There’s tons of items online and even here at Cory Center about working with and teaching digital natives. The children in our classrooms don’t know what it is like not to be bombarded with information, images, and messages. They interact differently with technology than their teachers.

Rather than fight to get them to be more like you – which will never happen – be creative, see how you can leverage the world that they live in to help pass along the message you have.
One idea, inspired by the RSA Illustrate people is to augment your talk with drawings…here’s a sample that I’ve used:

The week I used this, the student’s were captured. I had their full attention for the length of the video and several moments after – not a peep. I used the moments after to clarify the message and drive home a few points….

And believe it or not, this video only took about 2 hours to create. I’m sure that my next one will go from brain to screen much quicker since there will be less of a learning curve on my end.

Here’s what I used:

1. Story – we’re using Tru, but any story will do
2. iMovie – Windows movie maker may work as well
3. Garage Band – any way to record your voice so that you can import it into your movie software
4. ScreenChomp app on my iPad – I’m seeking another app, but this one will serve me for now. It’s possible to do the entire talk on ScreenChomp, but their server seems to have issues with large videos.

Here’s the process:

1. Record the story. (This is where I used Garage Band)
2. Using screen chomp, illustrate a point. It’s helpful if the illustration is longer than what you are saying.
   * With screen chomp, you have to save the movie to their server, then download the mp4…another app may save the file locally.
3. Import into iMovie.
4. Using the clip adjustment, adjust the speed of the clip to fit the portion of your talk.
5. Repeat 2-4 until you’ve illustrated everything
6. Show the movie

As you can see, with the right tools, this is a simple process that enables you to make a quick video to get a point across or to illustrate an entire talk. Just don’t over use it, the natives will get restless.

What are you doing to facilitate native learning in your classroom?

Today’s kids prefer to process images before text.  As leaders and storytellers present the truth of God’s Word, it is vital to incorporate visual elements into the teaching and today’s nonlinear presentation tools resources are the right tools for the job.  Why use a nonlinear tool?

• Visuals can be accessed in any order
• Increased interactivity
• Unique point of view – presenter can pan and zoom on the visuals
• Greater flexibility with multimedia and social media

1) Prezi – The mother of all nonlinear presentation tools.  Create your presentation on a large canvas, zoom in and out on the canvas, jump around from text to image to video.  Other similar tools without the panache include Pachyderm, Dizzy.js, and Speakflow.

2) PowerPoint – If Prezi is the mother of nonlinear presentation tools, PowerPoint is the father.  While not created inately for nonlinear work, with plugins like ActivePrez by GMARK, PowerPoint can add a toolbar at the top of any presentation to allow the presenter to jump back and forth through the visuals seamlessly.  A similar plug is pptPlex.

3) ProPresenter - Awesome and powerful software for Mac or PC.  I’ve used ProPresenter in multiple ministry environments and it is my favorite tool for presenting.  A fully featured impressive product.

4) Projeqt – So many cool features in this web tool: pull live tweets, blog feeds, insert audio notes or interactive maps, and view streaming video (to name just a few).  Projeqt is a crazy cool tool that you have to check out.

Have you used any of these tools or other nonlinear presentation software?  Let us know in the comments!

Hard working moms and dads all over the world are preparing for summer.  Where will the kids go?  What experiences will be planned for them?  How will they grow as a response to the summer activities?  Many families plan a wide variety of experiences for their family over the summer.  Parents want opportunities to serve, feel the emotion of compassion, and experience spiritual revelation and depth through camps and VBS.  It’s important to have family bonding times as well.  Contrary to what the kids want, it’s also important for parents that kids retain what was learned over the previous school year and take on new academic knowledge.    And to think, there are only eight to ten weeks for such experiences.  Although it is not the church’s responsibility to provide ALL the needs for families, summer is a wonderful time to switch gears and purpose as a ministry.

It’s important as you consider the plethora of ideas for summer outreach you provide what naturally suits your congregation.  Take a look at what other churches are doing and attempt to complement one another instead of competing.  Families tend to go to all types of church organized events over the summer to meet their needs.  Don’t take offense; be grateful!  Be prepared to find your niche and meet the needs of families in your community considering God has placed you in this community body just as He pleased. You have a role to fulfill.

