Do you know what the most important thing is? (Yes, I’m playing the “what is Andy thinking game!”). Let’s try again. Do you know what the most important thing is? (Insert basic Sunday school answer here…). You probably guessed it, the most important thing is Jesus! The Most Important Thing website is a great evangelism tool that is both free and easy!

You register with them, put your brief testimony on the site and then begin sending people with whom you witness to the site. From the site, they can read your testimony, see an interactive gospel presentation and respond in various ways. You can even have the site report to you when someone reads your page or makes a decision based on your testimony. It is very simple, people just go to the site and put your name in the search bar. They can click your name based on location (in case someone else has the same name on the site) and then read your testimony about how you trusted in Christ.

This site is sponsored by the Baptist State Convention of Oklahoma, but is not denominational in nature. It is for anyone who would like a new tool to effectively share the gospel. You can purchase business cards from their site for a very cheap price or have your own made at VistaPrint like I did. I put the website address, my name and some brief contact info on the card. I use these a lot at drive throughs and in grocery store lines. I usually say something quick like this: “I love to share how much of a difference Jesus has made in my life. If you get a chance would you to take a few minutes to go to this website, type in my name and see my story?” It takes all of 10 seconds and I’ve never had someone turn away a card.

Share this website with your kids and teach them about building a testimony. They can make business cards for themselves and invite their friends to view their story!

D6family.com is a website developed around a Randall House Curriculum that is established with the whole family in mind. I’m not a fan of that (more later) but one of their resources called splink has proven to take the Deuteronomy 6:4-9 message and compact it into easy to swallow ideas. Splink provides weekly ideas that parents can do with their children to instill a biblical foundation and worldview. It does somewhat align with their curriclum, however, anyone can do most of the ideas they suggest. Here’s one from this week:

Tell your child that to know a person you first learn things about that person.

Help your child come up with a few questions and let him or her “interview” a grandparent or other relative. (What was your favorite toy/game? What did you like about school? What is your favorite food? What were your chores as a child? What pets did you have? How did you learn about God? Tell a courtship story.) Videotape the interview if possible.

We can know about Jesus by reading the Bible.

Ask:
What do we know about Jesus from the Bible? (He is kind; He helped people; He loved children; He was obedient to His Father’s will; He was willing to take the punishment for sin by dying on the cross; He had no sin; He is wise and fair, etc.)

They put 3 ideas out once per week. A parent could check it in an RSS reader very easily on Mondays to get them thinking about how they will impact their child spiritually for the week. They also provide the option for anyone to sign up for an email to receive the ideas weekly in your inbox. I can’t testify to this method, I just check their site. I’m not sure how much advertising is in their email. Comment if you know!

You may want to put a link to it on your website, place it in a newsletter, make business cards with the logo to pass out to parents or put fliers about it in guest bags. Heck, you might even want to use the ideas yourself in your teaching or parenting!

Now, as for the family-wide curriculum. I think it is a noble idea. I think the intentions are good. However, given what we know now about educational psychology and development, it’s not the best way to educate. I do believe that the church takes on a lot of roles and one of those is education. Sadly, evangelicalism is slowly jetisoning this philosophy. If education about the Bible and Christian living should be taking place in the Sunday school or small group setting, then it must be done developmentally. There are some basic things about God and the Bible that children need to know before they can look into the deeper things of Scripture. Paul explains this in I Corinthians 3:2 and 13:11. On the other hand, adults who have that foundation, need meat, not milk.

Here’s one quick example: You couldn’t do a church wide Sunday school study on Hebrews 8 and 9. Foundational to understanding those chapters is a basic knowledge of the Abrahamic covenant, the sacrificial system and the temple culture. Kids need that stuff first, adults (for the most part) already have it.

So that’s my soapbox for the day. Feel free to comment and rant and rave. Just do it with a Christ-like attitude!

One thing that I try to give away to my families and in guest bags at every event is a Kids MP3 Bible. Faith Comes By Hearing is a powerful ministry that seeks to spread God’s Word all over the world. Aside from their regular products, they offer a special program for pastors and churches that allows members to receive free MP3′s of the New Testament as well as Kids Bibles with major stories and Bible songs.

What they ask in return is for your church to promote their ministry in some way and take up a special collection for their missions work. The two Bibles mentioned above are both dramatized and are an excellent tool. We have probably gotten close to 1000 discs from them. Seriously, no one in their right mind would pass this up!

