Christmas is fast approaching. Consider this festive wrapping paper an early Christmas gift from Lifeway Kids. We are so thankful for the role you play in kids’ lives. Click the image below to download your freebie today.
Click here to download your free wrapping paper. (PDF)
Devotional Giveaway
Once or twice a week, you meet with kids face-to-face, speaking into their development as disciples. You know they are growing spiritually, but imagine the exponential growth that could take place if they make it a priority to spend daily time in the Word.
This week, we’re hosting a giveaway to help you equip kids to study the Bible on a daily basis. Enter below for a chance to win 20 copies of devotions for three different age groups. See the images and downloads below for details on devos.
Download a preview of the More devotion.
More is a 28-page monthly devotional designed to help kids ages 4-7 develop a habit of daily Bible reading. Each devo includes 10-minute devotions, prayers, and fun Bible-learning activities.
Download a preview of the Adventure devotion.
Adventure engages kids ages 7–10 and cultivates the disciplines of daily Bible reading and spending time with God. The content is designed to invite today’s media-savvy kids to have a daily relationship-building experience with God. Each devo includes fun facts, puzzles, and games.
Download a preview of the boys’ side of the Bible Express devotion.
Download a preview of the girls’ side of the Bible Express devotion.
Bible Express is designed for ages 10 and up. Each issue is produced in a flip-book style with separate sections for boys and girls that is made up of fun facts, puzzles, missionary kid stories, and games. Kids will carry this cool, magazine-style devo everywhere they go.
Update: This giveaway has closed. Congratulations to our winner, Cathy Scharf!
Explore The Bible: Guiding Kids to Study the Bible Book-by Book
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Chuck Peters and Jana Magruder invite Tim Pollard, team leader of Explore the Bible: Kids to join them for the final episode in the curriculum podcast series. Explore the Bible: Kids, is an ongoing curriculum designed to help churches teach kids the Bible book by book. They share how churches can help kids study the Bible book by book in its context and discuss other helpful Explore the Bible: Kids resources.
Farewell to Mayflower
For many Bible Studies For Life: Kids fans, you’ve come to know and love the kids at Mayflower Elementary School over the past three years. It’s been a fun cycle, but those kids have grown up and it is time for them to take Middle School by storm. This Fall, we are introducing a new line-up of awesome life application videos called “Gumshoe Lane Agency.” We are thrilled to introduce you to Juniper and Chuck, the detectives who will go to great lengths to find out the real answers to life’s questions.
Before we bid farewell to the Mayflower kids in the last session of the Summer 2016 Bible Studies For Life: Kids curriculum, we had the opportunity to talk to the people who created the series, including some of the talented cast that made up the Mayflower team.
Enjoy this documentary from the creators of the Mayflower series, SeventhStory Productions.
Jeff Land is Publishing Team Leader for Bible Studies For Life: Kids. He hold a BSW from Mississippi College and a MACE from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. Jeff has served as children’s pastor and currently teaches second graders each week at his church. Jeff, his wife Abbey, and their four sons live in Coopertown, TN.
Bible Journaling with Your Kids
Welcome guest blogger, Mary Wiley!
Last week, I took the kids at my church to camp.
Every morning we would get up, walk to breakfast, and then head outside on the cafeteria’s empty patio for quiet time. The first morning, I explained to kids that they would follow the guide provided by the camp to read their Bibles, respond by answering questions, and spend time praying. Kids spread out quietly, and then one-by-one they came back to me to ask questions.
I quickly realized that I needed to not only tell them how to have a quiet time, as I’m sure I’ve told them dozens of times at church, but I needed to show them. I herded them into a circle and we proceeded to walk through the quiet time guide together.
These are great kids who are growing up in Christian homes, but many of them needed a little reminder about how to have a quiet time and why it is so important that we spend time with God each day. Your kids might need a frequent reminder as well!
As a children’s minister, one of my biggest goals is to help equip parents to disciple their children; and as a parent, my biggest goal is to point my kids to Jesus. There is no greater thing you can do for your kids than to model following Jesus for them. Let them see you do your quiet time. Help them with their quiet time. Spend time praying and reading the Bible together. There are so many great resources to help you do so today.
I’m a big fan of the Bible journaling movement. I love to draw and meditate on Scripture by writing out a verse. Recently, I’ve discovered that this can be done alongside kids as well! My kids are too small to do this yet…they can’t read, or write, or talk for that matter, but I look forward to the day I can do Bible journaling with them. For now, I’ll have to settle for journaling for them – writing in a Bible I will one day give them.
