My recent project for the Cory Center was What Matters Now in Children’s Ministry.  While the team that developed this resource are still in conversation about how to further the use of the content and expand it, I’ve been wondering about a new project: what’s next in children’s ministry?  My first port of call is the New Media Consortium’s “Horizon Report.”

If you’ve never heard of the Horizon Report, here’s a quick description from the K-12 edition: The Horizon Report series is the most visible outcome of the New Media Consortium’s Horizon Project, an ongoing research effort established in 2002 that identifies and describes emerging technologies likely to have a large impact on teaching, learning, research, or creative expression within education around the globe. This volume, the 2010 Horizon Report: K-12 Edition, examines emerging technologies for their potential impact on and use in teaching, learning, and creative expression within the environment of pre-college education.

Here’s a summary of the technologies the Horizon Report sees becoming integrated into the teaching and learning process over the next five years:

Time-to-Adoption Horizon: One Year or Less

•    Cloud Computing

•    Electronic Books

•    Social Computing

•    Social Media

Time-to-Adoption Horizon: Two to Three Years

•    Educational Gaming

•    Mobiles

•    Open Content

•    Virtual Worlds

Time-to-Adoption Horizon: Four to Five Years

•    3D Video

•    Augmented Reality

•    Personal Learning Environments

•    Thin Screens and Flexible Interfaces

Now, the New Media Consortium released the Horizon Report and a K-12 Edition early this year.  I think we need a Kidmin edition.  We need a simple way for people in the field of children’s and family ministry to know what is on the horizon in terms of trends, both technological and spiritual.  I think this is a critical resource – one that has not been researched or released!  If you are interested, comment or contact me.

This year I will turn 29.  God has opened up a really amazing opportunity for me to interact with a veteran in the field of children’s and family ministry.  This person is a leader that I have come to respect and learn a lot from.  But recently he challenged me with some big questions.

From my perspective, what are the top five things that the older generation of children’s and family ministry leader needs to know about my generation, parents from my generation, kids from this generation, and the challenges these groups afford to ministry paradigms from the past.

Here are some further questions for discussion:

Is it all about technology?  Are the distinctives only technological?

What about depth?

What about relationship?

What will ministry to children and families look like in the future?

What will students look like in the future/when they grow up?

If we make a host of changes in the way we minister to children and families, where will that lead?

Online classes are becoming more and more common – not just for adults seeking flexible degree programs, but for children.  I came across a great article in the Seattle Times about an online class for kids about kindness.  Here’s what Dan Pink had to say about the kindness class:
Andy Smallman, head of the Puget Sound Community School in Seattle, has come up with a social innovation that’s ingenious, inspiring, and infectious. He calls it “kindness class.”

Each week students in the online course get an assignment. In week one, they do something kind for themselves. In week two, they do something kind for someone they love. And so on. Along the way, participants do something kind for a neighbor, provide something wonderful for someone to find, let everyone go ahead of them for a week, and do something kind anonymously.

For more information, check out the site and this Seattle Times article. In a world where people are seeking purpose and connection, kindness classes could be an idea whose time has arrived.

This class is the idea of the week, so I’m going to spend 30-60 minutes this week brainstorming how it could relate to children’s and family ministry.  Here’s what I have so far:
•    This class integrates technology with values
•    It connects students via emailed assignments
•    It breaks down a value into actionable steps
•    It explains each step in the simplest of terms – no one is confused after reading the assignment
•    The steps are not intuitive and would take work to accomplish
•    Each step includes a quote
In terms of application, I’m going to specifically brainstorm how to use the aforementioned broad strokes with an upcoming campaign our church is doing on the theme of “serving.”  We’re doing an 8 week series on Serving for the entire church.  Kids through adults will hear messages on serving with very similar content.  My team is writing all the small group and large group curriculum for K-5th.  Adult Community Groups will use the small group books we created.  It would be awesome to break down “serving” into 8 actionable steps for kids and families and have those steps posted to a blog or available for e-newsletter.

I’m always trying to find ways to make the story of Easter creative and fresh for the kids who have tuned it out. It’s sad how repeated truth loses its value to the hearer (is that how trite sayings are born?).  This year I was challenged to see if I could write a mini-saga.  A mini-saga is a 50-word story.  I’m sure you’ve heard of the Six Word Memoirs, a web and print sensation where people see if they can write their life story in only 6 words.  It was Ernest Hemingway who set the precedent, writing a classically sad story (not a memoir), “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”

Clearly, I am not Ernest Hemingway. (Six words for those of you keeping score on Twitter).  I thought it would be fun to collect 50-word mini-sagas of the Gospel.  We’re going to take these mini-sagas and share them with our 2nd-5th graders this Easter.  I’m praying that hearing the whole story in exactly 50 words from different people will bring the story alive in a way many kids have never heard before.  I’m praying that the stories submitted will impact the kids on the margins.

I asked lots and lots of people to contribute, a few helped out.  I’ll post what I have so far and invite you to join the discussion.

God loves you.  God hates sin.  Everyone sins.  God sent his son, Jesus, to pay for your sins.  It’s a free gift.  You need to say, “Jesus, I’m sorry for my sin. Thank you for dying on the cross for me.  My life belongs to you.” Would you like that?

God created people to worship God. We sinned separating us from God. Jesus, who never sinned, died on the cross to pay for our sins. God raised Jesus from the dead. We can receive forgiveness of sin; have a relationship with God worshiping him again now and in heaven forever.

The gospel in fifty words; you’re crazy.  Wait.  “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”  Good huh?  A guy named John wrote that.  He knew Jesus really well.  You can too.

For me, believing in Jesus was like standing at the foot of the cross. As Jesus was crucified, he was shedding tears for me. The tears ran down his blood stained face and fell into my heart, washing away everything bad. For the first time I felt clean; free; forgiven.

Everything started with God: the universe, time, humanity.  But evil crept in.  All was lost.  Yet God chose a people and struck a deal no one could ever break.  Jesus was the sacrifice to bring humanity back into relationship with God.  Redemption!  By grace I can know God now, evermore.

This is a really powerful exercise.  Take your time.  Only 50 words.