The Fairfax Church of Christ hosted a forum on Spiritual Formation & Discipleship and asked me to present on children’s ministry.  Here is my outline, handouts and PowerPoint.

Capitol Forum Outline,

Handouts for Session 1, Session 1 – Part 2, Session 2, Session 3, Session 3 – Part 2, Session 4 

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Nifty-Fifty: 50 Bible Verses for Your Family to Memorize

Here’s a list of 50 verses I have chosen for my family to learn this year.  These are not just for the kids but for our entire family.  I may change some year to year but I figured this would be a good place for us to start! I call them the “Nifty-Fifty.” One each week!

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Sample Parent Email

Here is a sample email I’ve sent out in the past to parents each week quickly recapping what was learned in Bible class.  A short summary of the Bible lesson, what we want kids and parents to focus on throughout the week along with links to additional resources.  It’s a quick way of partnering with families to maximize the impact we can have.

Sample Parent Email #2

Here is another sample that was sent using MailChimp. MailChimp is a free service that can jazz up your emails and make them a little easier to read. This particular emails has very few details. Only the main things we want parents to know about the last week’s lesson and what to expect the next Sunday.

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Preparation for Home Strategies

This chart has some simple (very simple) ideas that churches can do to take advantage of time when the families are together at church! The activities are easily reproducible at home. We should be modeling at church what we want families to do at home.  Get the families interacting together in what is sometimes the ONLY spiritually charged context they have.