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6 Kidmin Ideas for Father’s Day

Many children’s ministries have plenty of material on how to celebrate Mother’s Day, but when it comes to Father’s Day, they scratch their heads. Some children’s ministries avoid it because there are so many children who will be left out because of the absence of fathers in their lives.

But fathers and father figures are an important part of children’s lives, and the church should honor that. We need to emphasize that every child can celebrate a male role model in that child’s life whether or not the man is the child’s father. Because God is our Heavenly Father, He can provide earthly substitutes for fathers.

Here’s a few ideas to celebrate fathers:

Father/Child Picnic: June is the perfect time to have a picnic. Why not have a picnic where child bring their fathers. For those children who don’t have fathers, they can bring a man who is important in their lives.

Father/Son Competition: Have a bonding time between fathers and sons by having them team up for a day of competitions such as a three-legged race or two on two basketball. For those without father figures, have your men’s ministry sponsor those children with father figures for the day.

Father/Daughter Date Night: Give fathers a chance to take their daughter out to show them how men should treat them on dates. Tell the fathers to dress up and give their daughters flowers, then have them come to the church where a meal is catered for them.

End the night with a romantic movie like “The Princess Bride” or “Snow White”. It the girls in your ministry don’t have a man in their life that can bring them, have men you trust from the church formally ask the girls out on dates. Let their moms know what’s going on first so they don’t worry.

Father’s Day Gifts: Have children make art projects or card to present to their fathers or significant men in their lives on Father’s Day.

Father’s Day Messages: Teach children about the importance of fathers in the Bible. Talk about how God is our Heavenly Father and is a father to the fatherless.

Prayer Fathers: There’s a number of programs to encourage mothers to pray for children, but sometimes they leave fathers out. Work with the men’s ministry to have fathers commit to praying for their own children and for children in the church that might not have fathers.

3 Steps to Teaching Children How to Pray for Missionaries

Little girl wishing on white background

Teaching children how to pray for missionaries is not always easy, but here are a 3 things to help.

Give the children Prayer Maps from Every Home for Christ. They are free and will give the children areas of the world to pray for every day of the month.

Teach the children what to pray. You can’t go wrong if you teach children to pray for missionaries to have boldness, for their safety, and for God to meet their needs. Here are verses to go with those prayers.

Boldness: Acts 4:28-29 But everything they did was determined beforehand according to your will. And now, O Lord, hear their threats, and give us, your servants, great boldness in preaching your word.

Safety: Isaiah 54:17  “No weapon that is formed against you shall prosper; and every tongue that shall rise against you in judgment you shall condemn. This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord, and their righteousness is of Me,” says the Lord.”

Meeting Needs: Philippians 4:19 And my God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus.

Teach children about specific missionaries. The more children know about real missionaries, the more likely they are to pray for them. This Assemblies of God site has stories about missionaries. You can also find some stories at this site about Christian children in non-Christian countries.

Revival Among Children

Revival is spreading throughout the nation among children. That’s what this ministry is all about, to help children’s leaders and pastors bring their students into revival. We are still booking children’s revivals, teacher training, and children’s ministry consultations this year.

For more information about booking Revival Fire for Kids, click the tab you’re interested in from the menu about or email me at revivalfire4kids [at] att [dot] net.

Here are a few pictures of our last children’s revival this past week.

Revival Celebration 1.2 Revival Celebration 2.6 Revival Celebration 1.2b Revival Celebration 2.4 Revival Celebration 2.1

 

 

Children in Revival History

Many Christians are praying for revival, but they relegate children to have a fun game night or have them watch a movie while the prayer meeting is going on. History has shown that whenever God moves in a powerful way, He always includes the children. Here’s a video from 4/14 Window Movement about the history of children in revival. This is a must watch for every children’s pastor.

You can download this video for free at this link.

The Candy Cane Object Lesson

The candy cane was invented around 350 years ago in Germany. It was originally straight and white. In 1670, a choir master in Germany bent them to look like shepherd’s staffs to hang easily on Christmas trees. The first historical reference to a candy cane in America is in 1847 when a man in Wooster, Ohio hung them on his tree. The stripes were added sometime around 1900. Although stories of an Indiana candy maker making the candy cane to incorporate symbols of Christianity aren’t true, the candy cane can still be used to teach about Jesus.

The candy cane starts with a stick of pure white, hard candy. White to symbolize the Virgin Birth and the sinless nature of Jesus, and hard to symbolize the Solid Rock, the foundation of the Church, and the firmness of the promises of God.

