July 2009

When I was in college I was know to pull a prank or two. Going to a conservative Christian college pranks were frowned upon which added to the fun. Anyways we pull some good ones off over the years and I graduated with a BA in Theology and minored in an amazing ability to find […]

Violet Beauregarde – Wrong Priorities The next trap I think many parents fall into is the wrong priorities trap. We communicate to our kids every day what is important. By what we say but far more by what we do. I will start off by saying I am a very competitive person. I like to

Augustus Gloop: Self-Control We live in a day and age now were we are blessed with so much. So much food, entertainment, money. We have so much we are so blessed! This should be great news for our kids, but is it? The down side to all this blessing is that kids now days have

I was going to write some blog posts about family but went back into my archives and found a series I did on family skills illustrated in the movie “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” I thought they were worth revisiting hope you do too. Importance of Family. As a children’s pastor you see the good

My church is to big for this. Whatever you are doing I guarantee this is quicker, faster, easier and cheaper to use ,especially in a multi-site church, than what you are using now. My church is to small for this. The great news is Bible Bucks 2.0 is free for the first 10 kiddos and

Sometimes innovation happens by accident sometimes it happens on purpose – I have always been on the fence when it came to rewards in kids church. I have used everything, stamp books, fake money with Jesus on it, even manually putting point amounts on name badges. I needed to come up with a new system

Spending some time with my family and watching the yanks play the pesky Angels. Go Yankees. Red sox suck! #fb # RT @jonathancliff: have u visited the new http://www.childrensministryonline.com/ ? //has world's largest twitter button. #kidmin // ha! # Doing a puppet right now that's right @Jonathancliff a puppet. #kidmin # For the record. I

The buzz is beginning to build for the napkin conference. The napkin conference is not going to be your normal everyday kids pastors conference. I believe that there is a serious need for innovation in kids ministry not just for innovation sake but to use new methods what ever methods necessary to reach a new

You may not believe this but I can not ever remember fighting with my siblings. We did get upset from time to time but I don’t ever remember having a knock down drag out with either of my sisters. Over the years I have heard many parents bring up the topic of how to handle

I want to do a few posts for parents that you may or may not find helpful about things I have found to be helpful and saw work in my family growing up and seem to be working in our family now. In an effort to be transparent and let you know that I do not know it all and I struggle with many of the same things you do.