Children’s Ministry and Culture

I’ve “remixed” the content of Lead the Way God Made You for the Conspire Conference at Willowcreek in two weeks. I’m presenting one of the book club sessions. There’s were two mistakes that I wanted to avoid. First, I don’t want to bore those who already read the book. Second, I don’t want to assume that everyone in the room will have finished reading in time for the session.

As I began to reorganize the content, I realized that one of the unique features of Lead the Way God Made You is that it’s the only children’s ministry leadership book that falls within the strength’s based leadership movement. So, I’ll be present on the challenges of building a strength based children’s ministry culture.

Here are the four challenges:

1) Killing (the Myth) of the Perfect Leader

2) Discovering Your Own Strengths

3) Helping Your Team Members Discover their Strenghs

4) Bending and Building your Teams.

There’s still time to register for the Conspire Conference at www.conspireconference.com. We’ll see you there.

Larry

The good folk at Kidology are hosting an Online Q&A for my book Lead the Way God Made You all next week (Wk. of Jan 2 in their forums. You can sneak on over there now and submit your leadership and team building questions. I’ll pop in twice a day all next week to respond!

http://www.kidology.org/network/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=5219&PN=1

If you’re new to the Children’s Ministry and Culture Website, the “Digest” is a monthy feature that points you toward the ten most clicked upon threads over the past thirty days. So if you’re behind on your CM&C reading here’s a quick way to get caught up.

Spiritual Gifts for Children: Attention publishing world: Children’s Ministers want help with the process of helping children discover their spiritual gifts. As of today, 1,702 children’s ministers clicked on that post looking for advice. We’re ready to purchase a well written, hands-on cirriculum that begins the journey. Children’s ministers: the challenge of course is our distinctives. It would be difficult for a publisher to craft a curriculum that appeals to a broad audience when we differ on issues such as tongues and prophesy. If you chose to write your own curriculum consider these tips.  

Be-Bratz: Social networking for children has arrived. Toy companies (Be-Bratz.com and Barbie.com) and Disney (Club Penquin) have all figured out how tap into this phenomenon. To my knowledge, only Group Publishing is on the cutting edge with their Grapple curriculum and the accompanying www.mygrapple.com. We’re using Grapple at my church and I’m waiting to see to what extend the tween’s embrace their online community.

Lunch Box Review: Many new readers found their way here through Keith’s link to the WSJ’s review of the best lunch boxes.

Speaking of new readers, Children’s Ministry and Culture has grown from a few hundred readers a month to several thousands of new monthy readers. Several of you are curious as to who is behind this blog. Keith and I are two children’s ministers and authors who are attempting to stay current with the cultural trends that influence how we do children’s ministry.

Aaron Reynold’s blew our collective minds with the release of “The Fabulous Reinvention of Sunday School” (Zondervan). Now our readers have been clamoring for information about his two new Christmas Productions. Need a second opinion? Check out Henry Zonio’s review at www.kidology.org.

And you can’t get enough of Orange. You’ve been clicking here to see what Reggie Joyner and Sue Miller have in mind with their traveling family ministry conference next year. 

Dozen’s of you clicked here find out where to download a video Craig Jutila’s talk in Texas. The video has come off the www.empoweringkids.net website. But Craig did say it was for a limited time. Monitor the website and perhaps you’ll be rewarded with another treat.

A while back I interviewed Barbara Coloroso for this article on the wisdom of using economic incentives (reward, bribes) in our ministries. The article has gotten some mixed reactions and has been discussed at both the www.kidology.org and and the www.childrensministry.com message boards.

Speaking of writing, many of you have been exploring links regarding Keith’s and my books. Keith is the author of Teacher Training To Go. TTtG is a unique approach to teacher training. Keith has created email blasts and audio files that you can use to get bite-sized pieces of training to your teachers as they need it. Teacher Training to Go is the multi-authored follow up to that book.

