Kidmin and Culture
Latest Post
Christ in the Chaos
(image originally uploaded to Flickr by pixel pro photography south africa)
Here are some thoughts I sent to the 4th and 5th grade leaders that I have the privilege of working with at MPPC:
I’m not sure where the week went… I don’t know about you, but every year I promise to slow down at Christmas (the other time is Easter). Then Christmas rushes on by like a bullet train, leaving me gasping for breath and my head spinning. I feel bad for not reflecting… for not having that “Silent Night” moment. As I’ve been writing the storyteller scripts for the Christmas lessons, I rediscovered something: there was nothing calm or “silent” about the circumstances before, during and after Jesus’ birth. From a scandalous pregnancy, to a 3-day journey on foot, to a baby born amongst the smell of hay and animal dung, to shepherds running through the town, to a busy temple where two people prophesied over him, to strange foreigners visiting from the East, to a flight to a foreign country avoiding a homicidal king… and not to mention angels popping up here and there! God did not stop time and space when he showed up. He jumped into the fray (and dare I say made it even more chaotic). If he can do it back then, I’m pretty sure he can do it today. So, instead of beating myself up this year for not slowing down, I think I’ll take Jesus’ hand and jump into the craziness with him. And just maybe, along the way, he’ll open my eyes to see how he can use me to bless those around me in little and big ways.
Featured Posts
(picture taken from RedwoodPark.org)
I’ve been struggling for the past couple of years about how to make missions more than just an aside in the life of the kids I minister to. This past Saturday, I posted up some thoughts about teaching kids about missions vs. helping them to live out mission on Twitter. Here they are:
- What would it look like to move beyond teaching children about missions to helping children live out mission?
- Teaching missions compartmentalizes faith and action, whereas living out mission gives rise to an holistic view of faith and action.
- Teaching missions is about bringing beauty and light “over there.” Living mission is about seeing beauty and light everywhere and revealing it.
- When we teach about missions, it becomes something only some do. When we live out mission, it’s something we are all a part of.
- Missions is something “extra” or “added” or “separate” from what we teach kids weekly. Mission is part of our lives locally and globally.
I’m all for missions, I just think we need a better perspective.
What are your thoughts? Do you teach missions to your kids? How do you do it? Do you tie missions into mission? Am I making a mountain of a mole hill?
(picture originally uploaded to Flickr by Victor Bezrukov)
If you’ve followed my blog, you know that I’ve been trying to articulate what missional children’s ministry is and what it looks like. A few weeks ago, I had a couple of posts about entitlement in relation to mission and the importance of remembering Jesus needs to be the main character of our life stories and promised to outline my thoughts on what children’s ministry with a missional mindset looks like. This post is missional children’s ministry in a nutshell as I see it. Over the next seven posts, I will expand on each of the points in this overview. (If you want a brief preview to my thoughts, check out my contribution to the Kidmin 360 Future of Children’s Ministry project.) I invite you to contribute your thoughts and join in on the conversation. There are many of us trying to figure all of this out, and it is my hope that this will evolve into something that helps bring a bit of clarity, direction and substance to those of us trying to discover what missional children’s ministry looks like.
Missional children’s ministries exist to help families and children know God’s Story as revealed by his Word and actively become a part of that Story.
In order for this to happen, missional children’s ministries want families and children to:
- Discover who God is,
- Experience his love for them,
- Live the way God wants them to, and
- Bring God’s Kingdom to their world.
What are your thoughts about these initial ideas? How would you begin to define each of the points?
This post is part of a larger series outlining what children’s ministry looks like from a missional mindset. Check out the other posts in this series:
Missional Children’s Ministry | A Brief Definition
Missional Children’s Ministry | Knowing God’s Story
Missional Children’s Ministry | Becoming a Part of God’s Story
Missional Children’s Ministry | Discover Who God Is
Missional Children’s Ministry | Experience God’s Love
Missional Children’s Ministry | Live God’s Way
Missional Children’s MInistry | Bring God’s Kingdom to This World
Missional Children’s Ministry | What Does This Look Like?
//
I’ve seen this video pop up on the Burnside Writers’ Blog and on the iMonk blog.
Now, I want to be careful here. I don’t want to bash the people in this video. I’m sure most of them were honestly trying to worship God. In the churches I grew up in, I remember going to gatherings which had elements like this (and I was uncomfortable then as well as now).
The question that still goes through my head when watching gatherings like this one is, “Why?”
Why do you think this is worship?
Why do you choose to worship in this way?
Why are you doing what you are doing?
My nine-year-old son was watching the video with me. I asked him, “What makes this different from what we do at camp, on Sundays?… We do actions to songs… Some of you dance around during the singing time…”
I love what he said. “I don’t get what they are saying. We sing songs about who God is and how much we love him, and we do actions and dance around not to get attention but for God. They look like they are just dancing around.”
Again, I’m not trying to pass judgement on the people in the video. There’s nothing wrong with dancing around and twirling your socks in the air. But I have a hard time seeing this as “worship.”
That begs the question, “Well, then, what is worship?”
The best definition I’ve found for worship comes from Teaching Kids Authentic Worship by Kathleen Chapman. She defines worship as “paying attention only to God.” She compares it to a boy playing a video game. The only thing he is paying attention to is that video game. He doesn’t hear anyone else, he doesn’t see anything else… his whole attention is focused on that game. In that instance, he is “worshipping” that game. The same goes for worshipping God. When we do something for God, paying attention to him while we do it, then we are doing that something as worship whether it’s singing, dancing, reading the Bible, taking out the trash… whatever. Worship is not about me, it’s about God. Worship doesn’t simply result in warm fuzzies, but results in action… in mission.
- How would you define worship?
- What do you teach kids worship is? How do you teach worship to them?
Recent Conversations