Think Orange - 5 "Principles"

So the book "Think Orange", written by Reggie Joiner,  is about thinking about how church is done in a different way.  That probably doesn't do it justice.   Let me break it out into the principles mentioned on page 82:


1. Nothing is more important than someone's relationship with God/
2. No one has more potential to influence a child's relationship with God than a parent.
3. No one has more potential to influence the parent than the church.
4. The church's potential to influence a child dramatically increases when it partners with a parent.
5. The parent's potential to influence a child dramatically increases when it partners with the church.


That's a tidbit to get me started.     One thing to keep in mind, thinking orange isn't children's ministry or youth ministry, it's breaking down the silo's and helping a parent look at a child with the end in mind.

Thinking Orange

So I'm a slow reader.  Mostly because I have a hard time blocking the noise that is a family with 3 little girls.   Anyhow, I'm reading a book called "Think Orange" by Reggie Joiner.   It presents kind of a whole new way of thinking about the church.  I've got to go now (re: the 3 little girls).  In the very near future, I'll post more about the Orange concept.

Come Thou Fount (Verse 1)

Don't take my translation as totally the greatest, 

but it's a start.
feel free to suggest other possible re-phrases.

1. Come, thou Fount of every blessing,
tune my heart to sing thy grace;
streams of mercy, never ceasing,
call for songs of loudest praise.
Teach me some melodious sonnet,
sung by flaming tongues above.
Praise the mount! I'm fixed upon it,
mount of thy redeeming love. 

Translation:

Come, you Source of every Blessing,
(Bring into Harmony) my heart to sing your grace;
Your streams of mercy never stop,
make me want to praise you without holding back.
Teach me a new beautiful song,
sung (or given) to me through the Holy Spirit given from Heaven.
Praise you for Jesus dying for me, I am thinking about it now,
The place where Your love redeemed all.

Hymn translator

I might step on toes with this, but I was worshiping in my church on Sunday and was wondering what kids think when a hymn comes along and the words include fetter and thee, thou and thine.   So I think I am going to try to translate a hymn... see where things lead.   The song was "Come Thou Fount".   BTW - initially I had "Come Now Fount"  so that shows my point exactly.... I can't even remember the title because... to me...  it I can't understand the lyrics/title, I'm not going to remember it.

So as Brad Stein says,  "Put yer helmet on!"

I am not a good blogger.

I just looked. 2 posts in 2009.... not very good blogging frequency. :( maybe 2010 will be an up year in my blogging adventures.

From the Bradford Archive

As we were moving last week, I found a CD from our past (The Bradford Archive).   I picked up Young Warriors "It's Our Turn Now" years ago and loved the "Throw Up Song".  So I decided to spin the 1st two songs in children's church last week.  It was like the song was new all over again.  Our group of 13 kids were dancing and grooving to these songs long ago lost at our house.   You should check this CD out..... it's a lot of fun.

Tim Hawkins

Long time no post.

Well this post is to share with you a very funny dude.   His name is Tim Hawkins.  He has many funny (wierd-Al) like songs.  Here's a youtube clip of a kids rock commercial:

Midnight in Chicago

I found this podcast/blog this morning. 

http://www.mic.mypodcast.com/ 


which is a number of podcasts about various issues relating to autism. most interesting to me was the podcast called:
Autism on the Homefront: Parenting Autistics

The casters mention research pointing to research that is uncovering that autism has genetic links. 
So things like Chelation Therapy (which is to try to remove heavy metals from the body) probably aren't going to be to affective if autism spectrum disorders aren't caused by environmental issues.

Autism and Faith: A Journey into Community

Here's an interesting story of a 13 year old autistic boy who was banned (even to the point of a restraining order) from church.

That led me to another find Autism and Faith: A Journey into Community which I would love to get a look at.

Looking at my church, I wonder what would happen if a boy like Adam Race and his parents showed up to worship. I would hope that the reaction wouldn't be the same. But does my (or your) church have a plan for providing for the needs of a boy like Adam? Would it be inclusive or would you provide a separate space?

I am a bad blogger

I have tons more inbound blogging than outbound. I have like 100 feeds I check for updates everyday, but I post (or even comment) maybe once a month.

hey we're half way through 200-8... time to start new... (8= new beginnings right?)

I will try to blog at least once a week and see where things go.

Great Workshop Slide Deck from Dick Gruber

Cultivating a Cutting-Edge Children's Church

From: childrensministry, 1 day ago

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Pre-conference workshop by Dick Gruber and Jason Rhode entitled, Cultivating a Cutting-Edge Children's Church offered live at the 2008 National Children's Ministries Leadership Conference. For more details regarding this workshop and for links to additional resource materials and the slides referenced during the sessions, visit www.cmuo.com/workshops/kidschurch


SlideShare Link

oh yeah! Jesus-is@live.com

Dude! I am like so geeking out!!! I just scored the e-mail address jesus-is@live.com

How cool is that? Yes, I did have to sign my life away to Microsoft. But I'll still use google for my real work. :)

Long Time No Blog - Off Topic of Kids Ministry

Wow it's been a long time since I've blogged! So what's new in my life since April when I last blogged? I'll try it in bullet points.