Are you still stuck using Microsoft Word clip art for your next big Children’s Ministry event? Or are you really doing it the old school way by taping pictures from those 1980′s clip art catalogs? Well toss your clip art out the door and start using quality graphics from Stock.xchng. Everything on their site is high quality and absolutely free. You do have to set up a free account with them in order to download the graphics. They have mostly picture images, but are growing in their number of digital graphics as well. Here is what the website allows you to use images for:

All Images on the Website are copyrighted and they are the properties of SXC or its Image providers. All rights are reserved unless otherwise granted to You. Your rights to use the Image are subject to this agreement and the restrictions specified at each Image.

We hereby grant to You a non-exclusive, non-transferable license to use the Image on the terms and conditions explained in this Agreement and on the Image preview page FREE OF CHARGE.

You may use the Image

• In digital format on websites, multimedia presentations, broadcast film and video, cell phones.
• In printed promotional materials, magazines, newspapers, books, brochures, flyers, CD/DVD covers, etc.
• Along with your corporate identity on business cards, letterhead, etc.
• To decorate your home, your office or any public place.

Here are a few logos/posters I have done using background images from this site. Click on the image if you would like to see the whole thing.

I did these in either Publisher or Inkscape

Recently, I found out about a very nifty tool for the technological generation of parents that we serve. It’s called “Zefty” and is an online way for parents to help their children manage their allowance. They say they may add premium features down the road, but for now, everything is free. Here’s how the site describes its service:

1. Parents set up virtual accounts for their kids
2. Allowances can be automatically deposited
3. Parents manage withdrawals and deposits
4. Kids can print out ZeftyChecks to take to their parents
5. Kids can use ZeftyCalc to see how long they will have to save for purchases
6. Parents can use ZeftyCalc to find a reasonable amount for their allowance

Essentially, the parent is the bank branch with the actual money and Zefty operates as the online banking system. Obviously, the service will only work in a setting with older kids who can read and proficiently operate a computer. My daughters are preschoolers so we are resigned to giving them 4 quarters a week with one going to “Jesus.” Hopefully as they get older we’ll be able to use this site to teach them about Christ-centered financial management.

There are a ton of internet filters to choose from and they pretty much all cost money. You can choose Safe Eyes, AFO, bsafeonline, and Net Nanny. They will cost you $40-50 and/or a monthly charge. These are all adequate filters and have received good reviews, however, K9 Web Protection is a diamond in the rough. It is completely free and has been downloaded over 1 million times. It offers real time protection and updates and works seamlessly in your existing browser without any extra search bars, plug ins or add ons.

The parent company, Blue Coat makes its money by securing network systems for Fortune 500 companies. They seem genuinely concerned about helping families keep a safe and secure home and that is why they offer K9 Web Protection for free. It uses the exact same database and technology as their commercial system. You can look here for details about what K9 offers.

This program is free for home use and would be a great resource to promote to the parents of your ministry. We use this in my home and only my wife knows the password. This keeps me (and my brother in law who lives with us) accountable and encourages us to live above reproach. It is very easy to check for sites that have been visited via the web-based administration page. It is also impossible to deactivate or uninstall without the main administrator password. I hope it can be of benefit to your home and the homes of families in your ministry.

So your budget’s tight right? Well, Yahoo! has a nice little way to earn some extra bucks for your ministry. It is called GoodSearch. First, you have to register your ministry (non-profit) with them. Then they send you an email telling you if it was approved or not. Next, you start searching! Basically, you use GoodSearch to do your internet searching and each time you make a search, you earn $.01 for your ministry. Here’s an excerpt from their about page:

“GoodSearch is a search engine which donates 50-percent of its revenue to the charities and schools designated by its users. It’s a simple and compelling concept. You use GoodSearch exactly as you would any other search engine. Because it’s powered by Yahoo!, you get proven search results. The money GoodSearch donates to your cause comes from its advertisers — the users and the organizations do not spend a dime!”

I promoted it in several of my newsletters and asked the parents in my ministry to make it their main search page. If you can get 200 people to do this by making an average of one search per day, you can make $730/year for your ministry! They cut checks once per year in the Fall, just in time when you need end of the year money!

I have found that their searches are not quite as accurate as Google, so it is not the best site for specific internet research. It also is not as comprehensive as Google at image and video searches. Nevertheless, it can be a quick and easy source for extra revenue!