This was the last week in our current series Dr. Tomorrow’s Robot Repair Shop (preschool) and Starlight Station (elementary). We’re so excited to start a new series next Sunday! Be sure to get your kids there and bring their friends, it won’t disappoint! Hop on over to the KidSpring Blog to find out a little more about this new series.

This is what your kids learned at KidSpring on Sunday:

Preschool

Need to Know (main point):

• I will tell everyone about Jesus
• Motions: Motions: “I will” = thumbs pointing to chest, “tell” = hands around mouth, “everyone” = point
  to others, “about Jesus” = point one finger to sky

Bible Story:

• Peter tells a crowd about Jesus
  • Acts 2
  • Recommended Bible:  The Beginner’s Bible
• Memory Verse
  • “God loved the world so much, that He gave His only Son.” – John 3: 16a

Jesus wants us to tell everyone about Him, and we can! We can tell everyone about Jesus! We can tell them we when see them, we can call them on the phone! We can even write them a letter or send them an e-mail! We should be telling everyone about Jesus!

Elementary

Need to Know (main point):

• Servant leaders help others in need without being asked!

Bible Story:

• Jacob moves to Egypt
  • Genesis 45: 16 – 47: 12
  • Suggested Bibles:  Read and Learn Bible, One Way Bible
• Memory verse
  • “If you want to be great, you must be the servant of all others. Even Jesus did not come to be served. Instead, he came to serve others. He came to give his life as the price for setting many people free.” – Mark 10: 43 – 45

As servant leaders, we should be looking for those in need, and we should do something to help without being asked. If we will notice people, we will have the chance to be servant leaders by helping those around us without being asked. Who are some people around you who
you can help? (Parents, brothers/sisters, friends, teachers, neighbors, coaches, grandparents.)

———————————————————————————————————————————————————————————-

Here are some ideas of how you could reinforce this with your children at home:

• Review the Need to Know (main point) with your child
  • At the dinner table while eating supper
  • While tucking them in and saying prayers
  • While driving in the car
• Be an example
  • If your child is in preschool:  let them see you telling others about Jesus.
  • If your child is in elementary:  let them see you being a servant leader and helping others without being asked.
• Reward/praise your child when they apply what they’ve learned
  • If your child is in preschool:  when you see him or her telling others about Jesus, make sure you praise and reward them for that.
  • If your child is in elementary:  when you see them helping others without being asked, make sure you praise and reward them for that.

In case you were wondering what your kids learned at KidSpring on Sunday (5/31), here are the details:

Preschool

Need to Know (main point):

• Jesus cares for others
• Motions: Jesus (point towards sky with both arms) cares (cross arms over heart) for others (point with both hands)

Bible Story

• Jairus’ daughter
  • Luke 8: 40 – 56
  • Suggested Bible: The Beginner’s Bible
• Memory verse
  • “God loved the world so much, that He gave His one and only Son” – John 3: 16a

Jesus cares for others and so should we! There are many ways we can care for others: sharing toys, helping your parents clean the house, giving hugs, praying for others, taking turns, etc. How will you care for others today?

Elementary

Need to know (main point):

• Servant leaders forgive others

Bible story

• Joseph reveals his identity to his brothers
  • Genesis 45: 1 – 15
  • Suggested Bibles: Read and Learn Bible, One Way Bible
• Memory verse:
  • “If you want to be great, you must be the servant of all others. Even Jesus did not come to be served. Instead, he came to serve others. He came to give his life as the price for setting many people free.” – Mark 10: 43 – 45

———————————————————————————————————————————————————————————–

Here are some ideas of how you could reinforce this with your children at home:

• Review the Need to Know (main point) with your child
  • At the dinner table while eating supper
  • While tucking them in and saying prayers
  • While driving in the car
• Be an example
  • If your child is in preschool:  let them see you caring for others.
  • If your child is in elementary:  let them see you being a servant leader and forgiving others.
• Reward/praise your child when they apply what they’ve learned
  • If your child is in preschool:  when you see him or her caring for others, make sure you praise and reward them for that.
  • If your child is in elementary:  when you see them forgiving someone, make sure you praise and reward them for that.

How will you respond? Who are you going to invite?

The other night, Bridget and I were watching Oprah. Yes that’s right, Oprah. Now, before you hound me too much about this, I want to be clear – I don’t like Oprah, I don’t care to watch Oprah (ever), but my wife does. If it’s important to my wife it’s important to me. Now, back to the point of this post…

Steve Harvey was the guest for this particular episode. He has a new book out targeted to women called Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man that happens to be at the top of the NY Times best sellers list. So Oprah was interviewing him about the topics of his books. This was actually pretty interesting – he had women asking him all kinds of relationship questions and he was answering them. At the end, he did a short spill about how women’s standards are too low, and I think he hit the nail on the head with this quote:

I’ve heard women say ‘Chivalry is dead’ but ladies, chivalry is not dead, it’s just not required anymore.

Single ladies, do you require the men that you’re dating to be chivalrous? You should. If you don’t then you’re settling.

Genesis 35: 1 – 5

¹ Then God said to Jacob, “Go up to Bethel and settle there, and build an altar there to God, who appeared to you when you were fleeing from your brother Esau.”

² So Jacob said to his household and to all who were with him, “Get rid of the foreign gods you have with you, and purify yourselves and change your clothes. ³ Then come, let us go up to Bethel, where I will build an altar to God, who answered me in the day of my distress and who has been with me wherever I have gone.” ⁴ So they gave Jacob all the foreign gods they had and the rings in their ears, and Jacob buried them under the oak at Shechem. ⁵ Then they set out, and the terror of God fell upon the towns all around them so that no one pursued them.

