRENS MINISTRY by IVY BECKWITH (A Dad in the Middle Review)

In the last three installments in this series, we introduced Ivy Beckwith’s newest book, “Formational Children’s Ministry,” and looked at the importance of story and ritual in transforming kids. Today we will continue our chapter-by-chapter synopsis and review of the book looking at the transformational power of relationships beginning with family relationships, and I will offer my overall review of the book. Finally, I have included links to various reviews from other blogs which were posted as part of the book blog tour.

Continue Reading…

Welcome to our third installment in this week’s review and commentary on Ivy Beckwith’s newest book called “Formational Children’s Ministry.” You can find previous installments in this review here:

• PART 1 of 4 – FORMATIONAL CHILDRENS MINISTRY by IVY BECKWITH (A Dad in the Middle Review)
• PART 2 of 4 – FORMATIONAL CHILDRENS MINISTRY by IVY BECKWITH (A Dad in the Middle Review)

In the last two installments in this series, we introduced Ivy Beckwith’s newest book, “Formational Children’s Ministry,” and looked at the importance of story in forming kids. Today we will continue our chapter-by-chapter synopsis and review of the book looking at the formational power of ritual.

Continue Reading…

Last time, we began our summary and review of Ivy Beckwith’s newest book called “Formational Children’s Ministry.” You can find previous installments in this review here:

PART 1 of 4 – FORMATIONAL CHILDRENS MINISTRY by IVY BECKWITH (A Dad in the Middle Review)

Today we will move into several chapters of the book in which Ms. Beckwith dives into transforming children through the use of story beginning with God’s story and moving on to other stories which are also important in the spiritual transformation of children.

Chapter 2 – The Child and God’s Story

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Ivy Beckwith serves as the Minister to Children and Families at The Congregational Church of New Canaan in New Canaan, Connecticut. Her most recent writing endeavor is entitled “Formational Children’s Ministry” and is subtitled “shaping children using story, ritual, and relationship.” The book first caught my eye in the bookstore because I love the idea of storytelling as a way to convey the excitement of the Bible to the children we minister to, and I was excited to read it.

Formational Children’s Ministry was the subject of a book blog tour several months back in which many prominent Children’s Ministry bloggers offered their opinions of the book. The book was already on My 2010 Reading List, and reading the reviews of others from the blog tour encouraged me to move the book to the top of my reading list. It was a rather quick read, and I have been planning on posting my own review here on Dad in the Middle for quite some time. As I started to summarize and review this book, I realized that this article was getting quite long, something I am not unaccustomed to here on this site. Nonetheless, I decided to break this review into several parts and post it as a series rather than one review. As I said, the idea of teaching kids the Bible through story is something near and dear to my heart, so several posts seem quite warranted. Plus, last week was Vacation Bible School at my church, and breaking this article into several parts allowed me to take a little break from writing during this busy week.

In the final post of this series, I will include links to the other reviews (from the Children’s Ministry Blog Patrol) so that you can read the opinion of several others in addition to my own review. In order to adequately review the book, I thought it necessary to first include an overview of the book which I have done chapter-by-chapter. Following the description of each chapter, I will offer my own thoughts (in red) where applicable. At the end of the review, I will offer my overall thoughts on the book and recommendation.

Continue Reading…