Children’s Ministry and Culture

A few of you have emailed asking for information about obtaining audio of my talks at Willowcreek. Willow has release one of the workshops to mp3 or CD, and if you are of the mind you can purchase it here. You can drop me an email for the workshop notes.

The Lead The Way God Made You workshop is not available. I’m guessing there were copyright issues regarding the book that Willow is honoring.

The WordPress blog tools allow me to see how people find this website. Searches for “Craig Jutila” are among the most common searches. For those looking for all-things-Craig, he’s got a power article in K! Magazine about lessons he’s learned about balance, family, and personal health. It’s worth the read. For more information, visit www.liquidleadership.tv.  

Some random bulleted impressions:

• Trust Google Maps. We drove in Tues Night and make a “long-cut” that had us seeing scenic IL-53 for some time.
• I haven’t been to Willow in years. It was my first exposure to the new building project. I was awed. It had a similar emotional effect to being at a cathederal– I felt small and had a sense of God’s bigness. God, you deserve so much more. Can’t wait for heaven.
• Speaking of heaven– I’m convinced that visionary leaders will be miserable in heaven. There will be nothing to change.
• Chris Yount Jones rocked the opening session. Her session on fear spoke into my heart. The night before, I admitted to my Executive Pastor that I felt like the character in “Catch Me if You Can”– a fraud who was just one step away from being exposed. Chris’ talk confronted my sense of inadequacy. (Public speaking forces me to confront my high school years of being a late bloomer and incredibly socially ackward. Chris’ talk forced me to see myself from a God-shaped perspective and not as “Captain Uhm.”
• I wish Pat Cimo had more stage time. She talked about Willow’s journey into family ministry. I’ll be purchasing her worskshop mp3, definately.
• The Disney folk were amazing. And Aaraon Reynolds needs to bottle his energy and charisma and sell it.
• Willowcreek’s Coffee Bar. I was amazed by the relational-piece to it. The Barista read my name tag and worked “Larry” into the conversation three times and walked the coffee down and called my name. That’s insanely relational– especially when they were turning over 100’s of customers. What an amazing thing when that’s happening during a weekend service!
• Derek is amazing– he’s my executive pastor and good friend. He carved out time to make this trip with me and provide emotional support. I occasionally get asked if I ever had designs on going to “greener pastures.” Derek is one of those reasons that Grace IS the greener pasture.

http://www.discipleblog.com/index.php/2008/04/15/mass-discipleship/

Karl reminds us that you can evangelize or “info-dump” to the masses, but discipleship will always be a life-on-life venture.

Children’s Ministry and Culture is about to go to go off to conferences. This week I (Larry) and my executive pastor, Derek, are off to Willowcreek’s Conspire Conference. Next week Keith heads off to Orange. (I would have loved to have gone. But I can’t afford two weeks away with my ministry schedule. Some of my favorite speakers are going to be at Orange– Jutila, Wideman, and Don Miller!)

We’ll both be checking in an reporting about what we’ve learned.

Brian McLaren has a brief post about the topic of children in the emerging church. There’s link in the post to a pdf which traces the role of children in the Bible. I admit to being quite McLaren ignorant. While I am aware of his role as leader/aggitator within the church, I haven’t read his work yet. Jim Palmer, author and spiritual leader, cites McLaren as a positive source in his spiritual path wrote the forward to my book Divine Intention. Through email, Jim’s outline how his spiritual network addresses the spiritual formation of children.

Family carries the bulk of that frieght (Hmmm… we Institutional incarnations of local church’s might be able to learn from our emerging friends). Jim also wrote about parents using the facilities of a local church to lead their children through a version of the Good Shepherd curriculum– Montressori inspired method of teaching Psalm 23.

I just zipped over to Jim’s blog and discovered that he has a recent post about the spirituality of parenting.

I’ve gotten several q’s about the Pirate’s Backyard Adventure Curriculum that I had posted last year. The curriculum is protected by a Creative Common’s Copyright which prevents modificiation.

First off, duplicate this as much as you like for local church use. The sole reason for the Creative Common’s restrictions is that no one decides to make money on a curriculum that I chose to give away. The modification piece of that notice– please feel free to adapt the curriculum. If you don’t want to use ”etch-a-sketches” and prefer another toy, swap it out. I just don’t want my name attached to modifications due to doctrinal or educational philosophy differences.

So copy away!  

A few months ago, we noted that Barak’s campaign was targeting children, showing them how to throw parties to support the campaign. Read this report that first appeared in the NYT’s. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24003601/ 

This approach seems to be paying off for Barak as Super Delegates note the influence their child had on their vote.

This isn’t a political post. I don’t care who you vote for. The point I’m noting is the power of children to influence the entire family. Marketers have known this for years– just look at the commericals during Saturday Morning Cartoons. Environmentalism turned a corner through the education of children. And now, apparently, political processes can be influenced to a degree, as well, through children.

Sometime today, 100,000 visitors will have come to visit www.childrensministryandculture. Let there be cake, lots of cake.

I remember sitting on a bus with Keith headed into the Rocky Mountains a few years ago. I was not a happy guy. I have this phobia about heights. Why anyone would built a road up a mountain so they could build restaurants and resorts at the top of it is beyond me. To avoid having to take the sight of paper thin guard rails and ravines, I decided to strike up a conversation with Keith. Somehow the idea of this blog was born. We both realized that there was a gap in what was being written about children’s ministry. No one was writing about how our surrounding culture (beyond the evangelical bubble) affects children’s ministry.

We both had a the realisation that the topic interested the two of us, matters to the church, and was not marketable (culture is too fluid. The book’s ideas could be outdated by the time it came to print). And that’s how it started.

Sometimes I wonder if Keith and I don’t come across as the Dr. Miles and Fraiser Crane (remember the Fraiser sitcom? I do. Keith doesn’t; he was reading Plato) of children’s ministry. In spite of that, we’re still growing in readership. Our goal, as we move forward, is that we’d by understand culture we can begin to understand how families outside the church percieve themselves– their needs, their wants, their dreams. Together, we can take out our “churchy” lenses and begin to meet people that matter to God.

Keith’s Comments:

Larry is a terrific spoil, adversary, brother, friend and whet stone (iron sharpens iron, but diamond-studded whet stones sharpen them all). I’ve respected Larry’s range of reading and since we both don’t golf, writing is a great stress tonic! I personally hope that our passion for ministry to children in the local church comes through loud and clear. What we’ve tried to do is help READ culture as it impacts those we serve (children, parents and volunteers, not necessarily in that order) to help build a church that is as engaged emotionally as it is intellectually.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/religion/2008-03-25-kids-spirituality_N.htm

There have been similar studies done with adults. I’m not aware of other studies exploring this link in children.