[?] Subscribe To This Site

Our Children's Church Blog

December 31, 2006

We had an end-of-the-year children's church pizza party this Sunday, thanks to a generous church member, Mrs. Treva Tallman!

We are also excited to announce that our website was recommended to Top 100 Sunday School Sites! We are currently #32!!! You can see it here.

Our banner will not appear until our ranking changes, so y'all go and rate us with a 10!!!

We have personally been super busy through the holidays, and I have really not worked on the website a bit! I'm buckling down though and learning a ton so that I can add to and improve the site. There is so much to learn! One of the biggies is putting graphics on the site; hopefully I can figure that one out soon! Y'all say a prayer for us as we work. I'm up to about 20 web pages (and about 280 to go...). Thanks!

December 24, 2006

Our attendance was really low this week! I don't know about your church; but we had a lot of folks out of town for the holidays, and our buses were super low, too. However, it can be fun just to have a handful of kids every once in a while. We finished the activities that we didn't have time to play last Sunday during our Christmas party. Chris taught on Jesus' gift to us: Himself. He put some interesting twists on the lesson, and it was very interesting. The children filled out their gift cards to Jesus, telling Him what they wanted to give Him for His birthday. One kid wrote that he wasn't going to sin anymore. Don't I only wish that was possible!! Seriously though, some of them had very good suggestions; and I hope they really try to stick with it.

December 17, 2006

Our children's church Christmas party was awesome!!! Our only regret is that Pastor dismissed the adult service right at noon (instead of 12:20-12:30 like usual), so we had to cut the fun short! We'll probably continue the festivities next week because we still had games, prizes, and an activity left over.

We opened with a couple of games that were really fun. You can read the details by clicking here.

We handed out some first class, full size, full color fliers on Saturday; and I think that helped a lot. Chris had to work this particular Saturday (which is unusual); so I gave our fliers to the Bus Captains to distribute to the kids on their routes, and I visited all the "church kids" myself. I wasn't exactly sure where some of our kids live since Chris usually does the driving while I act as "runner," so I just prayed for the best; and by the grace of God, I found every single house (I am no navigator without a map!). Some of our Sunday School teachers expressed appreciation for the children's church promotion and said that their classes were up because of it. One teacher in particular said that she had a record-breaking attendance, and she felt that it was because of the children's church party and the promoting. Praise the Lord; and thank you, CCBC Bus Captains!

We are looking forward to next Sunday. I kind of figure the attendance will be down because of Christmas Eve -- I'm sure everyone has plans with their families... but perhaps some of the kids will be motivated to come and have a blast again like we did this past week! I sure don't want to miss it (Help! I feel like a 4-year old trapped in an adult's body!!!).

December 10, 2006

This week was our church choir's Christmas cantata, so we took the children's church kids into the auditorium to watch. They behaved exceptionally well. We asked a few choir members, and it was reported that our kids were not a distraction at all. We are very proud of them!

We had wondered how they would do and whether it would be wise to try them out in "big church;" and after talking to Pastor, Chris decided to go for it. We think that it did them good to see a church service for adults every once in a while, and it also exposed the regular church members to children's church -- a ministry that many of them know little about.

December 3, 2006

We were out of town this week for a wedding in Georgia, so our pastor's son and wife John & Heather Mulford took children's church for us this Sunday. We really missed doing our ministry and are looking forward to this weekend -- visitation on Saturday and children's church on Sunday!

I am also looking forward to getting back into website-building mode! It seems like I haven't worked on the site in ages, but I should be adding a lot of content this week. Stay tuned!

November 26, 2006

Our organist is back! I'm so excited because now I will be able to fully get back to my post in children's church! We are rejoicing that the Lord is restoring our beloved 81 year old organist Mrs. Dorothy Koons, who has been slowly recovering from a fall a few months ago. I did, however, still have to stay in "big church" for the first half of the service... because our pianist was out of town! I guess it's a good thing Mrs. Koons was around, or I might have had to pull off some kind of Go-Go Gadget trick and try to play both instruments!

Our children's church kids acted superb this week (that might have something to do with the fact that our three trouble-makers were out of town during the Thanksgiving holiday)! We played a Memory Verse Unscramble game using many of our verses from the entire year, and we were surprised and pleased that the kids did an awesome job of getting them all right. Nellie assisted Bro. Chris with a soulwinning demonstration, although we didn't attempt to get her saved (as we always emphasize that the puppets are foam rubber, not real, and have no soul or spirit). The kids are really growing fond of Nellie and Rudy, and they are becoming a permanent fixture in our children's church.

