What a great day with the kids. What great teamwork leading kids to Christ. Saw some kids we love and are so interested in building with us and got us excited to the core. The whole big point of “Wearing The Breastplate of Righteousness” came together from the beginning until the end strongly and I was very proud of the team who did a fantastic job. At least 2 kids were Holy Spirit ambushed, they resolved to keep doing the right thing and confessed of some dishonest act. The Lord’s transformative power was in grand demonstration.

To have great children’s ministry leadership, it is a requirement that we grow not just in knowledge & understanding but in faith and belief. These 3 stages of belief can navigate us to check how we are growing in spiritual leadership.

Stage 1: Believe in God

Yeah it rocks to know the Lord and believe; Almost everyone is good in this stage… but doesn’t the devil know and believe too?

Stage 2: Believe in yourself

I know you believe God can do it, but can you believe that God can do it with you and through you? Come on, didn’t Jesus died on the cross, rose from the grave, ascended to heaven and gave the Holy Spirit to empower us? Aren’t we temple of the Holy Spirit and isn’t the Kingdom within us? Yes, don’t believe what others tell you… Yes you can believe in yourself. You can do it because of Christ living in you!

Stage 3: Believe in others

Hope you would have notice that you can serve people but you can’t impact them unless you really believe in them? Believing in others requires you to first believe in yourself. If you are insecure and is made of low self belief, you won’t have the right stuff to believe in others. But if your identity is secure, this is the stage you can work on the type of leadership that is not about you but the people God wants you to lead & serve. This is servant leadership, the nirvana of all leadership and a truly worthy pursuit.

Although not explicitly stated, these 3 stages represent our growing faith in Jesus Christ, our God Almighty.

So which stage are you at?

Starting to work on Family-Team Discipleship. It’s part of ID2010. It’ll be part of Ripple Conference this year. It’ll benefit anyone who’s in teams or families in the kingdom.

This year’s Ripple conference will be slightly more radical!  Sorry if it rubs hard on you. We aren’t perfect but we prefer to be passionate instead. Yes families should also not try to be perfect because a perfect family is a myth.  They should be shown that there’s a nicely carved out purpose for them to be passionate about right ahead.

We must do the work,  the conference must achieve its aim.  Families and teams must be blessed because it’s really now or never.

Was involved in 6 services this week, from children, adults to funeral. It’s as wild as it can come. As I reflect on the week, I know that all this is not possible without teams. We partner with staff, worms, parents and a great team of family members. Did our last service of the year yesterday with kids and parents. If there’s something I have learned this year, it is the power of partnership in teams. Working in silos create division but partnership synergize to maximise for the Great Commission.

If Year 2009 is a year of preparation and alignment of teams, Year 2010 is going to be a year of intentional discipleship with these combined teams.

Ended the week with HopeKids MASH-UP session led by Eilton on Sunday afternoon. I was the invited guest and it’s good to see a group of young people starting their leadership journey and influencing one another. There’s great hope in Hope Church for 2010.

Good job to everyone who worked hard throughout the year.

“Kids are not problems to be solved but people to be built”

This quote inspire us not to volunteer but worm.

Someone asked me if worming is an official word, I said yes, here’s proof…

But its nothing like Ris Low’s Ristionary

Innovation?

We haven’t yet but we are determine to make HopeKids one heaven of an innovative ministry. I have made excuse telling others that our strength isn’t flaky stuff like innovation, but solid stuff like luuurvvee!!  Then I re-thought and am reminded how today, we sure need lots of innovation in love.

We got discontent, cracked our brains, studied how others do it and finally came up with our attempt to be more innovative.

Steps to Wack! (as presented in our One Thing Retreat)

Step 1. Decide to not have a solution but a killer solution (’poison’?)

Step 2. Get everyone into the room and ask “So folks, why are we here?”.
If we have no answer, session ends and we all go home. If not, we proceed

Step 3. Pray and go into free flow time with our ONEBQ creative brainstorm rules

O-ne conversation at a time (and stick to the topic)
N-o put downs (every person and idea has equal worth)
E-ncourage wild ideas (and exaggerated ones)
B-uild on ideas put forward by others
Q-uantity rather than quality count at this stage

With hopefully 1 zillion wild ideas at the end of a timed session, we then pray and decide on the best one to give the team a chance of innovation in leading more kids to Christ.

Over the weekend, we had our year end Leadership Retreat

Our key organiser is Joey who did a fantastic job as organiser and bbq server. She is also our resident ghost, one who’s scary enough to scare all evil spirits away..

When Pastor Jeff sms me to ask how the retreat was going, I was in the middle of attempting something…

So I replied “I am playing fireworks” and went on to attempt a great feat with the team.

We were trying to form “L-O-V-E”. We didn’t quite get it but its okay because there’s more to retreat than BBQ and fireworks.

We fellowship as one people, built team, envisioned and did creative brainstorming on the areas of importance. We discovered….

- The One Thing about us as God’s people
- The One Thing about building teams
- The One Thing about leading kids
- The One Thing about connecting them
- The One Thing about discipling them

…. because often its only one thing that is needed.

“… but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.” – Luke 10:42

We want to be like Mary to choose what’s better. When we know the One Thing, people may complain why we aren’t doing other things but that’s okay, it may be a bit problematic or troublesome, but what we learn in this retreat, we know will not be taken away from us.

No fights or biting, no one got their groin kicked.

Wo whoa! After 3 consecutive service of wild things, yesterday was quite a victory,  for us and for the kids, especially for those directly involved.

Disruptive behaviours are just love and boundary issues. It takes time especially when the kids are new but its worth it. The ‘war’ isn’t over yet as boundaries and love are work to be done consistently through time. Thank God for the team that worked hard and was consistently applying tough love when situations require them to ie. Wan Yueh, Deborah, Hannah, Sijia and others etc….

If you are after love and purpose and your are not strong. Think about being strong in your love and purpose by being strong for others.

Been examining ideas in this book by Geoff Surratt. The 10 Stupid things are:

1 Trying to do it all
2 Establishing the Wrong Role for the Pastor’s Family
3 Providing a Second-Rate Worship Experience
4 Settling for Low Quality Children’s Ministry
5 Promoting Talent over Integrity
6 Clinging to a Bad Location
7 Copying Another Successful Church
8 Favoring Discipline over Reconciliation
9 Mixing Ministry and Business
10 Letting Committees Steer the Ship

Hey, how come it makes me feel like I’m doing stupid things. Anyway I like number 4, which goes to show that what we do makes a difference to the growth of the church.