ALL SAINTS DAY: Children's Message

This is so good I need to REPOST!


All Saints Day will be coming up pretty quickly. We're talking about all the saints who have gone before us and we have a number of pretty young children who don't really understand the ideas of death, saints, and heaven. They're pretty concrete thinkers. So, I suggested to my pastor that he hand out little paper trumpets or kazoos and let the kids celebrate all the people who are in heaven with Jesus and that we will be there with them some day too.

You can add a short Bible verse too, and let the kids walk around a bit playing their horns and shouting the verse or something along the lines of "In God's house there's a room for me!" or, "When we die we go to heaven!" This way, whenever they play the horn or kazoo, hopefully, they'll remember what they said too!

Another option is to get the rest of the congregation involved. Perhaps they could all sing I Sing a Song of the Saints of God and for the last verse the kids could play their horns as the congregation sings.

H.S. YOUTH: Locker Magnets

This is so good it's time to REPOST!

Romans 10:17
So faith comes from hearing, and hearing from the Word of Christ. 

Ever been on Pinterest?  People pin all kinds of inspirational quotes.  Some funny, some serious, and some intresting paraphrases of Bible verses.  We seem to like soundbites and lyrics and slogans.  We remember them and replay them in our minds constantly.  Well, let's take that idea and instead of a poorly paraphrased Bible verse or something out of context, let's give kids the real thing, and since I'm all about finding ways for kids to carry Jesus with them and using Him as their support system, I say, make inspirational locker magnets!  They can give support and encouragement every time a student opens his/her locker throughout the day and soon enough that verse will be stuck in their minds.  Be sure to let them know that if a friend thinks they're cool and wants one that more are available.  Also, try not to let them take popular verses out of context.  Psalms and Proverbs are a great place to start!


 There are many different ways this can be done.  Here are a few:

• Make them and give them as gifts at the beginning of the school year.
• Have an event where kids get together to make their own.  Be sure they use real Bible verses (including the reference) and not popular quotes.
• Develop a few theme verses the kids may like to use and memorize for the semester.  Make large posters for the youth room and locker magnets for the kids. 
• Make the activity part of a Bible study about keeping the Word close to
  your heart and why it's important to use God's words IN CONTEXT instead of catchy quotes that may be inspiring but may not be Biblical.

Remember that the more often they see God's Word (the magnets) and read them, the better they will remember it later... Brain Rules (John Medina).

EDUCATION: Discussion Strategy #1

One of the most effective learning strategies is discussion. It gets people interacting with the material, asking questions about the material, and hearing multiple opinions. We often forget that academic discussion needs to be structured and facilitated. Most adults have experienced discussion as a teacher/facilitator talking and asking questions while a few outspoken students respond. This is not effective discussion. What you want is to have students discuss while you listen, observe, and consider next steps. Here are a few ways to get more out of your discussion. The success of these strategies is dependent on the size and age of your class. Some of these are great for adults too, but they're not used to them. They're not used to discussion.

Gallery Walk variation 

Write significant questions (read my book, The Art of Teaching Confirmation for more information on significant questions) or thoughtful statements on large post-it notes and place them around the room. The post-its help start discussion, so make sure you ask good questions or make good statements that help guide students to your goals. Remember that the goal is to have discussion, not to write post-it notes.

Round 1
Give each student a few small post-it notes. Have small groups travel around the room reading and responding to the questions on their post-its and post them on the wall next to the questions/statement. Students can ask questions or make comments about what they read.

Round 2
Have students walk around the room again and put a hash mark on questions or comments they want to have answered or talk more about. If they have follow-up questions they can add them too.

The facilitator then can walk around the room and use the students' comments and questions to have table discussion.

Stay tuned for more discussion strategies!

CHILDREN'S MESSAGE: Echo Story

 

Oftentimes we use ECHO PRAYERS when we pray with children because they are simple, they use words that the kids can understand, and they help children learn to pray and feel more comfortable praying out loud.  The leader says a short phrase and the kids repeat it.

Developmentally, younger kids LOVE stories.  They learn from a story far more than a stand alone message from an unattached scripture passage out of the pericopes.  Try doing that with Bible stories for a Children's Message.  You can still use whatever theme you're working with that day but instead of an object lesson, which is often lost on young kids, try an ECHO STORY (you can use a children's Bible or any storybook).  Tell the story but have specific places within the story where the kids will repeat a line or answer an echo question.  Here's how it works.