You clicked here to read chapter one of Lead the Way God Made You. LtWGMY is designed to help you know your leadership style and the styles of those leaders around you. You’re also clicking here to read chapter one of Divine Intention: How God’s Work in the Early Church Empowers Us Today. Here’s a youtube link to a TV interview I gave regarding the book on the Harvest Show.

Thanks for reading,

Keith and Larry

Here’s the TV interview I mentioned. I’m on the Harvest Show Discussing Divine Intention.

Watch Jim Wideman’s website… www.jimwideman.com. In July, Jim will be offering a free copy of Divine Intention to the first twenty leaders who either renew their current subscription to “The Club” or create a new subscription. Bro. Jim usually posts each new teaching on the 15th of each month, so mp3 subscribers interest should read the Bro. Jim’s letter for details.

Divine Intention: How God’s Work in the Early Church Empowers Us Today is now available for sale at www.amazon.com and www.bn.com… and of course at your local Christian book retailer. Click here to read chapter one.

The new www.larryshallenberger.com is finally online. Finally, meaning I intended to get it done this Fall. However writing and ministry demands took precident over it.  Check back soon, I intend to have .pdf downloads available with samples from my new book Divine Intention.

For the record. I built this website with a free program Nvu- a what you see is what you get editor. And I purchased a web template cheaply for about $75. And a friend is hosting the website. The moral of the story is that if your children’s ministry doesn’t have a web precense it shouldn’t be too hard for you to rectify the problem!

And now for a crass advertisement. My upcoming book “Divine Intention: How God’s Work in the Early Church Empowers Us Today” is now available for pre-order at Amazon.

Acts 15

When rewriting this chapter I was again impressed with what a mess church can be. The entire counsel/debate was avoidable. Nine-years earlier God gave the church a template for how they were to deal with Gentiles at Cornelius’ home. However Peter and Co. were unable or unwilling to make a clear stand on the issue because of political pressures from the temple and from the Christians who were still active in the Pharisee party.

Interestingly, there is no mention of God in this pericope until the story is wrapping up. James writes to the church at Antioch that their ruling “seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us.”

Why is the church “worth it”? Because this is where the Holy Spirit works. He hover over our chaos as he did at the beginning of time and recreates us into community.

 Our times with children cannot be so overprogrammed that there is no quiet moment for them to encounter the Holy Spirit.

Acts 16

This chapter reminds me that discovering God’s will is more like a conversation than it is working through an equation. Paul’s herky-jerky stagger through Asia Minor makes sense if we view it as a dialogue.

“Here, God?”

“No.”

“How about here? This is a great urban hub!”

“No.”

And then through the dream, “This is where I want you to be.”

I just finished revising my chapter on Acts 9– the so called Samarian Pentecost. One of the barriers the disciples had in accomplishing the Great Commission was being willing to visit the Samarian. Samaria was a “Creole culture” that had assimilated Assyrian culture and religious themes. The Samaratins, I learned, were actually a Jewish religious sect in Samaria… they had a different scriptural cannon and insisted the true temple was in Gerazim, not Jerusalem.

When Jesus sent the disciples to Samaria, he wasn’t sending them to non-believers or godless people, but to “bad” believers– those who had faith in God but with what the disciples viewed as twisted, dangerous, and even dangerous views.

No matter how bad the Christians were treated in Jerusalem they could at least say “We aren’t like those Samarians.”

It wasn’t until Saul’s persecution of the Hellenistic Christians in Jerusalem, that the believers were willing to overcome their bigotry and share Jesus with the “bad” believers. The believers had to share a “misfit” label before they would share Jesus with the misfits to the north.

It seems to me that we protect and insulate our children from bad influences. But God sends his follows into “Samarias”, and I suppose that includes his kid-sized followers too. We need to teach our children that church-behavior doesn’t impress God, that they are, like their parents, loved misfits. And they can share Jesus and joy with anyone.