The cane is formed into a “J” to represent the precious name of Jesus, who came to the earth as Savior. It could also represent the staff of the “Good Shepherd” with which He reaches down to reclaim the fallen lambs who, like sheep, have gone astray.

The candy cane is stained with red stripes. Three small stripes show the stripes of the scourging Jesus received. The large red stripe symbolizes the blood shed by Christ on the cross so that we could have the promise of eternal life.

Children’s Ministry Thanksgiving Songs

Here’s a list of songs that work great for Thanksgiving lessons now or any time of the year. They can be used to praise God for His blessings. The songs are all from Uncle Charlie’s Made 2 Praise DVD’s. Click on the song for the link where you can order them.

Say Hey, Made 2 Praise Vol. 1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWQu08PdehA

Beautiful One, Made 2 Praise Vol. 4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3p8dbgDxgzs

Everything to Me, Made 2 Praise Vol. 5

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcKNuqY_42w

Life is Good, Vol. 8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3uyUc-ZrNE

Deep Down Boogie, Made 2 Praise Vol. 10

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZ4tkwIvllQ

Sunshine, Made 2 Praise Vol. 12

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQ9-5SKn8Pg

Fun, Simple Games For Children’s Ministry

IMG_0009If you’re looking for some games with little planning that you can do when service runs over, here are a few you can use.

Mummy Game:

Supplies: 2 rolls of toilet paper.

Choose 4 children for each team. One child on each team is the mummy. Start some music. The teams have until the music stops playing to wrap their mummies. The team with the best looking mummy wins.

Application: Mummies in the movies are dead, but they walk around and act like their alive. Scripture tells us to be alive in Christ and dead to sin. When we do that, we can be “spiritual mummies”.

Jesus says:

Suppies: None

Similar to Simon Says only you say Jesus says.

Application: We should always obey Christ and do what He says.

DSC_1175Get Rid of Sin:

Supplies: Beach Balls

Have children divide up into two teams. Each teams sits or stands on their side of the room. Throw the balls out evenly and start the music. Tell the children that the balls represent sin. They want to get rid of them and bounce them to the other side. When the music stops, the team with the least balls wins.

Application: Just as we tried to get rid of those beach balls, we should get rid of the sin in our lives.

Fruit Basket:

Supplies: Chairs formed in a circle. You should have one less chair than the number of kids.

Go around the circle and assign each child a fruit. Apples, Oranges, Bananas, Grapes, Pears. If there are less than 15 kids, only use three fruits. The child standing in the center of the circle is it and calls out a fruit. When a child’s fruit is called, he has to stand up and find another chair. When a child calls fruit basket, all the children have to find other chairs.

Application: Fruit of the Spirit

What’s Wrong with Children’s Ministry Today? Old Wine in New Wine Skins

Luke 5:37   And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the new wine will burst the skins, the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined.

Gone are the days of flannelgraph boards, overhead projectors, and CD players. The students in your children’s ministry is the most technologically intelligent generation that ever lived. The message should never change, but the methods need to if we want to reach this generation. We need to throw out the old methods and teach them with newer methods. In other words, we need to get rid of the old wineskins and replace them with new.

Here’s a few ways you can do that.

Use video projection for teach and praise and worship. Video projectors are cheaper than ever before. Even if you don’t have the money for one, you might be able to find a church that wants to get rid of their old one. Or you can look on E-bay for a good used projector. If all else fails, get an adaptor and hook your computer or laptop onto a used TV set.

Use videos instead of audios for praise and worship. Children’s ministry DVDs and downloadable videos save a lot of time and trouble because they project the words with the songs.

Use email and social media to contact children and parents. Do a Facebook group that promotes special events and informs parents. If you are a normal American church, 95%  of the parents in your ministry are on Facebook, maybe even more.

Use video clips. While you don’t want to teach using only video, short video clips are very effective to emphasis your lesson.

Find a techno guru to help you. If you don’t know much about technology, ask somebody who does to help you.

What’s Wrong With Children’s Ministry Today? Segregation

For the next few posts, I’m talking about why our children’s ministries today aren’t as effective as they once were. Today’s topic is segregation.

Children’s ministry is vital for a growing church. Children need a service they can call their own with ministry geared to their ages. But many large churches have taken this to a new level and now segregate children from all areas of congregational life. Some even segregate them until they reach 18 years old. Children not only aren’t heard in our churches, they’re very rarely seen.

Children are a part of the body of Christ and a vital part of the church community. Everyone benefits from children being seen and heard. That doesn’t mean they should always be on the pews beside their parents, but we need to include them.