In order to get your ideas rollin’ we’ve listed several ideas you can use to reach your community this summer.
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Imagine having had this amazing experience on your first mission trip.  As you returned home and began showing pictures and sharing stories of how your faith was renewed and how you served others, they don’t seem to get it.  Listeners try to share your enthusiasm but cannot grasp the life transformation that took place in your life.  You wished they could have lived it with you…

If you’ve ever been on a mission trip, you’ve likely experienced that dilemma.  If one individual shared that much life change, imagine what would take place for the family unit when they serve on a mission trip together.  The conversations and moments of caring for others would be amazing.

Parents want nothing more than to have their kids carry on their faith in God.  According to Eugene Roehlkepartain in his book, The Teaching Church, if you want to double the chances that your child will continue to live for God, then they will do three things:  have caring conversations, family devotions and family service.   Providing opportunities for families to serve together or experience mission trips could provide each of these faith milestones families need to strengthen their faith TOGETHER.  Although not limited to summer, it is a great time of the year for such experiences.

You may be thinking, at this time of the year, with this amount of responsibility how could I possibly organize family serving opportunities or a mission trips?  Remember, our role as church leader is to equip the saints to do the work, not to do all the work alone.  The idea of a family missions experience can be as elaborate or simple as you need it to be.  The benefits of the work put into family missions experiences will out way the work put into pulling the ideas together.

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I am fascinated with the teaching and learning process.  As children’s and family ministry leaders, part of our work is educational so being attenuated to issues related to learning theory is critical.  In Approaches to Training and Development, Dugan Laird posits that the vast majority of knowledge (75%) is learned through seeing.  God created our eyes to help us learn.

So often in children’s ministry we overemphasize learning through hearing, even though hearing accounts for only 13% of retained knowledge.  Learning to represent ideas and concepts visually is a worthwhile skill to acquire for anyone involved in the teaching and learning process.

I know what you’re thinking:

“Wait, I don’t draw!”  “Even my stick figures are unrecognizable!”

Have no fear, technology is here to help.  Here are 5 resources that can help you begin the process of learning how to represent ideas and concepts visually.

Draw Something – This app is being played by over 20 million people all over the world.  It’s turn-by-turn Pictionary for your iPad.

Vizthink.com – Free articles, media, podcasts, and presentations cover topics like Idea Mapping, Drawing Ideas, and Visual Note-Taking.  There is a fantastic library of articles covering the basics, including how to conquer the fear of drawing.

Paper – My favorite app for the creative process.  Simple tools make it easy to pick up a “pen” and brainstorm.  Available in the iTunes store.

Napkin Academy – Dan Roam, author of The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures, is on a mission to help people learn to use simple pictures.  With Napkin Academy, you can begin with a variety of free lessons that help you go from “I can’t draw” to “I can draw any idea.”

How to Draw Faces – This is one of my go-to resources by author and artist Austin Kleon.  It’s a simple video of how to draw faces with a square, two dots, 2/3 of a triangle and three lines.  Watch and learn.

The purpose of this series is to equip leaders in children’s and family ministry with tools and resources from the digital world.  We’ve covered theological topics, leadership issues, volunteers, worship and music, research, budget, and social media.  Today I want to introduce you to a concept that completely changed my work style and effectiveness.  Whether you are a Sunday School Director or Children’s Pastor, you are a busy person, so busy that often people tell you, “I didn’t want to call you because I know you’re so busy.” Am I right?

The problem with being busy is that you reach a certain threshold where no matter what you are working on in the present; your mind fixates on the things you’re not working on.  We tend to think about what needs to be done instead of focusing on what we are doing.  This is a critical issue for children’s ministry leaders because in the moments when we are strolling the halls of our ministry environment, instead of looking like we have all the time in the world to stop and talk to parents and kids, we look like we’re trying to solve a complex algorithm.

Are you too busy?  Determine how much time you can spend with people without thinking about supply shopping, set-up, or curriculum and let your heart decide.

Almost five years ago I read a book called Getting Things Done by David Allen.  Getting Things Done (or GTD for short) is a system of organizing your work.  In GTD, I learned to give all of my work a place.  It was a pivotal moment for me as a leader and pastor.  I recommend the book and invite you to look across the interwebs at the myriad tools available to help you keep track of what needs to be done: Remember the Milk, Omnifocus, Nozbe, Wunderlist, Action Method, Outlook, Google Tasks, Things.

