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!

Rose Publishing is a company that produces some excellent Bible reference materials. Although their resources are available for a price, they do offer a free “sampling” of some of their materials through a weekly email. By signing up for their email, you can receive free Bible eCharts about every other week. The free charts they make available are pulled from various resources they offer. Some examples include:

• 10 Names of God
• Then and Now Bible Maps
• Christianity and World Religion Comparisons
• Armor of God Diagram

If you know anything about education, you know that graphic organizers (charts, timelines, descriptive illustrations) are exellent ways for people to grasp certain concepts. These emails provide you with a few tools to store in the “Bible Teaching” folder on your computer to pull out for future reference.

Rose sends out about one email per week, so they do not flood your inbox. Each email is obvioulsy a promtion for their material, and every other week, it includes a link to a free eChart. I do not recommend a lot of newsletters to you, only ones that provide a good benefit, so I definitely commend this one to you.

I’m not sure if you are familiar with the National Center for Biblical Parenting, but they do some incredible work. Every Children’s Ministry leader should have some of their resources in their toolbox. As with many of the resource providers I blog about, they have a good deal of books and curriculum which you can pay for. I have used their Parenting is Heart Work seminar with parents in my church, read their books for my own parenting skill development and also get their weekly newsletter.

The founders, Dr. Scott Turansky and Joanne Miller send out a snippet from one of their books in each weekly newsletter. It always flows well and often seems to be something that the Lord wanted me to recognize about my own parenting. I reccomend that the parents of my church subscribe to it and sometimes I will be reminded of a parenting problem within my church that the newsletter topic speaks to. At that point I can either forward the whole email to all of the parents in my ministry or to a set of parents who came to my mind. The focus of the emails are the parenting tips. This means that although there is some advertising for their products and services, you are not overwhelmed by a sales pitch when reading it.

Let me know how you may use these tips in your ministry.