KidzPlace is a website for children and CM leaders. It is sponsored by the North American Mission Board and contains tools for leaders to teach kids how to be Matthew 28:19-20 Christians as well as interactive gospel presentations for kids and games.

You will definitely want to check out the video presentation, “God’s Special Plan for Children.” You can show it to kids online, embed it into your own website, and if you call NAMB and talk very nicely to them, they will probably send you a high quality version of it on DVD free of charge (at least it worked for me about a year ago!).

See Also:

1. Free Safe Web Browser for Kids
2. MP3 Bible Stories

Today’s post comes from a post by Tony Kumner at Ministry To Children.

Tony came across some great free MP3 Bible stories told by a grandmother who wanted to record the Bible for her grandchildren. You can check out Tony’s post here. From his post you can read his take on the MP3′s as well as follow the link to download them.

I’ve listened to a few of them and they are pretty cool. They would be great for car rides. I plan on putting them on a CD and letting my preschool daughters listen to them for quiet times and on trips. There are no copyright issues here, you are free to copy and distribute to parents and kids as you would like.

I wanted to let you know about a very helpful newsletter out there. Occasionally I will recommend free email newsletters to you, however, I only recommend them if they are of high quality and would be worth your time to read. One of those is the Connect with Kids newsletter.

Let me quote their website so you can see a little something about their mission and purpose:

Connect with Kids is a multi-media, education company focused on helping educators and parents teach life skills, prevention, character, health, and wellness.  Our belief is that parents and teachers are the greatest influence in the life of a child.  Our mission is to connect kids with the adults who can help them using the power of real stories on video, television and the Internet.

Essentially, the weekly newsletter links you to short video clips featuring recent research from universities and independent research firms on kid and teen issues in a variety of areas including parent/child relationships, physical care and nutrition, current trends and many more. I have never received any junk emails from them. In the last year that I have subscribed, every email has been a newsletter highlighting current research.

These newsletters can provide rich material you can use to more effectively shape you ministry. You may also find helpful tidbits that can be passed along to parents in your monthly newsletters or emails.

For those who cast aside secular research as an abomination to ministry, let me briefly comment. Though I am extremely committed to the changing Truth of God’s Word, I see secular research as a benefit to our ministry. In the words of Augustine, “All Truth is God’s Truth.” If a secular researcher, or research institution for that matter, discovers something that is validated by the Word of God, then I say “Praise God.” I would never endorse a research conclusion that was not validated by God’s Word. Disagree? Comment below, I welcome some Christ-centered discussion!

Cornerstone University Radio has a great resource out there for you to pass along to families. It is a place where a good deal of Christian radio progamming for kids comes together. This is a quote from their site:

We’ve gathered the best in children’s Christian programming and put it in one place so you can easily find safe, entertaining, and enriching content just for kids! Our alliance of broadcasters and partners work hard to make HisKids.net a place you and your child want to be.

Kids can listen to shows like “Down Gilead Lane” and “Paws and Tales” on demand. Or you can stream the His Kids Radio station. If you contact them, they will set up a custom logo of your church on a special site of theirs. You can provide a link in your own website to the His Kids Radio site with your logo on it. You can see an example of mine here. This is all free, however, they do offer a paid service where you can stream your sermons, podcasts and trainings if you would like. This particular aspect of their service is charged by how large your church is.

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!