I attended a wedding the other day in a church I had never been to before. It was built in the early 80’s, it was decorated like the late 70’s but the children’s classrooms could have been a sceen from a movie where we went back in time to the 60’s. If we are ministering to today’s kid’s why do our churches look like yesterday. Paint is not expensive. Graphic artists are a dime a dozen. I know you don’t have to have to be “Chuck E. Church” to be effective but shouldn’t we at least reflect this current decade? My question for thought is if we carbon dated your ministry (not just your rooms) what decade would they reflect? In 30 years of ministring to kids at church I’ve learned something very important “Every few years you have to update what you do if you want to or not because culture and kids are constantly changing. My daughter Yancy just produced a new preschool CD. One of the songs came from Amy Grant’s “Songs From The Loft” a project made for Youth worship in the 90’s. The same song that was for teens 15 years ago was a perfect preschool praise song. What changed? Culture did we need to change with it.
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Our walls are done in flannelgraph with each wall reflecting a different time period in God’s covenant with man. Pretty cutting edge stuff…Nothing gets them more fired up than a rousing chorus of Father Abraham!!!
Seriously, even with limited resources there is always something we can do to improve the quality of our rooms. My pastor’s wife and her sisters were over the children’s departent for years which made it difficult to make them see the need for change.
We had a boat load of Mark Harper material…which contained some great stuff but most of the skits and puppet skits were outdated and just flat didn’t work. When I was finally able to convince Pastor we needed to get a volume of KOTM.
What a blessing it was to have material work that required very little adaption. As great as the curriculum was and is we still could not use the stories and many of the worship songs.
Eventually we had to totally go away from KOTM worship and passed it on to our Wee Warriors. Without having a worship team for kid’s church we’ve been using mainly Hillsong kid’s with a team of tweeners that lead in worship.
I try to tweak the messages, skits, and other supporting pieces and sometimes mix and match with other curriculums as well as my own material.
I’ll address this to you first Brother Jim because I know you guys primarily use KOTM obviously. What are some of the things you guys do to keep the core of your material but change the presentation etc?? If anybody has something to add please do!!!
Hmmmm???? I must say that I love hearing this kind of stuff bro jim, but I also hate to hear it. This love - hate relationship I have with the idea of producing culturally relevant ministry spaces stems from having a desire in my heart to create such a space, but having facilities people tell me “there’s absolutely no way, no how we are going to let you do anything to the space because it is a shared ministry area and kids don’t have to have all that anyway, etc, etc, etc…”
What’s a CP to do in such a situation?!? My church is in the middle of erecting a Family Life Center and I have been pretty much told that decorating is out of the question unless it’s a few pictures of kids art work and that we will have two central colors throughout the entire building (kids areas included) - the two colors that are close in color to our church logo colors - good old blue and yellow, but on the soft side of those colors. They are not bending on this because they don’t consider it all that important.
So what can a CP in this situation do besides going into a sound proof room and screaming as loudly as possible?
Are there cool decorative props that can be easily stored, set up and taken down from week to week - with limited storage space of course? Would banners attached to some sort of stand add life? There must be creative, cost effective solutions available and I would love to tap into them….
Chris,
We have themed it into different series. Added current artwork and video intros as well as changed our presentation styles. We made some of the themes available at dream you can order them @ http://www.churchonthemove.com/store/show_products.html?categories_id=67.
To me it’s all about presentaton and packaging.
No out of the box curriculum is going to always be culture current in it’s look but the teaching is timeless. It’s up to us to present the timeless truths using today’s methods for today’s kids.
hope that helps,
bj
I have been were you are the key is having a base color or colors that’s aimed at adults in their 30’s not in their 70’s. Then add banners, vinyl, cool bigger then life styorfoam props. My son-in law has tons of banner stands that set up and take down easy and can help you. Checkout http://www.momentummedia.us. This is also a good lesson of questions to ask in the interview process. This post might be a good one for your senior pastor.
I feel your pain,
bj
fabrics and large posters or blown up photos are cool decor. also hanging beach balls, small statues, etc from the ceiling may be a cool idea depending on your space. something that i thought was really neat in our old kids church was a stop light that hung and a model airplane. stuff like that sparks imagination!
Thanks Brother Jim…I don’t know if your ministering this week to the counselors at Dry Gulch but my son Cory Pedersen will be there for his 2nd year as a counselor…If you get the chance to say hello to him that would be awesome!!
He just finished his 1st year of college but really believes the Lord may be leading him a different direction. He knows he’s called to children’s ministry and is praying about possibly applying for an internship at COTM. We couldn’t find anything online about it. He’s been working in Kid’s Church since he was 11 and is going to be a way better children’s pastor than I am.
I always enjoy catching one of Brother Harold’s services and enjoyed I think one of your youth pastor’s messages…He was my kid’s favorite last year…He had the ninja dude with him…Any I missed hearing you minister to the kids last year, the year before was great…
I’m already making plans for Dream next year as I got scheduled out of it this year…Do you have dates yet?
Thanks for the link bro jim. I just told someone on Sunday that I now know a host of questions to ask during my next interview process. I missed quite a few this time around - lesson learned though.
Nevertheless, in the meantime I am glad that there are ways to decorate and make a room come to life even if it can’t be so permanent. Thanks again for the web link!
Amen! Our churches are severly outdated. Darlene, I think most of use have been where you are, and it is indeed a tough place to be. Keep praying that God will change the hearts and minds of your leadership. Perhaps, also, you could find a local church in your area that has a decked out CM area and invite some influential people to visit it. Maybe they would catch the bug. CM is contagious (but not like the recent TB scare)
Dean-o