Wanting to teach the preteens in my class about the choices they make regarding their attitudes and strife in their lives, finding a suitable visual aid was proving to be difficult. Sitting on my bed after rummaging through cupboards, my eyes fell on my two Levi jackets…one that is over-sized and quite comfortable and the other is a fitted jacket that fits, well a bit more snuggly. Like a flash of lightning, an idea popped into my head. A wild idea, but amazing idea.

Armed with two different colors of duct tape, red for the over-sized jacket and white for the fitted jacket and a marker I began to label the jackets. The over-sized jacket is my “strife” jacket that was labeled with different “negative attitudes”. You know the ones, a deep s-i-i-g-h when you ask them to do something, slamming of the doors, back talk, ignoring requests, being disrespectful, arguing, selfishness and my all time favorite…the rolling of the eyeballs! I labeled my sleeves, the back of my jacket, on the pockets, where ever I found a place for the red duct tape. On the other jacket, with the white tape, I labeled all the positive attitudes that were the opposite of strife, “I’ll do it now,” thank you, I would like you to have the biggest part, “I can do that for you,” etc.

(more…)

Working at a church that takes great strides in making sure their facilities are pristine, I was often questioned when I had an object lesson that was messy. Not that I didn’t take extra time to make sure the room we used was as good or in better condition than when we started, because sometimes I even had to get out the carpet extractor and clean the carpet. I have the mind set that if it needs to be a messy object lesson to make a point with kids, the extra time to clean it was well worth the investment.

Not one to purposefully put a stick in the hornets nest, this was sometimes a hard balance in my mind. Did I really want to the building administrator after me for bringing ketchup and mustard in and squirting it on a clean white sheet? (even though there was a roll of plastic laid out to catch any stray splats) The times I used fire of any sort was always a concern to this guy. My gut instinct was to teach the kids with the methods that would have the most impact. So sometimes the stick did get put into the hornets nest with an apology and assurance of clean-up soon following the quizzical eye.

(more…)

What a funny thing to think about. As the EvangeKid Chef I sometimes write lessons that are in character. Using cooking themes and how it can relate to building a relationship with Jesus is really a lot of fun. Think of all the different ingredients that go into so many yummy recipes. How can those be related to discipleship? That is my goal as The Chef.

Last year I was invited to speak at a retreat for 4th and 5th graders. So many ideas were flowing through my mind about how to present to the kids. What topics to write on and challenge them with. I knew one aspect of the weekend had to include the Chef – building a lesson around a recipe that the kids actually made as I taught. In preparing the rest of the weekend’s lessons I realized that I should include what things we needed to have to be considered a child of God. My mind was swirling around chocolate chip cookies. Maybe I was just hungry? As I thought out the process of which characteristics to talk about, which were important to 4th and 5th graders, I listed out the ingredients for the cookie: (more…)