What I took from that: In order to answer God’s calling in our lives, we must first get rid of all foreign gods.

So I had to ask myself some questions that I hope you’ll ask yourself as well:

• What’s my foreign god?
• What am I pursuing more than I’m pursuing Jesus?
• What do I spend the most amount of time and money on?
• Is there anything in my life that is keeping me from answering God’s calling?

Look at what happened when Jacob and his household got rid of all foreign gods and answered the true God’s calling, God protected them. What is He calling you to do?

This past Sunday, NewSpring Florence celebrated its 10 week anniversary. It’s crazy to think we’ve already been meeting that long, it seems like just yesterday Bridge and I moved to Florence. I’ve been doing some thinking lately about where we were on January 11 (launch day) and where we are today – we’ve come a really long way!

At Unleash last week, Michael Brown led a breakout entitled “Starting a Campus from Scratch.” That got me thinking about what we’ve done in the kid’s area specifically to get things up and running. I made a few notes of things that I think were key in getting KidSpring running excellently in Florence. Before I share those with you, I want you to know that I really have no clue what I’m doing. I’m not so arrogant to think that I have everything figured out – I’m learning as I go. In fact, you probably know a lot more about children’s ministry than I do.  I can only share what I’ve experienced and what others have shared with me. So here ya go!

Starting a kid’s ministry from scratch:

• Find someone who does children’s ministry with excellence and learn from them

  • Obviously, that was NewSpring Anderson and NewSpring Greenville for me. It was such a tremendous help to see what an excellent kid’s area looks like and to have an example of what I’m striving for. Who is that this for you?
  • Also, it’s extremely helpful to have someone you can rely on helping you. I was so blessed to have Pudge Huckaby (children’s director at NewSpring Greenville) spend time pouring into me. I know that if I ever need anything or have any questions, I can just give Pudge a call or send him a google chat. That’s been huge! Who is this for you?
  • One thing to be careful of though, you need to be who your are and not who other churches are. Make sure that the vision for your kid’s area is clear, but at the same time always be learning from others.

• Build a core group of volunteers by casting vision, not need.

  • If you communicate a need – “Hey, we really need some elementary volunteers, can you help?” – you’ll likely get some volunteers, but only because they feel obligated to serve instead of having a passion for serving in the kid’s area. They won’t ever completely understand the vision behind their role and they’ll quickly burn out and quit.
  • If you cast vision – “Kids are learning about Jesus on their level…serving in the kid’s area makes an eternal difference” (or whatever your vision is) – then you’ll get volunteers who are bought in and will be on board for the long haul. They’ll understand the vision behind thier role and be the best volunteers you could ask for.
  • Michael Brown, my campus pastor, has really instilled this principle in me. I’m working hard on cutting the words “we need” from my vocabulary.

• Identify key leaders inside your core group of volunteers that can lead people

  • You can’t expect to do it all by yourself. If you do, your children’s area will never be where it could be – or even where it needs to be. I didn’t see true excellence until I let go of some areas and put them in the hands of volunteer leaders.
  • Vanessa Brown (organization extraordinaire) is the perfect example of this for me. She leads the nursery and preschool areas, and she does a better job with those areas than I ever could! Those rooms are hers, I let her lead them and run with them. She just tells me what she wants to do next, and as long as it fits into the vision (which it always does because she gets it, and your volunteer leaders should too) I make sure she has everything she needs to make it happen.
  • The important thing here is to remember that just because someone is really good with kids doesn’t mean they can lead adults. Don’t put people in leadership positions just to fill positions – be strategic!
  • Also important, you need to find people who are leaders, not DO-ers. DO-ers are awesome and necessary, but they usually aren’t leaders. They may look like they’re leaders because they’re always doing something or helping in some way, but that doesn’t mean they have what it takes to lead people.

I know, these are just a few things and there’s a lot more to think about…theming, environments, curriculum, training, check-in, budgets etc. But really, think about it…if you have an example of excellence in children’s ministry to follow, a core group of volunteers who are completely bought into the vision and volunteer leaders who can lead people and areas (probably better than you could anyway)..then you really are set up to win in the kid’s area!

I love this video. I can watch it over and over and it still makes me laugh. The truth can be so hilarious!

Why are we as people so good at complaining? We’ve become even better with the economy the way it is. I ran across this quote on Perry’s Blog and it’s so true:

Let’s not insult God by saying that our economy is bad…it is not as good as it has been…but probably everyone reading this is NOT in danger of starving to death!

That really got me thinking – I mean seriously, who am I to insult God’s blessings in my life by whining all the time? It also reminded me of Philippians 2:14: “Do everything without complaining or arguing.”

So, right now I’m committing to stop complaining and start being thankful. If I complain around you, I give you full permission to call me out. I’m serious, tell me to shut up and count my blessings.

So….Who’s with me?

This is probably the coolest music video I’ve ever seen, you have to watch it! You’re definitely going to want to watch this in full screen HD.

Fuse in Anderson is starting a new series tomorrow called Sexed. Head over to Brad’s blog where you can get more details and updates. I’ve been keeping up with what’s going on at Fuse, and let me just say – God is moving in a huge way! I can’t wait to see how God moves though this new series!

Fuse staff and volunteers, you’re in my prayers!

Here’s a little taste of what we’ll be seeing in Florence on Sunday. Make sure you’re inviting you friends to iwantanewmarriage.com