Showing posts with label children's ministry during COVID-19. Show all posts
Showing posts with label children's ministry during COVID-19. Show all posts

Sunday, August 30, 2020

Ministering To Children During the Covid-19 Pandemic


The global pandemic of 2020 has been challenging for all of us. When I began the KidFrugal blog, it was to resource others. Even though we are now retired, I still participate in some children's ministry, and I continue to read and research. Coming from a small church background we always had to rethink things. I never knew if I would have one kid or 8 kids. But over the years we were able to adapt and provide quality time for the children that came.

Ministering during a pandemic is similar in some ways. You have to re-think everything. Think outside of the box. How can we "touch" kids when they aren't even coming on campus? How can we connect. What about when we re-open?

I have already written a few posts about re-opening with kids in your services for those of you that will not be having separate children's ministries yet. You can check out worship bags here and ways to engage kids in "Big Church" here and specific ideas for worship bags here.

Today I want to give you some resources from Melissa J. MacDonald. If you aren't familiar with Melissa, aka as "Miss Mel" to many children, you owe it to yourself to read her book or listen to some of her teaching material.

Below is a 30 minute training video that Melissa did entitled, Engaging Kids Over Video. There are some really good pointers in this video. Melissa is straight forward, and engaging, which is what you want to be on video. She will give you some great ideas how to be personable even in a video. Some of her pointers include:
  1. Smile
  2. Connection not perfection
  3. How to be personable - if you are in your office, talk about some of the personal items in your office before you get into the lesson. Introduce your dog if your at home. Let kids see something about YOUR personal life in the video.
  4. Lighting
  5. Watch the video for more.





In addition to speaking and making videos, Melissa also writes. She is a regular columnist in Children's Ministry by Group and has a book entitled, Missing: An Urgent Call for the Church to Rescue Kids. 
 
Melissa also offers many different training opportunities like boot camps, coaching and seminars. Find our more at her website: Melissa J. MacDonald.

Sunday, July 12, 2020

Virtual VBS Incrediworld Day 1




I just recently finished filming a 5 day VBS for the local church we attend. This is day one, the creation story. In it, I use my signature mailbox and flashcards to engage the children. I accessed the images for the flashcards from FreeBibleImages.comhttp://www.freebibleimages.org/. The images I chose came from this page.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/193IepovXgbI6dB40X8FxUugLk8AlyDcE/view?usp=sharing


Here is a link to the 11x17 visuals I created in PDF form.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WOpay0DMRZgzzyfvUhwP11-BBh6uwEyM/view?usp=sharing
Here is the link for the flash card, And there was evening and there was morning, the ___ day.



Incrediworld VBS is by Answers In Genesis and is available for free this summer due to the
Covid-19 pandemic. You can access your copy here.

You can watch the whole lesson below (my intro got cut somehow, but it's still OK).





Sunday, July 5, 2020

What's In Your Bag?


Worship bags and worship boxes are nothing new to the church scene. However, I am willing to bet that they are new to a lot of people since the Covid-19 appearance and the changes we have had to make in ministry. Most churches have not reopened their children's churches. And even when they do, there are going to be some parents who will want to keep their children with them in the pew.

Friday, June 5, 2020

8 Ways to Engage Children in "Big Church"


Location, location, location. These are three most important words in real estate.

Connect, connect, connect. What are these the three most important words in? Intergenerational services. You could say, "Engage, engage, engage." too, but I like the connotations of what connecting means. So even though I entitled this "engage," I want the purpose of the engagement to be to connect children to the big picture of church. This entails realizing that they are a part of something bigger than their children's church or Sunday School classes. It means realizing that there is a body of believers that they are a part of. The more you can connect them to that body, the more they will feel a part of it. And the more they feel a part, the better the chances that they will maintain a life long connection with a local body of believers. Even beyond that though, children should be a part of our churches NOW, not when they are grown up. So I will give you ideas in this post, but more important than doing these things, is developing a church body that values the collective body, which includes children, the disabled, ethnicities, and, well you get it, all that are a part of the body of Christ.

Today with the event of Covid-19, as churches are facing re-opening, they are also facing incorporating children into the worship services. I did write a similar post a few years ago about alternatives to children's church, but I have included more ideas in this post. So here are 8 ideas for connecting and engaging children in "Big Church."

Sunday, May 31, 2020

The Butterfly Project



My regular readers may be aware that we retired from full time ministry in September. This entailed finding a new church and then getting involved. Hence, not many new posts...until now. Our new church had a genius idea I want to share with you during this COVID-19 crisis. This will still be great after the pandemic too, but it is particularly useful now.

This project was a mailing, but not just any mailing. The church purchased magic flying butterflies. If you aren't familiar with these babies, they are paper butterflies with wind up wings. The sender "winds the wings" up and places the butterfly in a card. When the receiver opens the card, the butterfly comes "flying" out.

You can order these butterflyers all over the internet, but we got ours at this website.
Cards were purchased at the Dollar Tree where you can get them 2 for $1.00. You could also make your own.

To make this project really special, parents were notified ahead of time that the card would be coming in the mail. You could email or text the parents, but they simply posted it in the Facebook group for their children's ministry. The children's director announced that something would be coming in the mail for the children and asked parents to film them as they opened their cards and then send the video to the church. Someone at church put the footage together and made one video which was shown during the online church service. It was a delightful surprise, and we got to "see" some of the children we hadn't seen for quite awhile. Below is the video that was shown in church.



This is a win-win project. It sends joy into the home where it is captured on film and then sent back to the church where it is shared with all. It benefited the congregation, the children's ministry, the children themselves and families.
  • The congregation benefits by getting to see the children's ministry (it created an inter-generational moment during the church service). 
  • The children see themselves shown during the "big peoples" church and thus feel a part of it. 
  • The ministry is kept before the church (they often do not see what goes on in kidmin). 
  • Finally the children & their families receive joy when they get the cards in the first place.
Have you done any mailing projects? Let us know in the comments below.

Friday, April 10, 2020

Social Distancing and Green Screen Ministries



Years ago our youth entered a video contest to try and win money to attend a conference. We wrote a script that included all kinds of crazy scenes. The girl that was going to film it took one look at the script and said, “I can’t do this.”

“Why not?” I asked.
“Can’t you just cut out the background and make it look like we are on a boat?”

“You need a green screen for that.” was her reply.

A green screen? I had never heard of it. Apparently every kid from here to Timbuktu knows what a green screen is, but I didn’t. 

Today, with social distancing being practiced, and churches doing everything online, I noticed that my old "Green Screen" post was getting more traffic. So I am going to add a little to it in light of the present situation the coronavirus has imposed upon us.

Pirate Themed Trunk & Treat

Shiver me timbers and batton down the hatch, it's trunk and treat time and have we got a theme for you. Be sure to check the video out a...