To sum up my series on Bible Bucks. I think no matter what you do you should consider the following.
1. Do bible bucks enhance your overall experience?
2. Do kids love bible bucks more than Jesus? (I had a girl say to me once as I greeted her before our service started. “I don’t like you, I don’t like it here I just come for bible bucks” needless to say I change my whole thought process on Bible bucks from day on.)
3. What are you attaching a reward to and why?
4. Are the parents engaged in the process?
5. Does giving out bible bucks reflect your mission and values.
I shut our program down for about a year and a half because I didn’t feel that it was adding to the overall experience. When we remodeled our kids wing. I thought long and hard to come up with a solution that was fun, enhanced the experience, everyone could benefit from it the first day and was not more important than what takes place from the moment they walk through our doors to the moment they leave.
One last perspective I found very interesting as I looked for stuff online was this post by Larry Shallenberger he connects Bible Bucks to principles found in the book Freakanomics a fantastic read by the way. I never made the connection to children’s ministry I loved his post. Definitely something to chew on.
Next week I want to get into creative outreach. I read this interesting thread on Kidology.org.
you know, technically David didn’t say anything about that uncircumcised philistine until someone told him about the reward. did the reward influence his actions? maybe, maybe not. but the sequence of events is interesting.
Gina,
Thanks for your comment. For the record I am for rewards. I don’t know if I was clear enough in my post. 🙂