Just came back from planning for 2012 with Pastor Jeff and the leadership team at the D’Kranji Farm. The quiet time in there recapture for me a lot of reason why we do what we do. We are building God’s spiritual legacy to past to at least 3 generations. The two days reignite a certain passion I have within.
This video is special because it captures the dynamics of what it takes to make the dream possible; 1) The dedication of parents, 2) The purpose of our kids teachers and 3) The serving passion of our youth all working in collaboration.
We are grateful for the young minds and heart behind the production of this video for our recent Next Generation Service. I really like this. We all do as we are so a part of it in everything we do right now.
Doing something for the first time is terribly hard. But it gets easier the second time. And even easier the third and the fourth. Then in no time, it becomes second nature. It’s like that for kids learning to pray for the first time. There need to be a first time and here’s a ripple starting way to help them …
Step 1) Every Sunday look for kids to pray for and pray for them. You have to model loving to pray first.
Step 2) After praying ask “Do you want to pray for me”?
Step 3) If he says ‘yes’, guide them to a great praying time. If they say ‘no’, say “its okay, next time?”
Step 4) When next time comes, again pray for them before changing your script slightly and say ”Do you want to pray for me? I’ll help you?”
Helping kids be a minister isn’t natural but its possible when we are persistent. So rise up to start kids praying and keep doing it until its second nature. You’ll just finding yourself having lots of fun starting more kids praying in your ministry.
Every so often I will lurk outside Kidology.com. I like the Kidologist himself, Karl Bastian for all the fun he is made of and also kids ministry we can from him.
Well, today I was lurking (If you don’t want to be a lurker, being a member maybe worth it) and saw the poll on the front page which ask “How often do you serve in children’s ministry?” I selected my answer, submitted it and boy was I shocked by the outcome…
Why! so many people serves most weeks! 70% of the 1,500 who responded so far serves most weeks!!
Shocked because I was expecting more ‘once a month’ or ‘once every fortnight’ type of deal.
The result made me both happy and sad!
1) Happy that we aren’t the only ones with the commitment of serving most weeks.
2) Sad that the outcome may be because kids ministries are lacking vision, leadership and resource that those in it have no choice but serve most weeks.
What do you think? How often do you serve and why?
Starting a new series of 6 lessons on Titus and the book of Titus in line with our adults series. The series explore transformational leadership featuring Paul’s leadership over Titus and Titus’ own leadership. This week’s Big Point: I am a Godly Transformer
Yeah baby, our kids can be Godly leaders in their environment (especially to younger kids). Yes they can lead beyond what we can imagine. Yes they can be the church today.
I’m so excited that our oldest kids aren’t consuming a service this week but will be visiting our younger kids services as volunteer leaders. It’s a brilliant idea by our star staff. I know it’ll work as this is the very idea proven to work by another level leader who made her kids volunteer in our younger kids services a regular feature in her discipleship plan. See such brilliant action leaders we have!
You cannot be anything less than jubilant when LOVE is made into pure action. Love it so much, pumped to the max and so so looking forward to tomorrow!
Chern Han, Elyse and Thaddeus singing a birthday song for Hope Church Singapore’s 20th birthday. Wasn’t there to see it LIVE but a shot like that really captures the essence of connection of the next generation with our present one.
Received the message from Michael & Deborah (parents of Mattan) showing their appreciation to Shu Yan, their son’s life group leader in church. And then as a response, a reply from Shu Yan expressing her gratitude for them being great parents and always easy to approach on matters relating to discipleship of their son.
Such conversations never fails to reignite my belief in the power of family and church collaboration.
If people ask what’s the vision for families in our church, I will surely show them the picture of the “Foo Family Team”. As we work towards building families, I’m envisioning more of such teams where there’s honor and partnership leading in the same direction and speaking the same thing to those we are given to disciple.
Only when the forces of family (red) and church (yellow) combines, will the influence of the next generation (orange) be effective and maximized.
Families who believes in “orange” will be models for other families to come.
The people that is closest to you are the easiest people to take for granted. It may be your own child or the one in your Life Group that you see regularly. You may know he exists but you have not been impacting him in any way. Don’t look any where else but start with the one God has put right in front of you. Start by praying for him and then being involved in his life.
A – Acknowledge them and their feelings
Kids think and have stuff in their minds. Unless their concerns are acknowledged, stuff clutters their mind and prevents them from listening to you. You help by listening to them and giving them a chance to voice their feelings. Honor them with your attention and sincerity by repeating what you have heard them say. Statements like ” Are you saying that….?” or ” Do you mean….? ” will do wonders to the effectiveness of our communication with them.
S – Show them a God of multiple dimension
Our God is bigger than our style and personality. We should show our kids not just a God in the mold of ourself but the Big God that He really is. Make sure your kids see God in a holistic way with as many attributes of God as its possible to do. Firm adults should show flexibility & grace while the flexible ones display firmness to show a God who expects obedience. When we show the different dimension of ourselves, we offer them “more God and less ourselves” which is always a good thing.
T – Teach them how to be fully devoted to Him
Kids may have the intention to love God and even decide to follow Him fully. However they will not know how to actually do it. Don’t our quiet time, praying, loving God’s Word, honoring God by honoring others is not natural to kids who have just accepted Jesus into his life by understanding what He has done for them on the cross. They need to be taught how to pray, do their devotion, navigate the bible and even how to sing praises and worship and how to honor God with their lives. An adult who is willing to go down and help teach them on a one to one basis makes the biggest difference.
Was at a cafe with fellow leaders where 2 staff served us. Both were of great contrast. One has a posture of service while the other didn’t. We joked that we could tell immediately what the nationality of each of them. Then it hit me… Is service a ‘nationality’ thing?… or is it a posture? I believe it is a posture as someone with good posture of service communicates service better than one without.
As there are postures of good service, there are also postures to listen, worship and pray.
The following are postures we expect to see in our kids when they are praying, worshipping and listening to God’s Word. These are minimally what we expect our kids to observe and do. These postures may not be the activity of praying, worshiping and listening to God’s Word itself but it sets the stage to enable these activities much more than without it.
