Category Archives: Christian Education Archive

A Simple But Significant Tweak For Your Pre-School Sunday School

All Saints Church, Fulham

If there is one thing we’ve learned as Christian educators during this pandemic, it’s that many of our parents were ill-prepared to take on the role of being faith-formers at home when our church buildings closed and our church programmes were shuttered.

And, it wasn’t their fault!

When asked, most parents say that they ought to be the primary influencers of faith with their children, and they are absolutely right. Yet, these same parents also tell us they have no idea how to do this because they haven’t been shown how. Sadly, with our decades-long emphasis on forming faith with children within our church buildings through Sunday school, mid-week groups and summer programming we’ve inadvertently left our parents in the dark on how to talk about and practice faith at home as a family. 

As we look to rebuild our educational programmes this fall we can’t ignore what we’ve learned these last couple of years; we must not cut our parents out of our faith formation plans and in fact we need to make families the centre of our approach going forward.

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Are You Making Plans For Sunday School This Fall?

What will Sunday school look like this fall?

Churches are beginning to talk about restarting in-person Sunday school after a two and a half year hiatus from offering regular children’s programming. Leaning into the hope that our churches will be able to gather safely and with a deep desire to get children back to Sunday school before our youngest generation misses out completely on a Sunday school experience, churches are anxious to do the best they can to restart well this fall. 

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An Interactive Google Slide for Holy Week

There are so many stories to read and hear during Holy Week; from the excitement of the crowds on Palm Sunday to the quiet of the garden where Jesus went to pray, from the shock at Jesus’ arrest to his undeserved death a day later and finally to the extreme joy of the resurrection on Easter Sunday. Each day builds on the previous day revealing God’s deep and grace-filled love for this world.

For younger ones many of the stories we tell during Holy Week can be difficult to understand and even scary. Well-written children’s bible story books help us to share these stories from scripture with children in ways that are more accessible and appropriate for their age. For this reason this interactive Google Slide has been loaded with videos of wonderfully written and told stories for Holy Week. It is here for you to upload onto your churches website or Facebook page so families can visit each day throughout Holy Week to hear these stories together.

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Our Journey Through Lent: A Devotional Booklet and Interactive Slide for Download

Are you looking for a simple Lent devotional resource to share with your families at home? Here’s one that’s free for download that leads participants of all ages through a complete reading of the Gospel of Mark.

The Gospel of Mark is the shortest of the gospels and is considered to be the first of the four to be written. There is a sense of urgency in Mark’s gospel to get it all out there as fast as possible so people can quickly hear and know “the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” (Mark 1:1) With little commentary along the way, Mark leaps immediately into revealing Christ as the Messiah, through a wealth of parables, miracles, conversations and encounters with Jesus. If you have never read a gospel through from start to finish, Mark is a good one to begin with.

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Rest for the Weary

Thank you to Eduardo Flores and unsplash.com for this photograph

I just canceled the Zoom check-ins on Christian education planned for this week. Unfortunately only three people signed up and they were divided between two meetings. This low level of participation where once there was an enthusiastic number for Zoom check-ins seems to be symptomatic of what I’ve been seeing across the board with people’s participation in bible studies, Sunday school and leadership development.

I have found over these last couple of months that our church leaders and our people are more than exhausted from the ongoing stress of just keeping up during this pandemic. With the first year of the pandemic and its church building closures and protocols, leaders had a surge of energy and imagination for thinking about educational ministry in new ways and even began to focus on some things we’d been overlooking in the last number of decades. During the second year we established new ways of doing educational ministry and even began tweaking what we were doing as we got better and better at Zoom Sunday schools, porch meet ups and virtual worship. Moving into this third year I’m beginning to hear from many of our leaders that they just feel flat, without imagination, and are simply doing their very best to stay above water. 

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How Is Educational Ministry Going At Your Church?

Thank you to unsplash.com for this picture

Happy New Year!

And, how is it going?

Thank you for all you’ve been doing to continue providing faith formation practices and Christian education programming for your church over the past couple of years. Providing educational ministry for all ages during Covid has been an incredible challenge and you have pivoted, adapted and changed focus each step of the way.

We’ve learned a lot too. We’ve highlighted families and the significant role parents play in the passing on of faith to their children, we’ve learned far more about technology than we ever imagined, we’ve embraced the word ‘hybrid’ and are beginning to understand that multiple points of access will be the new normal going forward, and we’ve come to see our church as not a building but a gathering no matter how that happens.

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Good Stuff!

Do you remember all the good stuff that happened in your family last year?

I don’t, but my friends Claire and Kirk do.

