Reflection on Children Ministry Magazine Live 2005 training: "Out of the Box"

Hi there,

That was a good training today; good and solid. They focused on a few things and hit them well. Here are some of my reflections as I processing this stuff through.

- In session 1, we were exposed to four different stations for worship/prayer experience. I found myself thinking, "What is worship/prayer?" The church through out history used objects to mediate/aide people in their worship/prayer. (The Eastern Orthodox had their icons, the Roman Catholics had their statues, even the ancient Jews had their altars and the ark.) But as the author of Hebrews point out: all of these objects were only heavenly foreshadows, or "props" if we could say it. Therefore, if the "props" were without substantial contents, then they are useless. (Perhaps this is why the ancient Israel was not supposed to fashion graven images for worship). We should encourage our people to be more creative and experiential in worship, but we should also need to make sure that those creativity and activities won’t take the center stage of worship.

How could we help the staff process this some more? I would suggest that we allow them to process “How do you like/dislike the worship/prayer stations experience?” Then we need to ask ourselves again “What is worship/prayer?” And finally ask “Should we use some of this concept in our own worship? How?”

For me, I would like the worship time better if it was less people, and with more time. Worship and prayer for me is a place that I want to linger on. But once again, I am much older and slower than the kids. I think the ultimate goal is to fashion a people who could instinctively worship God through any objects and surrounding in which they are exposed to. They could be standing in the sun with their eyes closed and feel the warmth on their skin and praise the God who put the sun at just the right distance to give us the seasons and weather, grain and food, etc. In fact, we will need to constantly remind ourselves to “see beyond” the “props” to God in our worship. The minute that our focus is on the “props” themselves, we would commit idolatry. What do you think?

- Also in session 1 we learned about the issue of brokenness. While it is true that brokenness can be used by God, is it also true that “we will be stronger in the broken places?” Is it Biblical to conclude that "God's light shines through those broken cracks of our lives"? If so, and if we feel comfortable in our brokenness, how would we answer the question of, "Is Christians supposed to be more like Christ?" While it is true that God used people with a broken past in our ministry, it’s not necessarily true that we would want the kids to grow up and be broken just like us.

How could we help the staff process this some more? I would suggest that we raise the questions so that they can probe it a bit more in depth. And then perhaps we should introduce them about the preventive and prescriptive aspects of ministry. You see, in the medical profession there is no simple answer for “What are you given for disease X?” They give a medication Y for X in preventive vaccination, but they give a medication Z for X in prescriptive treatment. I could be off my rocker here, but I see Law as preventive measure and Grace as prescriptive measure. This is why we would teach kids not to marry non-Christians, but if some older adults made the wrong choices, we would continue to embrace them and care for them too (even though we would be sad, and they might got hurt too).

For me, this is convolute to kids to understand, so we wouldn’t teach children that. But your staff should be able to start grappling with this for the sake of our future. I would also suggest that the staff should ask the tougher question of “What are the issues (brokenness) that kids bring in to their class time?” Please jot them all down and feed them back to me so that I could present it to the pastoral staff. Some of these issues should be work on at the congregational level.

- Session 3 was the most challenging session for me. As I evaluate the topic of family ministry in our church I see a lot of inadequacy.

First of all, the problem was ingrained in the way I think and work. For example, when Christine asked me “Why didn’t ba Muc Su Son come?” I began to realize that I’ve failed to communicate this training event to her, to C. Thuy, or even the Sunday-School’s staff. Growing up as “pioneering youth leader” for the English Ministry frontier, that had robbed me of the intergenerational-thinking mindset. I often just think far enough for English Ministry, but not big enough to include the other segment of the church. This should be something you guys can help keep me improve.

The second problem was documented there in the handout: There is a big gap between parents and the church. We simply didn’t do a very good job of coaching adults on biblical parenting. Before today workshop, my limited vision assigned that coaching job to the Senior Pastor. But after thinking it through at the workshop, I am thinking that we can start taking some of that work on ourselves, at least in what we can do in English. A simple quarterly newsletter will improve that communication with the parents a lot. And we can coach them with relevant articles collected as well. I could build most of those contents for the newsletter. And one of your staff could play with the layout if they want, and you should do the final review to release it. We will leave white space filler if we cannot fill a page, but at least it will be a start.

