Resources For Children’s Pastors

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For the next few posts, I’ll show some links that are helpful resources for children’s pastors. Today I’ll cover the resources available at the Revival Fire For Kids Store.

Children’s Church Curriculum

Revival Fire For Kids sells Kid Konnection Curriculum. Although it has overheads instead of media files, I believe it’s the best curriculum on the market so far. I even wrote Kid Konnection 5 – Kids Entering the Presence of God. Starting in March, a new downloadable Revival Fire For Kids Children’s Church Curriculum will become available starting with Follow Me: God’s Social Network – 5 lessons on discipleship. A free 4 week lesson series on Easter will also be available for download. That’s right. Free. After that, new curriculum will be added to Revival Fire for Kids every couple of months.

Music For Children’s Church

Revival Fire For Kids sells Uncle Charlies Made 2 Praise Children’s Ministry music DVDs because it’s the best music for children’s ministry out there.

Leadership Materials

Puppet Skits

The Story of Saint Valentine

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The story of Saint Valentine is partly myth, but it’s hard to tell which parts. We do know that at least one man, a priest and a bishop, was martyred in Rome under Claudius II and buried on February 14th. The story of his life has some great applications you can use with your students.

Saint Valentine was born in Rome during the third century. He was a priest and then a bishop. During that time, the emperor of Rome, Claudius II, wanted to end Christianity, so he outlawed Christianity and killed Christians.

Claudius waged war on many nations to make the kingdom of Rome larger, but he had a hard time recruiting soldiers. He believed this was because men didn’t want to leave their wives, so he outlawed marriage.

Saint Valentine continued to preach about God, and whenever a Christian couple wanted to be married, he would perform the marriage ceremony. Because of this, he was arrested and jailed.

Emperor Claudius liked Saint Valentine and invited him to the palace many times to talk to him. Saint Valentine knew Claudius needed to ask Jesus into his heart and be saved, so Saint Valentine talked to Claudius about Jesus often.

This made the emperor furious, and he order Saint Valentine to not mention Jesus again. Saint Valentine knew Claudius would have him killed if he didn’t stop talking about Jesus, but he also knew Claudius needed to hear about Jesus. He made the decision to share the Gospel with the emperor.

The emperor became so furious that he order Saint Valentine to renounce his faith. Valentine wouldn’t do that, and Claudius order him to be beaten with clubs. When he still wouldn’t renounce Jesus, Claudius ordered him stoned to death and beheaded. Saint Valentine was buried on February 14th.

Children’s Sermons For Valentines Day

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Here’s a couple of links to children’s sermons that work well for the Sunday before Valentine’s Day.

The Heart Test

The Broken Heart

The Importance of Children’s Ministry

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This YouTube Video shows the importance of children’s ministry. Yet many church leaders don’t get that this is where most of the church resources should go.

Resolution #8 – One On One Time With Students

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The old saying “people don’t care how much you know until they know how much your care” holds true in children’s ministry and in the church. If all we have is programs and we’re not touching our students’ lives, our programs are worthless.

Jesus taught the multitude, but He also spent one-on-one time with His disciples and with many of His other followers. He set the standard for ministry that we should emulate.

But, as with every other resolution I’ve covered, if we don’t have a plan, it will fall by the wayside as busyness takes over. Here’s a few ideas to plan one-on-one time with students.

Don’t try to do it by yourself. If you have a children’s ministry team, have them help you with building relationships with students. That will free you up to pour into student leaders.

Acknowledge birthdays. You may decide to send a card, make a phone call, or give a little gift in children’s church. But make sure you acknowledge birthdays in some way.

Go to extra-curricular activities. Let your students know that, if they inform you of sport’s events, dramas, and concerts, you will do your best to attend.

Visit the hospital. Any time a student of yours is having surgery or is in the hospital, it should become a priority for you to visit her.

Have a certain time each week where you make phone calls. Maybe schedule an hour each week, and go down the list of students. Don’t only call students who are absent, call the faithful as well. It will make that student’s day to get a call from his children’s pastor.

Visit each student in your children’s ministry once a year. If you have more than a hundred student, this will require help from your team, but it’s more effective in reaching out with compassion than any program you could come up with. One word of caution – always schedule an appointment with the parent before making a visit.