Christine Kreisher
Orange Conference 2013

“A family experience is a shared experience for families designed to engage parents as partners, with a strategy to shape the faith and character of their kids that serves as a catalyst for what happens at home.” Reggie Joiner

Internal Collaboration
Teamwork

It all starts with vision…why FX?
Communicate to leadership and staff how your FX will help to flesh out the vision of your church
Who are the 5 most influential families in your church?
Who are your potential core leaders?
Leverage influence…identify kids and students who will serve on your team

Strategic Community Partners
Teamwork²

Create partnerships with local businesses whose values are in line with yours…family, community, etc.
Develop a promotion/marketing strategy. Social media is a must
Make a list of business owners within your congregation and create a win-win
Ask for donations “You do not have because you do not ask.” James 4:2

• Had a local restaurant donate an iPad and they got to make the presentation of it to the winner.
• Creative story about giving away a widget for “Wisdom.” Called a local dentist, the dentist provided stress ball wisdom teeth with their logo on them at no cost to the church.

Top Ten Budget Saving Ideas

• Free marketing techniques: press releases, tickets, invitation cards, paint car windows, Facebook, website
• Free widgets and give-aways
• Free and low cost set design options
• Free costumes and props (get donations from church community)
• Generate income through snack bars and novelty sales
• Scripts, Feature presentation, and Get Reel videos from 252 Basics
• Technical equipment
• Collections for local non-profits create community presence (charge an “admission” of an item for the food pantry or something similar)
• Music: amberskyrecords.com
• Recruit to a bold vision

They have a variety of resources available including, children’s curriculum, youth curriculum, adult sermons, audio files, graphic stuff, and motion worship songs and loops. Everything is free to download and use and it is well worth your time to browse the site.

I’ll be honest, what I’m most excited about is the kids worship music I found. These are excellent videos that we will be incorporating immediately. I downloaded all of them to use. I also downloaded a few of the worship loop backgrounds and have already started using them.

The resource site is located at seeds.churchonthemove.com or just click the image above.

But at a personal level, there has been a lot of stuff that has gotten in the way of blogging but has been a major blessing to me. At the beginning of the year, I left my second job working as a wire clerk at a bank. This job had served as my home 40 hours a week and enabled me to continue to do ministry in my small church while still providing for my family. For a while now, I’ve felt that the job was no longer where I needed to be for a variety of reasons. After much prayer and searching, an opportunity came for me to join the team of ROAR.pro. At the time, I was not fully aware of what my job description would look like, but I knew it was the right place for me to be.

I’ve been working with ROAR for the past three months and I’m loving every minute of it. I’m working with a variety of churches helping them build and maximize their apps. It’s a customer service position which is something I am wildly passionate about, so it fits me well.

Because of the arrangement with ROAR, which is not full-time work, I have been able to spend much more time working with my church. This was the biggest win of the whole deal. Over the last few months, our church has been through a lot of stuff and up until January we had never had a pastor that kept office hours (both myself and our senior pastor worked full-time day jobs). Over the last few months, I’ve been more available to our church and have been able to be there for hospital visits, funerals, and just those moments when they need to talk.

I thought once my new job arrangements started, I’d have tons of time to write. That has not been the case, but consider this post the shot in my arm to get me back into writing. I have discovered a ton of new resources that I just cannot wait to share on here. Also, next week I will be posting live from the Orange Conference, which is always a treat.

I love getting a great deal. I tell everyone I can about the nice, black dress shoes I bought for $2 a few years back. They had only been worn once but I proceeded to wear them nearly everyday for two years. That’s a really good deal! This week, the Children’s Pastor Conference is happening in Orlando. If you are there, you ought to stop by the Kidzmatter booth 701. They have this great deal they are making available. It is $2000 worth of materials for only $99. That’s enough resources to keep your ministry going for a year (and for less than $2 a week). The good news for those of us who could not make it to CPC is, they are making this same deal available on their website. This deal ends Saturday night at 6:00 pm EST, so you need to act fast. Even better news for five of you, they are allowing me to give away five of these packages for free! Keep reading to find out how.

If you would like a chance to win one of these fabulous packages, please leave a comment below telling me the best deal you’ve ever gotten. Let’s just go ahead and get this out of the way, if you are a Christian, then your salvation is obviously the best deal you’ve ever received. I mean, eternal salvation and someone else paid the tab. So, let’s be creative and tell me the next best deal.

For an extra chance to win, tweet the following, My friend, @pastorjaredm, is giving away 5 of the biggest #kidmin deals of the year via @kidzmatter. Enter to win here http://wp.me/p1lgcL-Ui 

You must leave a comment in order for your tweet to count. This contest ends Monday at noon CST.

Disclaimer: The giveaways are provided by Kidzmatter. I received no compensation or product in exchange for this giveaway, just the joy of giving stuff away to my readers.

I have been blessed with two free tickets to the Children’s Pastor Conference in Orlando next week, but I will not be able to use them. I’m looking for someone to use them, but since it is so close, I do not want to run a contest or anything. Here’s the deal. The first person to give me a legitimate reason to give them the registrations gets them. I’ll also separate them, so if you only need one, let me know that too. Leave a comment or send me an email through the contact me form.

