big church

November 5, 2015

Camp Big Enough

by Debbie Miller

This summer I began to think about the children who would begin attending worship with their families. I wanted this to be an exciting and positive experience for children and for their parents.

I remembered an article I read several years ago in Lifeway’s INministry magazine. The article was titled “Camp Big Enough.” Camp Big Enough is an event offered to children to introduce them to worship. I loved the idea and decided this was the year. I’m finding several churches offer Camp Big Enough and have tweaked it to meet their needs. I used the concept and developed our own Camp Big Enough.

We created a logo, fliers, and postcards to advertise our event. The children were given a Camp Big Enough t-shirt as they arrived. We divided the children and their parents into three groups and rotated through the following three activities.

Memory Game: We used photos of the ministers and musicians to introduce the children to the people who would lead out in worship.

Scavenger Hunt: This activity was used to introduce children to the worship center. Children were given a set of word cards and worked with their parent to locate the following: baptistry, pew, stain glass window, balcony, musical instrument and altar. We encouraged parents to take pictures of their child holding the card at each of the locations.

Inflatable Game Cube Matching Game: This game was used to introduce children to objects used in worship. Photos of each of the items were placed in the game cube pockets and the children played a tossing game to match the photos to the actual objects. The objects used were: hymn book, Pew Bible, microphone, Lord’s Supper serving trays, baptismal robe and an offering plate.

We concluded our camp time by giving each child a quarter and explaining how to pass an offering plate. As music played, the children passed the plate and put in their money. We closed our evening with prayer.

All who participated enjoyed the evening. We believe Camp Big Enough was a success!

Debbie Miller was born in Berkeley, California and now serves as Minister to Children at First Baptist Church, Muskogee, OK. Debbie desires to come alongside parents in laying spiritual foundations that prepare children to know Jesus is a personal way. She and her husband Doug have 4 children and 3 grandchildren and love spending time with them enjoying homemade tacos and blackberry cobbler!

Bible Study, Kids Ministry, kids101, Small Groups, Sunday School

May 20, 2015

There’s No Such Thing as “Little Church”

By Jeffrey Reed

It’s pretty normal to hear kidmin leaders says this: “Hey kids, after your parents get out of big church, you will…” It’s so common that my wife and I say it almost every week to the first graders we teach. There’s nothing wrong with it. But it does imply something…

Are we in “little” church? I guess it might simply be that there are “big” people in that other service. Maybe it’s just that the room is bigger… or grander… or more important.

If you think about it, even though it’s not improper to say “big church,” it might plant the subtle idea in our kid’s heads that they have not arrived. That there is another place they will get to go one day that has a little more significance than the place they are now. That there is something happening elsewhere that is bigger than what they are doing now.

As you know, nothing could be further from the truth. If we know that 80% of all decisions to follow Jesus happen before age 12, that is, in our kid’s ministries, aren’t WE doing “big church?” We want our children to feel like the church is a place they can go and have fun and feel safe, but we also need to consider that church is the place where they are engaged and challenged to walk with Jesus NOW, not when they become adults. Children’s ministry is not a holding cell for maturing Christians, it’s the launching pad.

So, here are five things you can try in order to reverse this potential mindset in kids, leaders, and parents:

Before kids are picked up from your ministry, flip the terms. You could say, when your parents pick you up today from big church.
Encourage your children to initiate the conversation that parents rarely do. We tell our kids that, as soon as they get into the car after church, to ask their parents, “What did you learn in church today?”
Do things in your corporate worship experience for kids that you do in the services that are held, primarily, for adults. For example, are there songs done in student or adult services that are also done in kids? I’m not suggesting that they all be the same, but there are some great songs out there that could be done in multiple environments, even Preschool. Do you pray collectively? Do they participate in offering? Do they see baptisms and testimonies? Are these things reserved only for adults?
Challenge kids in their faith, using different contexts, in areas that adults are challenged. To serve, be generous, grow closer to Jesus, deal with life issues, disciple others, and to outreach.
Find ways to lead your church in its perception of kids ministry. As long as adults think that what happens in big church is more important, it will be. But it’s not. It’s ALL big church.

Perhaps if we do this, the senior pastors of the next generation won’t struggle to get their adults to attend, worship, grow, give, serve, share, etc. because the believers in their congregations never had to graduate from “little church” to “big church.”

Jeffrey Reed serves on the leadership team for Lifeway Kids. He came to Lifeway with a wide variety of ministry experiences including worship leader, director of children’s ministry, and executive leadership in several growing congregations. He, his wife Katherine, and their four kids attend Rolling Hills Community Church in Franklin, TN.

Leadership, Sunday School

June 2, 2011

Moving On Up

By swiley

I teach kindergartners and around this time of year, my kids begin to talk about an exciting event – going to first grade. All kids are excited about being in an older grade, but the jump from kindergarten to first grade is a key transition. Here are a couple of things we do to help make that transition smooth.

We adjust our schedule in the classroom. In our kindergarten class, we use lots of exploring and hands-on teaching. We use learning centers for the large portion of our teaching time, with a group learning time of about 15-20 minutes. Around April or May, we adjust our schedule and teaching methods. We still have hands-on teaching, but we have a shorter activity time and a longer group learning time. Then we have a few activities after group time to apply the learning. This is similar to the first grade classroom. We also plan more activities that use group games and fewer activities with blocks or homeliving accessories. While our classroom is still focused on kindergartners, we begin to mirror what our kids will experience when they move up.

We give Bibles to our kindergartners/new first graders. In the first grade classroom, kids use their own Bibles much more than we do in the kindergarten classroom. In our class, we have Bibles throughout the classroom and use those. In the first grade classroom, kids find verses in their own Bibles. So our church gives each kindergartner a Bible to use. We give the Illustrated Study Bible for Kids since our teaching resources use the HCSB version. The Illustrated Study Bible for Kids also has references and helps specifically for children to use. We also expand our talk about Bible references and what they mean (book, chapter, verse). We talk more about Old Testament, New Testament, and Bible book names. These concepts are important foundations for future Bible skills.

Your church may have another transition point – worship service. Kids will begin to attend worship service with their parents or attend a children’s worship sometime in the older preschool or kindergarten years. Churches can also help with this transition. In my church, when children move to kindergarten, they begin to attend worship service with their parents. We have a lunch for parents and kids before they begin attending worship service together. After eating, they have a scavenger hunt in the worship center (to find and look at different things in it). Kids receive a worship bag and a notebook for their worship guides they get each week. They meet the staff members and learn more about what they do. On the first day they are in worship service, each child wears a "I’m a New Kid in Worship" sticker and is recognized by the pastor. If your pre-kindergartners or kindergartners are moving to a children’s worship service, you can offer a similar "orientation" and recognition time.

(You can also give parents a copy of When I Go to Church, a resource to help the transition of attending worship service with their children.)

How do you help your kids make the transition from kindergarten to first grade?

Camp Big Enough

There’s No Such Thing as “Little Church”

Moving On Up

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