• QUESTION ECHO - While you share the story, pause to ask simple questions.  "One day a man named Jonah was told by God to go somewhere.  WHO WAS THE MAN?  (Jonah!)  WHO TOLD HIM TO GO?  (God!)  You don't need to ask a question after every single point but you do want to make sure the kids repeat the important parts of the story as that's what they'll remember most.
• PAUSE TO REPEAT ECHO - While you share the story, pause in specific places to have the kids repeat that line.  "Zacchaeus was a short, rich man and nobody liked him.  He took money from people to give to the government so nobody liked Zacchaeus.  NOBODY LIKED ZACCHAEUS.  He wanted to see Jesus.  Hmmm, what should Zacchaeus do?  He looked around and climbed up a tree to see Jesus.  HE CLIMBED UP A TREE TO SEE JESUS."  You get the idea...  You'll want to make sure these are pretty short and that the lines are kept short enough that the kids can remember them.  You also want to remember that you're telling the story to get a point across so you need to make sure you get your point across in the story and they should be repeating that.
• REPEAT THE PHRASE ECHO - Tell kids that every time you put your hand to your ear the kids echo a specific phrase or every time you say certain words they echo a specific phrase back to you.  This one works great when trying to get kids to understand something that's complex.  For example, if the basic message is JESUS LOVE EVERYONE and you tell a story about a bunch of mean, sad, ugly, unexpected types of people, every time you put your hand to your ear have the kids say JESUS LOVES EVERYONE!

Oh!  And if there's a specific Bible passage you'd like them to remember, make it short and have them repeat it after you a few times throughout the story similarly to REPEAT THE PHRASE.  You can make up your own stories about life or use an online children's Bible if you need a little help telling Bible stories.

Bible Suite Children's Bible
The Bible Story Guy
The Bible for Children
A Bible in many languages:  Bible for Children, Inc.
Jesus and Kidz
Super Online Kids Bible

I'm sure there are many more...

CHILDREN'S MESSAGE: The Truth about Object Lessons

The truth is that the majority of children's object lessons aren't for the kids if the kids are under 8 years old.  In the early elementary years faith takes the form of story or drama which means the young kids who come up to the front of the church for your object lesson, lamb's lesson, or children's message, don't have the ability to connect the object to your intended concept.  It's a higher order thinking skill.  Their little brains just can't get it.

Cognitive Development of Kids 3rd Grade and Below (Ages 3-8)

• Little ability to think in terms of general principles (kindness, goodness, etc.) 
• Little ability to think about non-physical entities (God, heaven, etc.)  God the father is a really big dad.  Heaven is a literal place like the library or a big park.
• Visual symbols do not initially have symbolic meaning -- children must be taught what the cross stands for, for example and it will stand for the church or Jesus but not death that pays for sin.
• Cannot relate one fact to another, for example, the heart being like the inside of a tootsie pop that was hardened on the outside by sin.  No way.
• Cannot make generalizations like what happens to a Sunday school class when the word of God is shared.  Super no way.
• Religious stories are classified as any other stories.  There is none more or less important.  Jonah and Pinocchio are on the same level of truth or make-believe.
• The stories of miracles are primarily perceived as fairy tales.  They cannot understand them as real.
• The older they get the more they can determine the difference between real and make believe but that's different than taking something that sounds like it can't be real (coming back from the dead) and assuming it's real.

What Should You Do?

If the majority of the kids who come up during your children's lesson are younger than 8 or 9 there are things you can do if you want the message to be for them.  If it's really something for the adults then please give the kids candy when you're done for being willing to come up front.  Just because they don't understand the larger concept of love, sin, or that Jesus loved them enough to die for their sin they do need to be introduced to the words and the older elementary kids are very interested in meanings of words. The younger ones will most likely equate sin to being mean and cannot transfer that to other actions and certainly not thoughts.  They understand what they experience.

• Tell stories that are close to the emotions of the child. Stories telling of human characteristics such as loving, sharing, and caring are excellent at this stage. The child will accept these with awe and wonder and will relate them to itself.
• Use poems, riddles, and songs.
• Use props, pictures, voices, puppets, and/or volunteer actors to tell stories. 
• If you have an abstract moral they won't get it but they can answer simple questions like, "What happened when I...?"  "What happened when (the puppet) hit the other one?"  "What would happen if you...?"  The information needs to be relevant to their experiences, which are very egocentric.
• Show pictures and have kids answer questions about the picture.  "What's happening in this picture?"
• Teach them what Christian symbols stand for.

EDUCATION: What is Active Learning Homiletics?

As far as I know, every pastor wants to preach a good, memorable sermon. They want people to leave with a new insight, a word of encouragement, hope. They hope God's word flows through them in law and gospel as needed by the hearer. Given that, we've all heard some rough sermons. They might be hard to remember, hard to pay attention to, and sometimes it's just plain hard to understand. As I have pondered this dilemma, I can't help but wonder how I, as a teacher, can help pastors be more effective in their preaching. Nobody wants to dread the sermon or think of it as "dead time" in the worship service. No pastor wants to be told how to preach. So, if you're a pastor and might welcome a few tips from an educator, here's what I've got for you. Here are some educational tips that can be applied to preaching, because in addition to proclamation, preaching is teaching.