Details:

• These tickets only cover registration and not travel or other expenses. This is a great opportunity for someone who is already going to bring a spouse or other team member.
• Please do not waste these. If you honestly do not plan to go, please do not try to get them. That would just be rude.
• These tickets were provided to me by My Healthy Church.
• If I haven’t given both tickets away by Friday afternoon, they will be forfeited so I’d like to give this away as soon as possible.
• Sorry for the late notice.

Please help me spread the word! Tweet it, put it on Facebook, call your friends. Let’s bless someone and get them to Orlando!

Merry Christmas from Small Town Kidmin. God bless you and your family this season.

]]> http://smalltownkidmin.com/2012/12/christmas/feed/ 0 http://smalltownkidmin.com/2012/12/the-end/ http://smalltownkidmin.com/2012/12/the-end/#comments Fri, 21 Dec 2012 07:00:13 +0000 Jared M http://www.smalltownkidmin.com/?p=3475

In all this, my mind has been drawn to one of my favorite Christmas carols, “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day.” I love the story behind this song. Written on Christmas day during the Civil War, it was the author’s observation of the devastation and brokenness of man that surrounded him. On Christmas, the fighting stopped for one day, to celebrate peace on earth. Yet the hatred and war continued.

I’ve included below the lyrics of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who penned these words in 1863^[1]. I’ve bolded the last two stanzas as they have especially spoken to me over the weekend. The second to last stanza is one of complete and utter desperation but the final stanza is one of victory.

I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play,
and wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men.

And thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along
The unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men.

Till ringing, singing on its way,
The world revolved from night to day,
A voice, a chime,
A chant sublime
Of peace on earth, good-will to men.

Then from each black, accursed mouth
The cannon thundered in the South,
And with the sound
The carols drowned
Of peace on earth, good-will to men.

It was as if an earthquake rent
The hearth-stones of a continent,
And made forlorn
The households born
Of peace on earth, good-will to men.

And in despair I bowed my head;
“There is no peace on earth,” I said;
“For hate is strong,
And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men.”

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
“God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The Wrong shall fail,
The Right prevail,
With peace on the earth, good-will to men.”

And this is my all-time favorite version of this particular song.

Take, for example, the story of my family’s Christmas miracle. While this story brings me so much joy, it happened just a month after someone I care about very deeply had a miscarriage. The question then becomes, why? Why does God sometimes show up in amazing ways and sometimes He lets us suffer? Why does one person get a new and better job just days after being laid off, while another who has worked just as hard waits a year or more for something that still is not as good as the job they had. Why does one family member die of cancer and another is told they are miraculously cancer-free? And why do we simultaneously quote Romans 8:28 to each of these people?

I wish I had a simple answer to this, I really do, but I do not think it is a simple question. I do know a few things, though. God loves the world so much, that He sent his only Son for our forgiveness and reconciliation. If God never did anything else for me, I can rest in His love knowing that. God is not a respecter of persons, meaning He does not have favorites and His spirit is available to all. Each one of us is uniquely His favorite.

I still think it is important to share our stories of what God has done and to celebrate those stories accordingly. However, I think we always need to be aware of the stories of others. We can never truly know what someone is going through, so it is important to recognize that people may not always respond as we expect them to, and that’s okay. We need to make sure our stories do not point back to our families, but to our family’s God. And in all things, we need to make sure the love of God is known.

This was my wife’s Facebook post yesterday.

A year ago today, I excitedly went to my first ob appointment and was thrilled to hear that they were going to do an ultrasound. The ultrasound, though, was empty. The dr. told me to “be guarded” and sent me for blood-work. They called me later at home and told me to come earlier for my follow-up blood-work and then to meet with the dr right afterward (instead of waiting for a phone call, like they’d originally said). They also told me to “bring a support person.” Not good signs. We prepared (as much as you can) for the worst and prayed for the very best. Two days later, blood tests, 2 doctors, and a nurse practitioner confirmed that my pregnancy was not viable (my body got ready for a baby, but there wasn’t one) and I would need surgery. I could do it right then, or I could have an ultrasound in a week–only for my “peace of mind”–and then have the surgery. People wondered why I would put myself through a 2nd sad ultrasound, but I knew I needed to. I’m so glad I did because God revealed our miracle baby that day.

That baby is our second son, Eric Samuel. We refer to him as our miracle baby and you can read the rest of the story in my Christmas Miracle post. There is a reason we talk about this story so much. There is a reason we want Eric and his older brother, Zachary, to hear it often. It’s simple really. When life is tough, when they get worn down by the trials of life, when their faith is tested, we want them to remember what God has done. This is an important moment in our family’s story.

This year, one year after these events, my wife and I are talking about how we can make sure our family does not forget these things. We have decided to celebrate the day we heard the good news, the day of that second ultrasound when we found out she was seven weeks pregnant. It will be our family’s Passover, an annual celebration of God’s provision. We have not figured out all the details yet, but I’ll be sure to share more after it is over.

What moments in your story are worth celebrating and remembering? How do you create a family rhythm out of those things?

Deuteronomy 6:12 Be careful that you do not forget the Lord, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.

See also: Joshua 4 and Exodus 12:14-28