If you want a good site for a Children’s Ministry resource directory, interesting and challenging articles (by Roger Fields), and some children’s ministry humor, go to Cold Water Cafe.
Also…don’t forget about the Jim Wideman Leadership CD’s that I’m giving away. You can find that post here.
Popularity: unranked [?]
Well, I’m at camp again this week! Aside from my own camp with Grey Stone Baptist Church, I’ll be doing 3 other church camps this summer. I’m in the second of three right now. Needless to say, I’ll be brief in the next few posts. But that reminds me…if you are looking for a retreat/camp speaker or worship leader, feel free to get in touch!
Here’s a blog similar to Free CM Stuff. It’s called Children’s Minister Blog. He has some ideas and reflections, but also links to free or low cost resources.
Popularity: unranked [?]
Our church is getting geared up for a new children’s building, and while looking around for companies to theme our facility, I came across this very nice VBS Decorator’s Guide from Creative For Kids. I figured this to be the perfect time of year to promo this to you. This guide-book includes some basic VBS forms, a handy 10 step organizational plan to decorate, some snazzy backdrop layouts and other how-to’s. For my VBS, I have one coordinator who gathers a decorating team. This would be a fantastic document to provide to that person upon commissioning them to serve.
Creative For Kids is a company who provides a variety of services in the children’s ministry decor arena. A cursory look at their examples shows that they do very beautiful work. You can also take a look at their free desktop wallpaper (perfect for a computer in your children’s worship room or at check in kiosks) or free ministry forms. I have found the forms to be of good quality.
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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:
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.
Popularity: 6% [?]
In this post, I have to be honest, I’m not so much recommending a resource as I am telling you to stay away from it. Mostly on this blog, I commend great free resources to you that could be of benefit to your ministry. I came across the social network for those who minister educationally to children. The site is called “Kidistry.” It operates with Ning, the same social networking platform that CM Connect uses.
The difference is that CM Connect is far better. There are less than 300 members (CM Connect has over 4,000), people do not maintain their pages, the discussions are sparse and old and the networking is virtually nonexistant. The founder of Kidistry has not even posted anything since April 17th. I do not want you to think that it is all bad, however. There is a small glimmer of goodness within this site. That is their coloring pages. You can download about 100 good coloring pages for free and use them for special events, preschool extended sessions, parents night outs or whatever.
I’m not trying to be mean, I just wanted to let you know that if you have heard of this site and had joining it on your to do list (like myself), you might as well forget about it. Join CM Connect, it’s worlds better.
In fairness, I would love to hear of any of you who have found Kidistry beneficial. Just comment below and I’ll let the world see your recommendations!
Popularity: 6% [?]
If you want to be on the cutting edge of Children’s Ministry, then you’ve got to keep up with Kidology. Kidology has a great deal of free resources, but also has 3 levels of memberships to allow you and/or your volunteers to access every bit of content on the site. Kidology was founded by a long-time Children’s Pastor named Karl Bastian.
Although there are paid memberships, you do not have to join to access the free content. Unregistered visitors to the site can access a slew of ideas, a vast resource directory, discussion boards and more. Karl has done a fantastic job getting content on this site and it continues to grow. To say that it is a behemoth resource website would be an understatement. I really can not say much more about it or you would be reading this post instead of accessing the great content at Kidology. You just have to check out this gigantic bank of ideas and resources for yourself. But be cautioned, if you really want to dive into it, set aside about 2-3 hours!
Popularity: 6% [?]
My friends, today, you get the two for one deal. I was planning on posting about KidzMatter’s free monthly download, but then the KidzMatter founder, Ryan Frank, cued me in on something else. Ryan recently began publishing a magazine called K!. It is a fantastic magazine, that’s why I am a subscriber. KidzMatter would like for you to have a free copy of their magazine. All you need to do is contact them by calling their office (Toll Free – 877.568.2437), let them know you’d like a free one to preview, then they’ll send you one. It’s that easy.
Of course, KidzMatter, offers a great deal of excellent resources. You can purchase worship videos by Uncle Charlie, short films by Timbuktoons and KidzMatter original material like powerpoint games and “Spud” episodes. Ryan is a starving Children’s Pastor with a hungry child, you should definitely support him!
So let’s recap:
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Have you been jealous of that larger church down the road who always seems to put out the best looking promotional materials? I mean, what match are you for that pizzaz? Well, first of all, you should be judging your ministry by the amount of work the Holy Spirit is doing through you, not by the quality of your printings. Secondly, if you do want to look a little more up to date and are spending thousands on color ink jet cartridges from printing 500VBS brochures, you may want to look into Xerox’ program.
Now notice that the title of this entry calls for a free “color printer” not a free lifetime supply of color printing. There is a catch. When you sign up with them, you’ll get the free printer, solid ink (see below) to get you started, free shipment, and a 3 year service agreement. From then on, you only have to print out at least 2,000 pages per month to stay with the program and purchase supplies from them. All in all, it would probably be a little bit of an increase from your normal printing spending, but you get high quality printing and a free printer out of the deal.
The technology here is not laser or ink jet. It is called solid ink and is like a wax cube that you put in the printer. A friend of mine used this program with his church and seemed pretty pleased with it. The one drawback he suggested was the inability to write ON the ink, as it was sort of waxy. It did not rub off, however, it did not allow ink from pens to be used on it. Most people don’t write on colored areas of brochures anyway, so this is probably not a big concern. Also, the printer can easily be networked so all your staff friends can use it!
Have you had some experience with this program? If so leave comments so that others can get a feel for its quality or lack thereof.
Popularity: unranked [?]
