Toolbox For Faith

I had a wonderful fourth Sunday in Advent children’s message that involved our children lighting the four candles on the Advent Wreath. When I went to invite the children forward to sit on the steps of the chancel with me, I suddenly had a horrible, sinking feeling. I had forgotten! I had forgotten that on the third Sunday at the church I am serving, they have children’s church and none of the children were in church. It was an excellent mistake.

As I looked around pondering what to do next, I noticed the top of the head of Jonathan, age two, in the back of the church. For some reason, he had stayed with his mother and father rather than going to Children’s Church. Abandoning all my plans, I asked Jonathan to come forward and help me light the candles while the congregation sang all four verses of the hymn we sing while lighting the wreath.. Jonathan and his mother came to the wreath. I took the acolyte’s stick, lit it from the altar candles and picked up Jonathan. Together, we lit all four candles.

When lighting the candles, his eyes were wide, wide open with one of the biggest smiles I have ever seen. When I put him down, he was jumping up and down, up and down. When he finally stopped, he gave me a high five and got his mother’s hand and danced up the aisle, pausing occasionally to wave at me. As he walked, he told everyone next to the aisle, “I lighted the candles, I lighted the candles.” I could see the smiles on the faces of all in the congregation. This was a powerful moment.

What a great lesson! God helps us at all times of life, even when we completely goof. God provided a little child to save me. That’s what Christmas is all about—a small child shall save us.

A few weeks ago, I came across an excellent resource for Youth Group games on a website called “The Source for Youth Ministry.” I don’t know much about the other resources on the site, but the game section is amazing. The games are categorized and there is even a search feature that allows you to search by number of participants, prep time needed, etc. Here’s the link if you are interested: http://www.thesource4ym.com/games/.

Last week, I heard Marcus Miller, the president of the Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary, talking about the texts for the season of Lent. As a part of his presentation, he spoke of Lent as a time of renewal for discipleship and a time of preparation for baptism. Dr. Miller’s focus was on adult baptism, but he got me thinking about how we resource parents as they begin to nurture the faith of their young children. At St. Michael, we give the newly baptized individual a Faithchest, a Bible and other resources, and now I think we are going to add the “Baptismal Feast” as a resource for families. There are still many details to work out, but essentially the “Baptismal Feast” will be a yearly luncheon where we invite all the children and families who have been baptized in the last three years. Over lunch, we will provide age appropriate resources to help families nurture faith, allow parents to ask questions and hopefully build community. My hope is this will be a helpful tool for families as they seek to live our the promises they make in baptism.

I got a call last Wednesday from a person who was asking for advice on which Sunday School material she should use at her church. I shared with her that we were using Hands-On Bible Curriculum from Group Publishing, but I also shared with her that the reason we were using Hands-On Bible Curriculum was because it matched the gifts of the teachers.

At times in the past, I have helped pick one curriculum series and used it for each of our classes. While that was a little easier, it didn’t take into account the gifts that each teaching team brought to the ministry. These days we select several theologically appropriate sets of material and then see which set provides the best match between teaching strengths and curriculum. The result has been happier and more engaged teachers and students.

Pastor Philip Bottomley shared this idea with me a few weeks ago and I thought it was worth passing along. Congregations often talk about Vacation Bible School as a way to reach out to new families, but what if instead of asking the families to come to the church building, Vacation Bible School actually went out to the people you were trying to reach.

Apparently there is a church in Northern Virginia that runs a neighborhood Vacation Bible School. Host families agree to have a VBS team set up in their front yard and then they invite the neighborhood kids to come and take part in the crafts, music or lesson. As it was described to me, you’d have rotating teams each focusing on a different topic/activity and they would move around to each front yard station. If you scheduled it correctly, one team could lead the same one hour activity at ten different locations during a week. Just imagine how many new families could be touched with the good news of God’s love in just one week.

Each year, I spend two days at the Price’s Fork Fair. The fair is nice, small community event that provides a wonderful opportunity for outreach to the community. Our booth at the fair offers free activities for kids - a ball toss game and face painting. Everyone who comes by the booth gets a faith-themed coloring book, a small bag of candy and some faith-themed prizes (typically we spend about $200 for prizes and supplies). We also have Bibles, grief resources and information on the congregation available at our table. The booth is staffed by me and at least one volunteer from the congregation. For me, our booth is a ‘ministry of presence.’ We are present as God’s people to show God’s love to others, to proclaim God’s caring through our actions and to share the story of Jesus.

I spent last week on a Mission Trip with a group of junior high students including three from our congregation. This was the first mission trip for our youth and it was a wonderful week. We accomplished some meaningful ministry on the trip, but one of the most powerful moments happened on the way home. When we stopped for lunch, one young lady got her Bible out of her bag and said, “I got this for camp, but I don’t know that I have ever really read it.” She opened to Genesis chapter one and started reading. She spent the drive from Richmond to Blacksburg - reading, asking a few questions, stopping to reflect and then diving back in to the reading. By the time we got home, she had finished the first 30 chapters of Genesis.

Sometimes we learn something and it inspires us to act. Sometimes we act and it inspires us to learn. It seems to me the key is to discover which methodology connects to you and to the people with which God has blessed you. What I discovered this week is that for my youth, having them live a life of compassion and service is a wonderful way to inspire them to learn more about God.

This summer I am writing Lectionary focused Sunday School material for a class of kids who range in age from kindergarten to fifth grade. In searching around online, I found a couple of interesting websites that have helpful resources and tools.

Here are a few helpful sites if you are interested.
Sermons4Kids.com

Lesson Plans that Work (from ECUSA)

Make your own Word Search

You can also look at the “With Children” section which is at the end of the links provided weekly by Textweek

I had the opportunity this weekend to help lead a workshop which focused on Nurturing Faith in Children. Although we shared many specific examples, our discussion centered around the “Four Keys for Nurturing FaithLife in the Home” developed by Vibrant Faith Ministries. The Four Keys: Caring Conversation, Devotional Life, Service and Rituals and Tradition describe areas which help nurture faith in young people. You can find a fuller explanation of the Four Keys on the Family of Faith page on St. Michael’s website.

I have learned a great deal about faith in youth and families from the materials produced by Vibrant Faith and I have found their resources to be extremely helpful. There is a page filled free articles and downloads and they have a store which includes both the resources that Vibrant Faith has developed and the best youth and family resources they have found. If you haven’t taken a look at their site, I would highly recommend taking a few moments to check it out.

(Note: Vibrant Faith Ministries was formerly known as The Youth and Family Institute.)

Each year on Palm Sunday instead of a sermon, we read the story of the Passion as a congregation using a responsive reading with multiple readers. The response from the congregation is always very favorable. If you haven’t seen the booklets you can use for worship, you can get them from Augsburg Fortress. Here is the link for the Passion according to Luke.

In the Hands-On Holy Week service that I posted on Friday, I referenced a booklet for kids entitled, “Three Amazing Days”. The booklet is well done and focuses on Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and an Easter Vigil. It is available in two formats: Pre-Reader and Young Reader. There is also a booklet that focuses on Lent and Easter. It too is available in Pre-Reader and Young Reader. The booklets were designed to support the current Lutheran hymnal, but they are very general and would probably support most liturgical hymnals.