If you have littles (or like to color yourself), Lifeway Kids Director Jana Magruder and her daughter, Morgan Grace, have created the cutest little journal set for kids. You can grab a set, get your teenager an Illustrated Notetaking Bible for Teens, and get yourself a Notetaking Bible. Sit down at the kitchen table and spend some time together reading, praying, and memorizing as you draw and color.
We are giving away 15 copies of the Life Verse Creative Journal by Jana and Morgan Grace. Enter here!
Mary Wiley works with B&H Publishing now, but she was a member of The Lifeway Kids team for 5 years prior. She lives in Lebanon, TN with her husband, two babies under 8 months, and tiny, hyper dog. She serves as the children’s minister at Fairview Church.
Reaching Kids Outside the Walls of Your Church
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Linda Ranson Jacobs, of DC4K joins us again on the Lifeway Kids Podcast to discuss how to reach kids outside the walls of your church. This more than likely will mean addressing tough issues that are prevalent in our culture. Linda & Chuck Peters address some of the following questions and issues:
- How are families different today than they were in biblical times?
- How do we address these new issues & pressures from our society that are becoming prevalent in our culture?
- Most kids pastors are not well prepared for tough conversations and because things move so fast, it’s hard to keep up with how to appropriately respond to specific issues.
- Leaders and teachers in the church should provide a safe place for a child to come, but leaders should also be aware of how to face tough issues.
- As a children’s minister, if a child comes into my ministry from a family of a homosexual couple or transgender parents, how do you serve that child well?
- You should not necessarily change what you do in your ministry, but be aware of the approach you take, and what that means for kids that might not be regular attenders at your church.
- What are some specific pitfalls you should avoid in handling tough situations?
Security for Your Kids Ministry
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John Murchison, Director of Children’s Ministry at the Austin Stone Community Church, provides several tips & procedures for keeping your kids safe in your ministry.
- As a children’s minister, you must get educated & trained.
- Have policies in your church that are known and followed.
- Background checks are very important, but they are not enough.
- Complete reference checks on your volunteers.
- Train as many volunteers as you can on the risk of sexual abuse to kids in your church.
The Gospel Is For Volunteers Too
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This week’s episode of the Lifeway Kids Podcast features a conversation with John Murchison, the Director of Children’s Ministry at The Austin Stone Community Church in Austin, TX. In our desire to share the gospel with kids, have we neglected to share that same gospel with the volunteers serving with us? The gospel is not just the way to become a Christian, it also sustains and motivates the work of ministry. In this episode John & Jeffrey discuss ways to recruit, train, sustain, and send volunteers with the basis of the good news of Jesus Christ.
Greatest Wins in Children’s Ministry
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Leadership can often times be challenging and discouraging. Any seasoned leader will tell you that having community with other leaders is vital. It’s critical for a number of reasons, but often times, that community is where is an encouraging word that can lift up your spirit as you seek to follow God’s direction to lead the ministries He has entrusted to you. On today’s podcast, we sit down with 3 children’s ministry leaders and ask them one question: What is your greatest single win so far in your ministry? We believe their answers will surprise you. Our hope is that what God is doing in the lives of these leaders will be a catalytic moment in your own ministry & leadership. Today’s guests include Heidi Hensley, Chad Overton, and Chad Owens.
Connecting the Church with the Home
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The concept of connecting the church with the home is certainly nothing new, but it has recently become very popular. As this philosophy of ministry is considered, one question that church leaders must ask is who is ultimately responsible for the spiritual development of a child, the church or the home? In church ministry, there is a renewed wave of thinking that is seeking to not just teach kids the Bible, but ultimately equip families to minister to their children as well. So how do we practically equip families? What would happen if your kids ministry assumed your families never go to church rather than assuming they know what church is all about?
Heidi Hensley joins us on the Lifeway Kids Podcast to give us wisdom and insight from her experience leading at Bayside Church, a multi-campus church in Northern California. Heidi serves as children’s pastor at Bayside and has been in children’s ministry for over 20 years.
Heidi will also be joining us for Lifeway’s new ETCH Family Ministry Conference in October. Formerly known as KMC, where this podcast episode was recorded, we’ve expanded our national event to include not only kids ministry leaders, but student ministry and family ministry leaders too. The topic of today’s podcast really helps to set the stage for what our new conference is all about. As we all work to minister to children, students and families, it’s important that you attend a conference together, as a team. This is where you begin to see strategic connection points with what you are doing in children’s ministry and how it feeds into your student ministry. To make our conference even more accessible, we’ve dropped our rates from last year and even extended these discounts to extend for a few more weeks, so now is a great time to register your team for ETCH Family Ministry Conference. Visit our website to learn more and register today!
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