CBH Ministries has a great component on their site which provides devotionals to kids. Kids can get “Keys” over email, through regular mail, archived on the website, or as a podcast. Be sure to link these on your church website and promote them to the kids in your ministry!
I’m keeping it short today!
In a pinch or need to supplement your lesson? Go check out Calvary Chapel’s Curriculum. It is quite a nice collection of Old and New Testament lessons.
Have you heard of Prezi yet? If not, you need to go check it out and see if it could be beneficial to any presentations you give. Unlike cues or slides, Prezi utilizes a “canvas” concept where you zoom in on various aspects of your presentation. It’s quite unique.
The free account from Prezi is a little limited, but still offers you a great deal of flexibility as well as allows you to add pizazz to your presentations. While the free account allows only online presentation development, you still get offline presentation capabilities. This means you can download your custom presentation and present it without a web connection.
Use Prezi for:
I recommend a good deal of open source software on this site. Open source programs offer a viable alternative to expensive programs. What you miss are some user-friendly features and support, however most problems are easily solved by glancing through extensive forums.
One I came across recently is Open LP. If you can’t afford Media Shout, Song Show Plus, or Pro Presenter, then you may want to consider this. You can download it here.
This one’s for all you thespians out there! Dramatix is a site filled with thousands of Christian skits. I obviously haven’t looked at them all…but it’s a good resource to have in your bookmarks list. For non-thespians, I’d recommend YouTube…ever heard of it?
Thanks to Dick Gruber and Jason Rhode, you can download 13 lessons on the book of Hebrews from the resource section of the CMU site. Dick and Jason are the hosts of the podcast Children’s Ministry Talk.
A ministry called Faith Inkubators has a unique game site called FaithInk Games. They are pretty cool and a great resource to have on ministry computers or to share with parents.
Cullen Wood has an extensive website full of videos geared toward preschool teachers. She has a lot of videos that teach activities to do with preschoolers along with the accompanying craft templates. She also has a good selection of Christian focused videos teaching preschoolers songs like the one below.
One of the biggest blunders that we make in ministry is offending the masses with a poorly implemented change. I’ve learned through personal experience and the study of a few good books (the business sector calls change “innovation”), that change can be done in ministry in an effective way. Since almost quitting 4 years ago because my volunteers rejected our background check mandate, I have sought out how to initiate effective change and I think I have a good resource for those of you on the same journey.
The link below will lead you to a worksheet that will help guide you through effective change in your ministry. Before you speak a word of change to someone in your ministry, work through this guide first. I think it can be a big help to making your “innovation” a success!
Many of you know that Child Evangelism Fellowship offers a ministry to kids called the CEF Mailbox Club. You probably didn’t know that the Mailbox Club is not just a CEF ministry, but a ministry for any kid anywhere. this is something you can make available to your kids and families, especially as a follow up to their decision for Christ.