The third problem turns into strength by itself. At first, I looked at [the other] church and drooled at the ratio of adults they had coming to this workshop. From our church, it was all college people running around. As I “spied” on their group during lunch, they made me even more depressed because they were planning for a retreat. But then as I lamented about it with Jenney, she gave a great insight, “O, the reason the parents were more involved because a lot of their college people left the church so they had to take care most of it!” And so I grabbed Tiffany, “Hey do you think it would be better if the parents be more involved like get into Children Ministry and teach?” “No! They should be involved, but indirectly. Kids wouldn’t want their parents there – especially the older kids.” So we have some strength because of our college people cares, but it can be improved more to have more support from parents.

You may want to discuss the family-relation issue with the staff a bit. Is it true that we can teach the kids more effectively that their parents (or are they just liking us because we are more lenient than their parents?) How would we be able to create a roster and know the parents from the bottom up? What would they want to help with the newsletter? How can we provide opportunity for the parents to serve more?

- The last session 4 on Active Learning was very interesting too. This is the same concept that businesses had been exploiting for years: you have to create emotion to reinforce memory. The whole advertising/marketing/entertainment industry lives and dies on this. They created powerful emotion to brand recognition for their products. (See the whole science of it here) And more and more will be on the way.

It is about time that the church understands these psychological mechanics to reinforce what matters most to kids. Active learning requires more creativity, more preparation and it shows that we care for the kids and give them the best we have.

However, we should not neglect the important role of content. Active learning is only a communication channel to deliver contents. And without a solid content, we won’t communicate much. Therefore we need to encourage the staff to spent adequate time for the “What” before they dwell on the “How”. Otherwise we will create only shallow and temporal satisfactions. It’s like Krispy Kreme ministry:

When I was a kid in the summer my family would venture off to the shores of South Carolina for a family vacation at the beach. Right down the boardwalk from the hotel was a Krispy Kreme Donut shop. Dad would give my older brother a few bucks and soon he would return with a dozen or two of hot freshly made Krispy Kreme donuts. The donuts would actually melt in my mouth and I would wash them down with ice-cold whole milk. My brothers and I would boast as to how many donuts we could eat. Once I ate four donuts and thought I was king.

Each donut is about 210 calories. Four donuts and a cup of milk are about 1,000 calories—empty calories.

As a child I thought I could live off of Krispy Kreme donuts but as you know, sugar-glazed donuts and whole milk are not very nutritious, and ultimately not very filling.

Just because one is consuming massive quantities of Krispy Kreme donuts doesn’t mean he is healthy.

I think there are many folks who are being fed sugar-glazed [teachings] and they leave the building with a sugar rush having consumed 1,000 calories of bad [teachings] thinking they have been fed when in realty they are just buzzing from the sugar.

After a half-hour nap they are hungry again. Many go back to the donut shop not realizing that they are being fed white flour and sugar, or that they cannot get healthy off the white flour and sugar regardless of how much you eat.

They have the Krispy Kreme tee-shirt,
the Krispy Kreme Study Bible,
the Krispy Kreme Praise CD,
the Krispy Kreme Small Group
but no one is getting healthy.

Folks get addicted to the sugar buzz rather than God.

And when the sugar buzz diminishes they think God has gone some where and so they create a new version of the same donut. It’s still white flour and sugar no matter how you serve it.

That’s the problem, eventually folks wake-up sick and in great need of spiritual food.[1]

For your staff, perhaps read the parable above and discuss about, “How do we know if we feeding people healthy stuff and not just temporal satisfaction?”

- Session 3 on discipline the kids are fairly solid. Review it together and work out some more reinforcement details would be good.

Well, that’s it for now. It might be overwhelmed for you as well as your staff. So, get a pen and underline what important to cover, and spread it out over a few staff meeting. Or trash it all (because I may not assess things right either).

Think about this: “What is the next step for your ministry?”

Pray about it.

You can talk to me some more, too.

May God works in you so His work will be shown through you.

Bumble

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[1]http://newlifeemerging.blogspot.com/2005/07/krispy-kreme-church.html