Navigating ministry

I want to give up children’s ministry. One day, you will say this. You will start by saying it to yourself. Perhaps it will be on a Monday morning as you heave your weary body out the door to another week. Perhaps it will be on a Friday night when dinner is a piece of toast before heading out …

In our last blog, we suggested 6 games you could play at Christmas events.Here are 6 Christmas Talk Illustrations. You’ll still need to study the passage, prepare your talk and make it suit your context; but maybe there is just the seed of an idea here that could get you going. Shopping list.…

So it’s Christmas again – and as a children’s minister I groan at the list of Christmas events, parties, nativity rehearsals, assemblies, over excited children, snotty noses and diva strops from the kid who wanted to be a donkey … such a marvellous time of year… for p…

Explaining the first Easter to children represents a particular challenge. Their heads are full of bunnies, daffodils and chocolate eggs. We are wondering how to tell them about the bloody death of a naked man on an indescribably brutal torture device. There is potential for disappointed expectation…

What is a small group? You know the drill. A Sunday School session will have two or more leaders and a bundle of children. The bulk of the session is spent teaching the single main point, through games, through drama, through Bible time, through Bible story, through… any way you can! Then, th…

Those tricky 5 year olds! I am told that the Reception class (5 year olds) is a very challenging age-group to teach. Yes … in some ways it is – teaching an idea simply and making spiritual things concrete so that the children can understand is hard. BUT they are not cynical. They will b…

In an All age Carol service, keep everything visual and keep changing the communication medium to engage visual learners with short concentration spans. Videos can help with this, to grab attention at the start, to make the Bible reading more engaging or to illustrate a point in the all age talk. Pe…

Let’s get planning for our children’s Christmas in church! Did the arrival of the John Lewis Christmas advert make you “Bah-Humbug” or fill you with anticipation? Did the sight of a Christmas tree in mid-November make you sigh or cheer? However you answered these questions, the time has certainly c…

Can I tell you how I often feel on a Sunday morning? I wake up knowing that I’m teaching Sunday School – again. I’ve worked hard on my prep, giving it the time I can – alongside other commitments. I enjoy teaching Sunday School. But I still wake up with a weariness. I’v…

We are commonly asked two questions about singing with children in Church. Firstly how do we encourage children to sing, when they appear to be pretty disinterested and secondly, where do you go for songs that are good to sing? Before we deal with those questions, let’s lay the foundations for…