Biblical Precedent: Children were a part of the community of believers in Biblical times. Whenever there was a celebration or a time of prayer, children were included. Here’s a few examples.

Joshua 8:34-35 Afterward, Joshua read all the words of the law–the blessings and the curses–just as it is written in the Book of the Law.  There was not a word of all that Moses had commanded that Joshua did not read to the whole assembly of  Israel, including the women and children, and the aliens who lived among them.

Nehemiah 12:43  And on that day they offered great sacrifices, rejoicing because God had given them great joy.   The women and children also rejoiced. The sound of rejoicing in Jerusalem could be heard far away.

2 Chronicles 20:12-13  O our God, will you not judge them? For we have no power to face this vast army that is attacking us. We do not know what to do, but our eyes are upon you.  All the men of Judah, with their wives and children and little ones, stood there before the LORD.

Since it’s clear, God wants children to be a part of the church, the question becomes “how do we include them?” Every church is different, but here are a few ideas.

Have church services where children are included. Some churches have children in big church once a month. Other on special occasions. But there needs to be scheduled times where children are included. Children can sit in a group together or with their parents. A children’s sermon could be included, but it doesn’t have to be if the pastor will take special care to engage the children in his sermon.

Include children in celebrations. When the church has special events and parties, don’t segregate the children. Make special plans to include them so they feel like they’re a part of the church.

Have prayer meetings with children. Children can easily be taught how to pray, and with special coaching, should be included in prayer meetings.

Children can be a part of ministry. If you have outreaches and community service events, include the children to minister at these times. You can also have times where children are primarily the ministers such as special performances or services or have a project where they clean the church or raise funds for missionaries.

Have mentors for children. Older mentors can teach children the value of the entire church community and give them a sense of belonging.

How do you include children to be a part of your congregation? Leave comments with your ideas.

Children’s Choirs

With Christmas coming soon, I thought it might be a great time to cover guidelines for having a children’s choir. Children’s Choirs are an important part of children’s ministry. Children’s choirs and musical programs are an effective tool to:

  • Teach children to worship through music.
  • Teach children to minister in front of a congregation.
  • Make the congregation aware of children’s ministry.
  • Get unchurched parents and relatives to come to church. (They’ll come to see their children perform.)

Even though children’s choirs are effective tools in children’s ministry, most choir resources consist only of music programs. There is very little out there instruct children’s pastors on how to get a children’s choir started. Here’s a few guidelines.

Decide who will be in the choir. If you’re a small church, you may want to include every child. A larger church might want to limit it to those who sign up for practices or even hold auditions. There’s no right or wrong way of doing this. Decide which works best for you.

Age Groups: Decide what age groups will be in your choir. Will you have different choirs for each age group? Preschool children’s choir and grade school choirs should always be separated. Aside from that, decide what’s best for your children’s ministry.

Choir Director: If you’re in a small church and short on help, you may need to double up duties and be the choir director as well as the children’s pastor. The ideal would be to have somebody who knows music and loves children. The music director at your church would be a good resource to find the perfect choir director.

Practice Schedule: If you include all of the children in your children’s ministry, the last half hour of church or mid-week classes might be an ideal practice time. If not, one evening a week or Sunday nights might be a good time to schedule practices. Be consistent.

Rules: Decide what rules you will have for your choir. Some choirs have a policy of a certain number of practices you can miss. All choirs should have a set guideline for behavior and consequences for misbehavior.

Choose Music: What music you choose will depend on a number of factors. Consider the ages of your choir, the length and frequency of practices, and how in depth you want to get into music theory before deciding what music to use.

Choreography: You may want to include sign language and motions into the music your children’s choir sings. Simpler songs are better suited for this. In either case, you will want to work with the children on how they enter, exit, and stand during performances.

Plan Practices: If you have short practices, you may only want to go over the songs you’ll be singing. If you have longer practices, you can spend time teaching music, playing games, and learning about worship. The important thing is to plan your practices ahead of time.

Pam Andrews of Brentwood Music has the best resources for teaching a children’s choir. Here’s a resource that is very good.

Children’s Choir Basics

By Pam Andrews

Lillenas Music

Training DVD

Clickhere to order.

Learn the basics of teaching and developing the children’s choir. Discover why you should set musical, spiritual and even personal goals. You will even learn how you can make performing musicals more fun for everyone! This is a must-have for any children’s music worker’s resource library.

Pam Andrews has taught elementary school music, pre-school choirs, children’s choirs, and is a gifted and highly-successful children’s Christian songwriter. Pam is best known for her curriculum developmental ideas found in the numerous teacher resource books she has written, and is the creator of many best-selling children’s choir musicals.