Storytelling is one of my favorite ways to share a Bible story with my class. With a little practice, anyone with practice can tell a great story.  In order to tell a good story, there are three fundamental steps you need to take in order to be a good storyteller.

Know the story!

• Read the story aloud three times.
• Tell as much of the story as you can from memory. You don’t have to get the re-telling perfect, and you probably won’t the first time.
• Read the story aloud again.
• As you read, try to picture the story in your mind.
• Divide the story into three or four scenes according to the action in the story. This step will help you remember the story better.
• Re-tell the story again. You did better this time didn’t you?
• If you are still having trouble try repeating this process again.

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Our world is getting smaller. Staying connected with family and friends far away has become so easy with cell phones, Skype, internet and social networks. We can easily see that many of us enjoy the same things and even face the same trials as people across the globe. On the other hand, our world is bigger than we may think. The world is full of people who think and live differently from us. There are many needs in the world beyond our borders. So our kids and grandkids and those we teach can have a balanced view of their world, we need to teach them to be mission minded. Here are a few suggestions on how to begin.

1. Tie every lesson to some kind of mission focus.
Don’t save missions just for Christmas and Thanksgiving. Search for ways to tie each lesson to some kind of mission focus. Look for needs that could be met or a missionary story that could be shared. Perhaps you could even make contact with a missionary that your class could Skype with on a Sunday morning.

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Our average attendance is around 150 on Sunday mornings. Our children’s ministry is contained in the same building as our main worship services. We use a manual check-in system. What follows are the steps that we are using successfully.

1. Purchase a visual paging system–we purchased a single wireless visual display with three transmitters. A transmitter was placed in each ministry area. The visual display is located in the main worship area and is easily visible. Volunteers were trained in how to use the paging system. Check out www.microframe.com for more information.

2. Identification cards–At first we just gave each family a permanent number. This number is the number that would appear on the visual display should we need to get in touch with a parent. These were made simply and inexpensively on a computer using printable business cards.

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Vacation Bible School is alive and well in many areas all around our country. For many small churches VBS may be the biggest outreach of the year. However, some ministry leaders consider Vacation Bible School to be obsolete and ineffective. VBS is being replaced by more family-oriented events.

The decision to banish Vacation Bible School from your church calendar should not be taken lightly. Here are a few tips to help you and your team in a your decision.

1. Prayer–This should go without saying. Seek God’s will for your church.

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Any Children’s Ministry, large or small, needs a Resource Closet. This is the place that volunteers go to find craft materials, curriculum, puppets, items for object lessons, etc. Basically this is where anything and everything is stored that could possibly be needed by anyone and everyone working with kids. Here are a few tips to help you set up a Resource Closet at no cost. (Yes, I said free.)

1. Find a closet that is not being used or is not being used to it’s full potential. (more…)

When I was a kid it was considered rude to call someone a liar. We didn’t want to be rude – so we called them “story tellers” instead.

These days, I spend a good part of my time being a story teller. I love stories, and I love telling them to kids. I love to watch their faces as the story unfolds.  I love to gauge their reactions to the crazy props, the costumes and the faces that I make.  Storytelling is a great way to teach Biblical stories and Biblical principles.The Bible, after all, is a story.  It is God’s story, and storytelling is an effective way of helping kids to understand their part in that story.  As children’s ministers and teachers, it is important that we be able to tell a good story and tell it well.  As a storyteller, you can be as outlandish or as quiet and simple as you feel comfortable. That said, a prop or two now and then really helps to engage kids in the story.

If you don’t use storytelling in your children’s ministry and want to start, there are several good books out there to help you out. I especially liked Creative Storytelling Guide For Children’s Ministry: When All Your Brain Wants To Do Is Fly by Steven James.  Something else to consider if you want to get better at storytelling is taking a Simply the Story workshop. This is part of the “God’s Story Project.” After completing their workshop, you will be able to take any story directly from the Bible and lead an inductive Bible study on the spot.  The workshop  is easliy adaptable for use in children’s ministry.

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I just finished reading Sam Luce’s article “Hanging Out with Sally Lloyd-Jones”  in this month’s issue of K! magazine. Sally is quoted as saying,

“Jesus, of course, has the highest view of children. And, children are our teachers in many ways, maybe as much as, if not more than, we are theirs.”

This is so true. My three-year-old granddaughter has taught me so much!

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‘Tis the season for holiday celebrations. Over the past weeks I have read quite a few blog posts about holiday celebrations. Halloween. Thanksgiving. Christmas. There are as many ideas out there as there are blogs. So I am faced with another big decision–how will our ministry celebrate the upcoming holidays?

I really want to take another direction in how we celebrate these holidays. I just don’t like the idea of marching out the children, singing a few songs while the parents take photos of their kids wearing cute costumes, then marching them out to the kitchen for milk and cookies. Not that I haven’t done this in the past. It’s just time to rethink our traditional celebrations. What should be our real focus?  If our focus is on ourselves, we will continue to offer photo opps for the parents to enjoy without impacting anyone. We can tell the children that Christmas is all about giving to others, but how will they really know we are serious if we don’t offer them concrete ways to learn for themselves how it feels to give to others? If our focus is on others, then we will reach out to those in need and show them the love of God.

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“Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, in everything give thanks; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18

The first time I ever read that passage, I could not believe what I was reading. In my mind, I pictured someone kneeling for 24 hours a day. “That’s impossible”, I said to myself and dismissed it. Later, I heard a pastor preach a sermon on this passage and explain that believers are meant to be in a constant state of prayer.  We are supposed to keep our line of communication with God open at all times.  We accomplish this by immediately confessing any known sin and asking for God’s forgiveness. Then, whenever we need to shoot up a request, God will hear us. That seemed a lot more possible.

With that explanation, I took the passage literally. The moment I open my eyes in the morning, I begin to thank God for the rest and protection He gave me through the night. When my head hits the pillow at night, my last waking moments are spent in prayer. Whenever I hear something on the news like a tragedy, a missing child or a soldier killed in war, I pray for the family. I pray for the posts on my Facebook account. When I think about a friend or family member during the day, I pray for them. Prayer has become such a habit for me, that I catch myself praying for people in the movie that I am watching!

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Originally loaded to Flickr by _setev.

I shared these thoughts on my personal blog. With your indulgence, I would like to share them with you here as well.

A few years ago I traveled to Lima, Peru on a mission trip. I met a wonderful Christian lady there who was ministering to the children in her neighborhood. She would pay their bus fare so they could attend church when she could. Other times she would teach them in her tiny home on a dirt hillside. That is where I met her, with her house full of kids and tracing color sheets with a pencil and carbon tracing paper one at a time. Her only other equipment was her Bible.

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