Teaching BGMC (Boys and Girls Missionary Challenge) was my first role as a children’s minister as a teen. I LOVED the research and the idea of prayerfully and financially helping someone teach others about Jesus in another culture. Years later as a children’s pastor we did so many fun things and I learned a few lessons along the way too (like to make sure not to try to do all my ideas alone!) Now, I don’t believe I have all the answers when it comes to missions and kids; but I do have a TON of ideas. Allow me to share my experience and give you some fun ideas you can use to bring missions emphasis to the front of what you do in the class or weave it into your lesson on a monthly basis.

In my zeal I never had enough time to do all I had planned for Mission Sunday once a month. So as kids arrived and were waiting for service or class to start we’d have books on tables from the country in focus. I’d have someone cooking food on one side of the room, another person leading games (the kids would play in the country we were learning about). Then of course there were crafts going on too. Seriously, you could have just one of those components in the mission lesson and it would be fun!

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As we journey toward Easter Sunday I thought I would share with you the ‘Seven Symbols of the Passion’ that we have prepared for our Good Friday family experience.  Each family will be given a black coin bag that contains the items pictured to the right.  Families will pull out each symbol and pass it around as we retell the passion narrative from The Message Bible.

As you read through these scriptures I pray that you remember deeply the passion of our savior as he gave up his life so that we might gain life.

KB

Coin
The Betrayal.

 Then Jesus went with them to a garden called Gethsemane and told his disciples, “Stay here while I go over there and pray.” Taking along Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, he plunged into an agonizing sorrow. Then he said, “This sorrow is crushing my life out. Stay here and keep vigil with me.”

Going a little ahead, he fell on his face, praying, “My Father, if there is any way, get me out of this. But please, not what I want. You, what do you want?”

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I will never forget an online exchange I had years ago with a prominent figure in church leadership.  He argued that seminary was a complete was of time because its role was to “help people answer questions no one is asking.”  According to that leader, a seminary education was irrelevant to “real” church leadership.  Without a doubt, one of the greatest gifts I received from my time in Bethel Seminary’s Children’s and Family Ministry Program was the gift of understanding my own leadership and the passion to pursue leadership topics that were previously untouched.

This passion brought about the resources behind What Matters Now in Children’s Ministry and the newly released Kindle ebook Nexus: Central Themes in Children’s Ministry.  The focus of all of these projects was to answer big questions because that very act of collectively and collaboratively identifying and pursuing the primary issues in our ministry work is what leaders do.

Nexus answers the question: What is at the core of children’s ministry?

Why do children’s pastors, Sunday School teachers, Christian Education directors engage in children’s ministry?  When you take all of the programming, special events, recruiting efforts, and shopping for supplies – what is the foundation of ministering to children?

David Csinos, Greg Carlson, Nancy Davies, Amy Dolan, Larry Fowler, Ryan Frank, Matt Guevara, Stacy Igarashi, Ed Jenkins, Melissa MacDonald, Matt McKee, Dustin Nickerson, and Nicki Straza contributed to the book and their answers and passion for ministry are inspiring.

Nexus is available for free this week on Amazon.  Stop by the Amazon store and pick up a copy of the Kindle ebook!

It seems like almost every week I get another flyer in the mail or read a blog post about a children’s ministry conference.  As children’s and family ministry leaders, we have many options for additional training in our field and the conferences we can attend range from thousands of attendees nationwide meeting for a week to just a handful of local leaders meeting for one day.

My senior pastor has challenged our ministry staff over the past year that really made me think about the conference options I have available to me as a ministry leader.  He asked our ministry staff to begin choosing conferences and training that get us into God’s Word and help us practice spiritual disciplines, over the larger conferences that focus on ministry strategy and execution.  This is the primary reason I have decided to attend The Gathering on May 9-11 in Costa Mesa, CA.

According to their website:

The Gathering exists for the purpose of inspiring, equipping, and supporting the faith community in order that they may become awakened to their role as ambassadors of God, His kingdom movement, and spiritual formation through family ministry within the local church.

The main things I’m looking forward to at The Gathering are the focused times of prayer (including a self-guided prayer experience the first evening of the conference) and worship.  There is a great lineup of keynote speakers too: Michelle Anthony, Gregg Jantz, and Chris Brown.  You can get all the info about The Gathering at http://dccgathering.com/.

While I love new ideas and fresh ministry strategies from experts, I want my experience this year at a conference to be about hearing from God and being challenged by the Gospel’s story.  I can’t wait for The Gathering and I hope you can join me!