As I checked out facebook on New Year’s Eve, in the midst of all the Happy New Year’s messages, I found Claire and Kirk’s post that they were ready to begin their family’s Annual General Meeting.

Are you kidding me? An AGM on New Year’s Eve?

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A Trip Down Memory Lane

Thank you to Nong Vang and unsplash.com for this image

I was asked this week if I could recall my earliest memory of a bible story. The question came from a friend who is presently studying at Knox College, one of our denominational seminaries. Her query was prompted by a paper she is busy writing on the faith journeys of children. She is hoping to sprinkle some of these personal stories of treasured memories throughout her paper as illustrations of how children grow in faith.

What a delightful invitation to take a trip down memory lane.

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Our Interactive Advent Calendar Is Now Complete

And, it’s ready for you to share with your congregation, friends, and family members.

You may have read about, and even checked out, the sample 2021 interactive Advent calendar created for congregations to upload onto their church website, facebook page and/or email to homes for Advent this year.

Well, it is now complete and ready to use.

It’s a wonder-filled calendar built on a Google Slide that allows users to click to on a new door each day of Advent and be taken on an interactive journey through the themes and stories that prepare us for the coming of Jesus this Christmas. Individuals and families of all ages will experience videoed bible stories, music, recipes, crafts, adventures, rituals, games and so much more with this calendar.

So, first of all, check out the calendar. You can do this by clicking on the picture of the calendar at the beginning of this article. When you do the calendar will expand to fill your screen. Then click on some of the dated doors and start your journey.

Then, let you people know that the calendar will soon be coming their way; that in a very short week you will have it up on your church’s social media sites or emailed to them at home.

Finally, use the following instructions to upload the calendar onto your website, facebook page or place in a congregational email and set it to go live on the evening of Saturday, November 27th (the day before the first Sunday of Advent) ready for them to experience the next day.

Instructions for uploading

To take the calendar from this article and attach it to your church’s website, drag the photo of the calendar onto your church’s desktop. Alternatively, you can right click on the picture then save the picture on your computer by right clicking on ‘save image as.’ You can then upload the picture to your computer’s website. Then, to find the link to connect the calendar picture to the interactive calendar click on the interactive calendar link above so it opens up a new window, and copy the url at the top of the screen. At this point you may choose to hyperlink this url into the picture of the calendar picture you’ve placed on your website, or add it as a link below the calendar picture, in this case noting that the link itself is what will take users to the interactive calendar.

This is the link to the calendar: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/17HgdR37Kec0tcTN6YQNFkSE5W8oiVH96rpbPhDydZ-g/present?slide=id.phttps://docs.google.com/presentation/d/17HgdR37Kec0tcTN6YQNFkSE5W8oiVH96rpbPhDydZ-g/present?slide=id.p

If you’d like something more

If you would like to complement the calendar with an all-ages devotional booklet that follows the same daily themes as the Advent Calendar, please check out free 2021 Advent Devotional booklet featured in THIS article and downloadable for printing HERE.

Thank you to everyone who contributed their time and talent to this Advent Calendar. They are Terrie-Lee Hamilton, Tobey Boyer, Martin and Trisha Smit, Presbyterian Music Camp, Mirim Kim, Kristine O’Brien, Holly Boyne, Robert Bisset, John-Peter Smit, Gale Macdonald, Marylou Malicdem, Yunmi Kwon, Karen Pozios, Robynne Howard, Laura Alary and Daniel Scott. When asked each one said a resounding yes to being a special part of this venture and have collectively made this calendar a wonderful gift for everyone to enjoy.

A Free Interactive Advent Calendar For Your Church

Click HERE For The Link

One of my fondest memories as a child was of receiving an Advent calendar just before the first day of December. I loved those little doors. I would wait expectantly for the dawn of each new day, knowing I would get to open that day’s door and find a new treasure inside. Behind every door of my childhood calendar I would find a lovely picture of a Christmas symbol along with a scripture passage for me to read. Over the course of Advent I would experience the stories leading to Jesus’ birth as I anticipated opening that one final door on Christmas day.

We passed this tradition on to our children and delighted in watching the next generation open these wonder-filled doors for themselves. Over time though their calendars began to reveal a bit more chocolate than stories, and the ritual became more of a countdown to Christmas day than a way of preparing for Christmas Day.

This Advent I’d like to invite you and your congregation to enjoy a new kind of Advent calendar, one that includes the significant stories of scripture along with some contemporary stories that connect with the important themes of Advent. In addition to these incredible stories, this calendar also includes simple crafts, new songs, outdoor adventures, special ways of caring for others, and fun games.

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