November 19, 2006

I did not update the blog this week due to major computer malfunction; and to be honest... I really remember everything about our children's church ministry this week! We did use Nellie to demonstrate the true meaning of Thanksgiving, and Bro. Chris taught on the subject. Our memory verse was Psalm 118:1, which we sang to the tune of She'll Be Coming 'Round the Mountain: "O give thanks unto the Lord for He is good, PRAISE GOD! O give thanks unto the Lord for He is good, PRAISE GOD! Because His mercy endureth forever. Psalm 118:1, PRAISE GOD!"

November 12, 2006

We had a great children's church this week! We used some skits from www.fishersofkids.com , and it was a hit with the kids! I had found some old puppets at the church; and although they are pretty worn and scraggly, they were at one time some pretty high quality puppets. I'm just going to have to replace some eyeballs and tongues, and we'll be in the puppet business! I used the two best looking ones, and the kids loved it! They behaved so much better this week, simply because we implemented a huge variety of stuff. We literally treated it like a preschool children's church. Chris did a fun ice breaker, read a funny story, sang a few songs, went over the memory verse, performed the skit with the help of the preschool c.c. workers... then by that time I was coming in from my organ duty, and I got behind the puppet stage. We did a short puppet skit, and then I brought one of the puppets out to "help" me read the Bible story. I read the text straight out of the good old King James, allowing the puppet to interrupt me and give me opportunity to explain. Then Chris gave a short sermonette, summing up everything we'd done all day. After the invitation, we played Bible Bonk. The kids were great, and they loved everything. As a matter of fact, the preschool children's church teacher wasn't feeling well, so we had all kids age 3 through sixth grade (which normally would mean CHAOS); but it still went smoothly. Praise the Lord!

November 5, 2006

Wow, this week was... um... different. For starters we had a little 6 year old guest with us who was deaf. He spent the night with friends, who are some of our regular kids; and when Chris picked them up on the bus, he told the parents it would be no problem for the deaf boy to come along. After all, I know sign language; and I could interpret for him during Sunday School and children's church.

Problem: there is no use interpreting for a deaf person who refuses to look at you! Not to mention, the poor boy has never even begun to learn sign language until this year; so he doesn't really know many signs. We found out about 10 minutes into Sunday School that this definitely wasn't working out (at the expense of the students, the teacher, and my sanity). So the child and I went for a little stroll through the halls. We visited the water fountain, flipped light switches on and off, found a Noah's Ark display to tamper with, and finally settled ourselves down looking at children's church song visuals that (fortunately) had great graphics.

To my great relief another deaf interpreter offered her services between the Sunday School and church break. This was a blessing, since I had to fill in for the organist in "big church" (the term that children's church workers use for the adult service!). She is an 81 year old lady that recently fell and has not yet recuperated. So anyway, I left Rachel with the deaf kid and a bag of M&M's (yes, I finally resorted to bribing!). After I finished the song service and returned to children's church, she was more than happy to allow me the chance to resume my post! I spent the remainder of the lesson (Praise God for M&M's!) just trying to get the child to sit still. I would tell him to sit (by this time every kid in the service knew the sign for "sit") and put his hands in his lap so as not to break the "No Talking" rule. I would count to 10 with my hand in front of him; and if he made it all the way to 10, he was rewarded with an M&M. If not, I started the counting all over again. Once he became proficient with sitting still for 10, I began doing the entire sign language alphabet after counting to 10. This really helped me to conserve more M&M's, and probably prevented the kid from going home with too major of a sugar high.

You know though, by the time church was over, the kid was actually warming up to me (and I was becoming pretty fond of him, too!). I had start teasing him by sticking M&M's in the cuff of his jacket, and he thought that was so funny. I had to stop because his laughing was becoming quite a distraction. He clumsily tried to give me a hug before he left. One of those children's ministry *tender moments.*

So Chris was basically on his own for the entire service. Yikes! The kids did get pretty badly out of hand this week (worse than I ever remember, as a matter of fact). When we got home and were having lunch, Chris commented that we really needed to get a grasp on them and suggested that we consult our website for advice! (Yikes again!)

I've already gotten next week's children's church all planned (as of 3:00 Monday afternoon!). We are going to use some of the skits from www.fishersofkids.com and basically make every effort to have no dead space time whatsoever. I think it will be a lot of fun, and the kids will enjoy it. It's about time to drag out the old puppets again. I called some other church members and asked if they can come back and help for a few minutes with a skit this Sunday. We are really short-handed, since it's only Chris and me anyway; and I've been out for half of the service lately to do the organ playing.

We also finished our Oregon Trail campaign this week. The girls won! Their horse made it to the end of the trail. I'll post pictures soon of that adventure. It went hand in hand with our church-wide "Round-Up Sunday" that we have annually in October.

Go to 2007 Children's Church Blog