1. Baby Dana has grown to 8 months old.
   
1. Dana had RSV in the summertime. Dr said "Hmm I've never seen RSV in the Summer."
2. Took family vacation to Disney World at the end of July/Beginning of August.
1. Disney World was just OK
2. We have lots of luv for Disney's Vero Beach - lot's less to do there
3. Work has taken a lot of my time beginning in August.
4. We redefined Wednesday night kid's ministry - we were using Faithweaver Friends - now we use the keys of kids devotional as a "mini-lesson" and then we do something special - make your own cookie, myo sundays, talk to a missionary. It's been different. with FWF, we had so many adults required for so few kids (like 8 adults for 20 kids) that it made it difficult to recruit and keep workers and if workers didn't show, it caused some pain.
5. The Coudersport Sheetz now has deep fryers and a specialty drink machine, so we got ourselves a real life Redneck Starbucks!
   

That's all I have for now!

Hillsong Kids Supers Review

This is a review of the Super Series from Hillsong kids!

The Evangelism Linebacker is back for Easter 2007

The Evangelism Linebacker is back for Easter. Watch out Easter bunny

http://www.sermonspice.com/videos/5300/easter-linebacker/

Story by Steven James

This weekend I started reading a book by storyteller steven james. The introduction does a wonderful job of drawing the reader into 3 different mini stories that end up all coming together.

I'll have more in my next post. (which should be soon).

Flock

My last post was put up with a program called Flock.  basically it's firefox only changed a little bit.....  it allows you to quickly post to the blog of your choice.    It also has a "Blog This" on the right click menu inside the browser window so you can quickblog someone else's information.   All in all, I like it!

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Part Two of Truth or the Consequences of Internet Truth

So back in the late summer to early fall when the Trailer for "Jesus Camp" got put onto youtube. within hours there were THOUSANDS of outraged people saying how scary this "movie" is. Commentaries about a movie that was gleaned from a 2 minute trailer that wasn't even created/edited by the films directors....

So, if you watch a clip on youtube or video.google.com... maybe even a movie trailer... should you comment on the whole movie from the clip?

sure it's another one of those "you just use common sense" type scenarios.... but what about the thousands of responses to Jesus Camp?

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Truth or the Consequences of Internet Truth

So this idea has been cooking in my brain for a while. I've dedicated those brain cells that never were burned up by smoking, drinking and taking drugs to the question of validity of truth on the internet.

So here's the question/issue. In the years leading up to blogs and podcasts, we as a society got information from reference books and news outlets such as newspapers, radio and TV. We assumed that the maority of the information given by these outlets was true information, and most of the info was pretty close to truth. With the boom of the internet, with blogs and podcasts and sites such as cnn.com, foxnews.com we see the information that I glean coming more from online. So can the information that blogs/podcasts provide be taken as truth? In the beginning of the blogosphere, blogs were for providing an additional way of publishing ones opinion. Some major newsworthy thing events happened, had blogs were used to post very quick fact tidbits of what was going on (again with no ability to check for validity). This also was enhanced by the internet becoming even more mobile, where blogs could be posted "at the scene" from a cellular phone or other wireless device such as a Blackberry. Again no ability to check whether the blog post is "valid".

Let's take a step back and look at Paul Junior (there is no Paul Junior really). So Paul Junior (PJ) is 9 years old and is looking online about the names of God. In PJ's search he finds some very informative christian sites talking about the Biblical names of God. This is great information for what PJ is looking for. What PJ also finds is a blog talking about the similarities between the names of God in the Bible and the names in the Qu'ran which leads PJ to the thinking that maybe the Bible and Qu'ran are pretty much the same... His search also lead PJ to a blog talking about the Biblical names of God but adds more to it... The idea here is that in his search, PJ may get good info he might get some really bad info he might even get what looks like good info that really leads PJ down some bad paths. The problem is, what does PJ believe? He's a 9 year old and might believe everything he reads... What if PJ is a 65 year old that's new to the internet and blogging and really believes everything he reads on TV let alone on the internet?

The beginning of the answer of this question starts with the Bible, because it is the Truth. It's the beginning of Truth and the End of Truth. Every piece of information we get in a day needs to be filtered through our worldview (which hopefully is a biblical worldview) to help us discern what the truth is. It seems easy to say this here and now while I'm typing it, but that type of discernment is pretty difficult to do as an adult, let alone the 9 year old.

So this post is more like a alfred hitchcock in that there really is no conlusion to it. This is just something I am contemplating. If you see me with a funny look on my face, I'm probably thinking about that.

The Ceiling is coming down

So back in June our church had the roof replaced.  Part of that was putting new insulation in under the roof. They used some new type of insulation that is sprayed in between the roof and the ceiling.  Only one problem.  With our installation there was a "feature"...   With the spraying came the smell of dead fish.  fast forward to almost six months later (now).  The insulation maker is plunking down the money to replace the ceiling and anything else that may get damaged in the removal of the insulation (and smell).  Wow, huh!!!  

What does any of this have to do with Children's Ministry you may ask?  Well now, I get to work with the new Pastor at our church (Hi PB!) (He preached 1 week in the main sanctuary before construction starts.. - Haa!) to figure out the symantics of the next couple months worth of Sundays.  We have a multi-purpose foyer that "should" be big enough to fit all of the people on a Sunday, but it could get tight. 

So my thought is have kids dropped off directly to Children's Church.  Honestly, I've wanted to do this at the church from when Mollie (wife) and I started leading kids church.  I just haven't wanted to stir to many places with to much vigor. 

One last observation from the Sunday.  Superhero is now officially my kids' most requested song.  All I have to do is move towards the DVD player and they are squealing "Super hero! Super hero!!".  They have even gotten to love that loveable aussie accent "baaabie".  Their only question is... who the heck is the bearded guy in the boat?  :)

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