This Week in Children's Ministries

The Gospel Coalition class that I've been taking (How to Disciple the Next Generation) continues to be excellent.  If you missed the video recap from Week 1, I highly encourage you to check it out.  It's in the September 27th Epistle.  
You can find recap #2 in the October 4th Epistle.  It's Part 1 of "The Battle".

The class that I took last night is best explained over text:
It was taught by Cameron Cole, pastor, creator of the Rooted curriculum, and article writer for TGC.  
He highlighted the history of Children's and Youth Ministry, how we can learn from that history, and hopefully not repeat the follies!  (think of the moralistic teaching of the 80's and 90's - if you weren't born yet, I can fill you in)
Another thing that he highlighted was the past decade: 2010-2020.  Think about all that happened in our world between those ten years.  Even with all that's coming at our kids starting at a very young age, guess what!  Parents still have the most influence over their children - even teenagers.
That's something to be excited about, and also give us a little bit of panic: we are the most influential person in our child's life.
What should we do with that influence???
Cameron Cole suggested some excellent things to the Children's Ministries Directors, Youth Pastors, and Lead Pastors, and he also suggested 4 excellent things to parents:
1. The character of the parent is super important (Note from Ursula: we've been talking about this in the Parenting Forum - 9:30, Sunday mornings - childcare and SS classes are available for your children)
2. Church attendance - every Sunday (attending 9:30 SS and Worship is best)
3. Basic presence of Christian practice (read the Bible together, listen to Scripture in song (Seeds Worship), do the New City Catechism as a family, pray with your kids, and recite the Gospel Catechism daily)
4. Avoid participating in travel sports/activities (Note from Ursula: for two summers we had a taste of what it would be like to do travel baseball - learn from our mistake)

I hope that you'll be taking these things to heart, like I will be.  I'm excited about helping to guide the families of Cornerstone through the second half of this interesting decade.  I've been the Children's Ministries Director since 2010.  I've seen the effects that this current culture (technology and crazy busyness especially) has had on our children, and I'm hopeful about the next 5 years.

See you on Sunday!