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

• PART 1 of 4 – TRANSFORMATIONAL CHILDRENS MINISTRY by IVY BECKWITH (A Dad in the Middle Review)
• PART 2 of 4 – TRANSFORMATIONAL CHILDRENS MINISTRY by IVY BECKWITH (A Dad in the Middle Review)
• PART 3 of 4 – TRANSFORMATIONAL 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, “Transformational 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.

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

• PART 1 of 4 – TRANSFORMATIONAL CHILDRENS MINISTRY by IVY BECKWITH (A Dad in the Middle Review)
• PART 2 of 4 – TRANSFORMATIONAL 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, “Transformational Children’s Ministry,” and looked at the importance of story in transforming kids. Today we will continue our chapter-by-chapter synopsis and review of the book looking at the transformational power of ritual.

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

PART 1 of 4 – TRANSFORMATIONAL 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.

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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.

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It’s been a while since I did an installment from the book What Matters Now in Children’s Ministry, and this one is long overdue.  In the book Sam Luce chose the Word “Redemption” as What Matters Now.

Sam starts with a great summary of the importance of redemption:

One of the greatest messages we can give to every family we come in contact with is the message of redemption. In kids’ ministry, today, we deal with more broken hearts and broken families than ever before. I believe every family needs to experience the power of redemption.

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Why did I review this book?

When Larry Shallenberger announced several months ago that he was planning on doing a book blog tour to celebrate the fifth anniversary of his book, I eagerly signed up.  I don’t know Larry personally, but I do follow his comments on Twitter and read his blog, so I kind of feel like I know him even if he doesn’t follow me on Twitter.   Based on that presumption of relationship, and the generally laid back nature of people in children’s ministry, I will refer to him as Larry throughout this review.

Anyhow, I knew that regardless of what the book was about, Larry’ has a great sense of humor and an easy to read writing style, so I knew reading his book wouldn’t be a complete waste of time.  That said, when I found out the topic of the book was leadership, I got just a little bit leery.  It’s not that I don’t like reading about leadership or being a leader.  I actually do, but the world has plenty of books on leadership, and I have read a bunch of them.  It seems the everybody who has ever been a boss or started a ministry or had people report to them has taken it upon themselves to write a book on leadership.  After a while, they all just seem to say the same thing – do it my way and you’ll be OK, and it ultimately all runs together into a fuzzy blurry haze in my head.  Besides that, I already have a group of people whose writings, podcasts, etc. on topic of leadership I devour.  They include people like Andy Stanley, Jim Wideman, and others who I have grown to trust in this area and have learned a lot from.  With all due respect to Larry, I wasn’t sure what he could offer that hadn’t either already heard or wasn’t getting from some of the other resources I was reviewing.

There’s an old, slightly cliché, saying that “You can’t judge a book by its cover.”  I agree in principal, and Larry’s book turned out to be a prime example of this for me and another reason I try not to let pre-conceived notions totally guide what I choose to read.  Now, I’ve never recommended that someone not read this book, but if it hadn’t been for this blog tour, I’m not sure I ever would have read it either.  Had that happened, I would have missed out.

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We have now come to the final chapter of Spurgeon’s book of advice to those who work with kids both in church and as parents.  In this final chapter, Spurgeon continues to examine what we can learn from the story of Elisha and the Shunammite woman’s son.  He turns first to the location where the dead boy was placed and the method by which Elisha raised the boy.  Spurgeon notes that:

“The great secret lies in a large measure in powerful supplication.”

Elisha went into the room, shut the door, and prayed to the Lord.  As teachers and workers in Children’s Ministry, our power must come from God, and that power comes in large part through prayer.  Spurgeon explains: (more…)