I’m still catching up on notifying you all about articles I published over on Ministry-to-Children.com. The article titled What Can a 2-Year Old Teach You About Prayer? was published on June 13, 2010.
Brief Synopsis: In this post I share what my two year old Nathan taught me about prayer. It’s amazing what a toddler can teach you!
About a month or so ago, I started to accept ads on this site to recover some of the cost of hosting, software, etc. My hope has been, and continues to be, to find sponsors which the users of this site will find valuable. I think I have been able to accomplish this, and I like our sponsors so much that I have decided to feature them from time to time on this site beginning with today.
We begin Spotlight on our Sponsors with Christianity Cove. Rather than wax eloquently on my own (right!), I decided to ask Mary-Kate Warner some questions about the site to give us a better idea what they are all about. Here is the transcript of that interview:
This year, I have been reading through Charles Spurgeon’s Morning and Evening Devotional. Well, I’ve gotten a little bit behind, and I am busy “catching up.” This morning, I was reading the evening devotional for July 11 and found a rather startling entry based on the verse in Joel 1:3 which reads, “Tell your children of it, and let your children tell their children, and their children to another generation.”
Spurgeon wrote:
In this simple way, by God’s grace, a living testimony for truth is always to be kept alive in the land—the beloved of the Lord are to hand down their witness for the gospel, and the covenant to their heirs, and these again to their next descendants. This is our first duty, we are to begin at the family hearth: he is a bad preacher who does not commence his ministry at home. The heathen are to be sought by all means, and the highways and hedges are to be searched, but home has a prior claim, and woe unto those who reverse the order of the Lord’s arrangements. To teach our children is a personal duty; we cannot delegate it to Sunday school teachers, or other friendly aids; these can assist us, but cannot deliver us from the sacred obligation; proxies and sponsors are wicked devices in this case: mothers and fathers must, like Abraham, command their households in the fear of God, and talk with their offspring concerning the wondrous works of the Most High. Parental teaching is a natural duty—who so fit to look to the child’s well-being as those who are the authors of his actual being? To neglect the instruction of our offspring is worse than brutish. Family religion is necessary for the nation, for the family itself, and for the church of God. By a thousand plots Popery is covertly advancing in our land, and one of the most effectual means for resisting its inroads is left almost neglected, namely, the instruction of children in the faith. Would that parents would awaken to a sense of the importance of this matter. It is a pleasant duty to talk of Jesus to our sons and daughters, and the more so because it has often proved to be an accepted work, for God has saved the children through the parents’ prayers and admonitions. May every house into which this volume shall come honour the Lord and receive his smile.
I am working on putting together a Minute to Win It themed games night for our church’s Awana program this year. We added a special Minute to Win It themed game nights for our 3rd-6th grade girls and 3rd through 6th grade boys. I’ve always wanted to try out these games, but our clubs (and game times) run between 50-60 up to 100 or so kids, and these games don’t work well in that setting. Instead, for our Minute to Win It game night, I plan to pick a handful of the games and set them up around the auditorium. The kids will be able to practice them as they wish, and then we will do competitions throughout the night for prizes, etc. Fortunately, there is no lack of information out there from other people who have undertaken similar projects. Here is a sampling of what I’ve found thus far:
Youth Leader Stash has done individual entries on a number of the games. Here they are: (more…)
I’m still catching up on notifying you all about articles I published over on Ministry-to-Children.com, and it seemed like the middle of Go Dark week was a good time. This article was titled Where is Jesus in this Bible Story? was published on June 10, 2010.
Brief Synopsis: In this post I examine how to make sure that Jesus is at the center of every lesson you put together for children’s ministry.
My wife and I have four kids – four very different kids ranging in age from 3 all the way up to 17. We know enough, and we have been through enough, to know that we don’t know it all when it comes to being parents. That said, we have had enough experience at this point, that we are not often phased by the things that they do – sometimes surprised, but not often phased. That is, until last Saturday afternoon. On what was an otherwise normal Saturday afternoon, for a brief period of time, my wife and I experienced a paralyzing fear that only parents can relate to.
We were preparing for a family outing to go to dinner with my niece and nephew and their kids for the fourth birthday of my great-nephew. We had a fairly lazy stay-at-home Saturday morning and afternoon following a hectic week of VBS at church, so we all needed to shower and get ready to head to dinner. My wife had finished her shower and was getting ready, then I hopped into the shower to get ready myself. As I headed down the stairs to put my shoes on and head out the door to go to dinner, that’s when it all started. I started through my pre-leaving mental checklist (yes, I’m a list person):