What We Know About Lectures 

Let's face it. Preaching is lecturing. It's a short lecture, but it's still a lecture. Standing up and talking while people listen is lecturing, and that's what preaching is. Lectures are an effective way of conveying information or imparting knowledge, so if your preaching goal is simply to share your knowledge or Biblical information, then a lecture is the way to go. However, if you want to change how people think about something, you need to engage them in a debate of the mind. Can this be done in a traditional sermon? Yes!

According to current brain/learning research, we know that we learn more when actively rather than passively engaged, but what does that mean? Passive engagement is sitting and listening. It's the simplest form of engagement and least effective. More about active engagement or active learning later.

What We Know About Memory

If you want people to remember something, they need to hear it more than once. We all know the Lord's Prayer because we say it every week. If you want people to remember what you say, then your new mantra should be review, repeat, recap. 

We've long known that our strongest sense with regard to memory, is smell, but that doesn't work so well when preaching. We also know that our senses work best when used together. For example, memory works better when you combine hearing and seeing.

If you hear a piece of information, you'll remember 10% of it 3 days later. If you add a picture to it you'll remember 65% of it. You'll have 3 times better recall for visual information than for oral and 6 times better recall for information that's oral and visual simultaneously.

We think in pictures, not words. As people read, their brain translates the words into mental pictures. Think about Noah and you'll find a number of pictures (ark, animals, adults, rain, etc) flip through your brain like a mental video. If somebody says the word dog, your brain show you a video of many different dogs. So, if we attach a picture to the words, we have a better chance of  remembering the picture attached to the word. What does that say about using slides in a sermon? What does that say about using slides with pictures on them in a sermon?

What is Active Learning Homiletics? 

There's a reason sermons are only supposed to last 15-20 minutes. That's about how long an adult can sit and listen if they're doing nothing but sitting and listening. "That's ridiculous!" many pastors have said, "They should be able to listen to God's word for hours." Yes, they should, but no, they cannot. They can listen longer, however, if you do something to engage them in a mental debate.

Active Learning Homiletics is a term I created to explain the intentional action of integrating learning principles into homiletics. In this sense, it's about intentionally engaging people with the material instead of letting them be passive listeners. The way I'm using it here, it does not mean you have to separate people into groups and have them participate in some kind of activity. It means you enhance what you're saying with something that breaks it up. For example,

• Ask significant or probing questions that make people think or wonder. 
• Use slides with photos and words on them so that when people recall the pictures, they recall the associated words as well. 
• Use pictures of maps when talking about a region. 
• Use a graphic organizer to help organize groups of information.
• Have them read along with you when reading scripture.
• If you want them to remember a phrase, ask them to repeat it a few times throughout the sermon. "Say it with me, folks, I am with you always." 
• Try unexpected quizzes (but don't call them quizzes). "Remember what I said about...?"
• Throw up a video, cartoon, or use a joke to demonstrate a point. 
• Recap or restate your main points before the end of the sermon.  

SERVICE: Sonshine Care Card

My husband and I have been asking servers at restaurants we go to if they have anything they would like us to pray for when we give thanks for our meal. A few weeks ago, our server nearly burst into tears as she said yes. We prayed with her.

Across the room sat a woman who looked as if she was going through cancer treatments. I said a little prayer for her.

Both times I wished I had something to give them to let them know that God loves them and I prayed for them. At the same time, I don't want to make it seem like, "Hey, I prayed for you. Wanna come to church with me?" That's awkward and ineffective. Inviting a perfect stranger to church rarely, if ever, works. Never-the-less, I wanted them to know that God is with them and always will be. To say "I prayed for you" and walk away makes the words cold and uncaring. I thought, if you're going to tell somebody you're caring for the, you should at least act like it. Also, I don't want to tritely use those words. They are powerful. So, I created a card to hand out in those moments. It's a simple business card and I keep a few of them in my purse and car. This is what they look like.

I didn't want to put my personal phone number on the back of the card and wanted to have a place where people could reach out so the number on back is from a Tracfone. A time may arise that I do invite somebody to church or give them the number of my pastor (with permission to do so) or refer them to another resource.

My congregation has a Stephen Ministry program, but sometimes people don't need a repeat visitor. Sometimes they just need an listening ear or a kind word of encouragement. so I wondered if the pastor might be interested in putting a phone number for that ministry on the back of the card. They're talking about it. He said this may be a whole new form of Stephen Ministry.

Imagine if we could just reach out to people in this simple way. I'm here if you need me.