Children's Ministry Conference
Categories: uncategorized
Date: 20 February 2007 14:18:00
In January 1500 children’s workers either voluntary or paid turned up to the Children’s Ministry Conference. The atmosphere was a buzz of energy and creativity and of course a hunger for God. The weekend is designed to encourage, equip, train and resource children’s workers from across the country and in some cases the world. It was sooo much fun!
It has clarified and added to the things I was already thinking about! Here's a few:
Worship – How children worship is a massive question. But I’d like to review how we do worship in J Team making it more age specific as there’s a big difference between how a 3 year old and an 11 year old worship. This in itself raises a lot of other questions about J Team hence the fact that J Team will potentially be changing.
Personal Growth – A leader when working with any age group needs to be spiritually fed somewhere, whether that’s by going to another service or a small group. We have leaders within J Team and probably within other areas of church that aren’t being fed at all. I personally feel that this needs to be addressed tactfully. The challenge at the conference is that you can’t give on empty, you need to be responsible for your life and make sure you have a place to receive else you’re not helping others or yourself.
Ofsted – Apparently churches are one of the worst organisations for being up to the right oftsed regulations, some of that is due to lack of resources or finances etc and some isn’t. I don’t think that we need to go oftsted crazy but I do suggest that we go through the documents and make sure that we are the best that we can be both for our own church family and for other organisations that use the premises.
There's much more that goes in each of those sections but thats a start.
The conference also made me realise how lucky we are as a church. Our church does place a high priority on its children's and youth work in support, encouragements, resources and finances and it's important to remember that when so many other churches don't see it as a priority. Hopefully we can use the resources, finances and team to help other churches that aren't so lucky.
It has clarified and added to the things I was already thinking about! Here's a few:
Worship – How children worship is a massive question. But I’d like to review how we do worship in J Team making it more age specific as there’s a big difference between how a 3 year old and an 11 year old worship. This in itself raises a lot of other questions about J Team hence the fact that J Team will potentially be changing.
Personal Growth – A leader when working with any age group needs to be spiritually fed somewhere, whether that’s by going to another service or a small group. We have leaders within J Team and probably within other areas of church that aren’t being fed at all. I personally feel that this needs to be addressed tactfully. The challenge at the conference is that you can’t give on empty, you need to be responsible for your life and make sure you have a place to receive else you’re not helping others or yourself.
Ofsted – Apparently churches are one of the worst organisations for being up to the right oftsed regulations, some of that is due to lack of resources or finances etc and some isn’t. I don’t think that we need to go oftsted crazy but I do suggest that we go through the documents and make sure that we are the best that we can be both for our own church family and for other organisations that use the premises.
There's much more that goes in each of those sections but thats a start.
The conference also made me realise how lucky we are as a church. Our church does place a high priority on its children's and youth work in support, encouragements, resources and finances and it's important to remember that when so many other churches don't see it as a priority. Hopefully we can use the resources, finances and team to help other churches that aren't so lucky.