It’s a kids ministry Revolution baby!

Highlight 1: ACTS

Connecting with ACTS kids people in the afternoon before the NZ conference, had an amazing time in God’s presence together before the conference even started.  I LOVE being a part of a group of people that are committed to each other as we build kids ministry in our local churches.  There is SOMETHING about being in the same room.

Highlight 2: Kidshaper NZ

Just being at the first ever Kidshaper NZ was a beautiful thing! I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I believe that Kidshaper is going to unleash something new in kidmin in New Zealand.  It already has! We need a kids ministry revolution baby!

Highlight 3: Crazy people on stage

The worship team at KS NZ was flippen fantastic.  The team from Life were maniac, they totally owned the stage with so much energy… literally everyone was as nuts as Jo Darby.

Highlight 4: Taste

We tasted. God is GOOD!

Highlight 5:Hillsong Kids

I had the chance to check out Hillsong Kids.  I really love what they are doing! The coolest thing EVER that I saw was the Kids Create team before the service – they welcome kids as they come into the rooms with music and bubbles!  It totally lifts the atmosphere with fun and excitement.  I am totally stealing that idea, it’s genius. PS thanks to Dave, Beci and Kathryn for letting me hang out!

Highlight 6: New Friends

Not meeting any Aussies in Sydney. Apart from the people I already knew, I think I only met about two genuine Aussies.  In fact the first night I was there we had a Kiwi Connect, ate Pineapple Lumps, Jet Planes, Hocky Pocky Mellopuffs, and had a BBQ.  I absolutely enjoyed meeting so many awesome people.  Thanks heaps to Rach + housemates for having me

Highlight 7: Sydney

Sydney was all round awesomeness, shopping, catching up with old friends, then more shopping… then catching up with more old friends

Highlight 8: Coffee

Melbourne Coffee to be specific… the one thing I was deprived of in Sydney was good coffee, Melbourne made up for that though.

Highlight 9: Tasmania

Random people sitting behind us on the first night of Kidshaper: Where are you from?

Me: New Zealand

Random people: Get out! what are the chances of that! We’re from Tasmania!

And that began a beautiful friendship.

Highlight 10: Apostolic

The Apostolic Church in Australia are kinda like our cousins, so I’ve been wanting to connect with some of their kids people for a while now.  Just happens that the first 3 groups of people that I met were from Apostolic Churches!  Wow that’s cool! The group from Tasmania also happen to be Apostolic.  I like it when God is working behind the scenes…

Highlight 11: Chanley!

Yep that’s right, I met Michael Chanley!  For those of you who aren’t in the know (and if your in kidmin that would be suprising, what rock have you been living under?), Mike started CM Connect, a network for kids leaders to connect.  Connecting people just happens to be one of my favorite past times, so was really great to meet Mike and hear him talk.  He’s quality, that’s what he is!

Highlight 12: Havin a Laugh

I really enjoy laughing. Sometimes I laugh at the stuff in my head but it happens to be the most inappropriate time. Anyways, as usual laughs were not hard to come by at Kidshaper, the highlight of that of course would have to be Funny Man Dan… speaking of FMD, my next highlight is…

Highlight 13: Possibly Platanum

We’re still talking about it now, Dan’s workshop was GOLD… possibly Platinum… some very good stuff on performing/speaking/mcing.

Highlight 14: Friends

Hanging out with kidmin people that connect together through blogs and twitter is seriously cool!  Being in God’s presence, worshiping Him with friends that share a passion for kids ministry (and the IT Crowd) is great, probably the thing I enjoyed the most.  That’s got to be a taste of heaven right there, standing with friends in God’s presence together.

Highlight 15: Home

ahh Dunedin, the land flowing with milk and coffee.  There is nothing like being back at my church, love it.

Huge thanks to Rob Bradbury and his amazing team for following the call of God and running such a ground breaking conference, and even huger thanks for bringing it to New Zealand (the fairer of the Australasian nations…). Your a ledgend!

tomorrow I get a hideously early flight to Auckland, hanging out with other ACTS kidmin people in the afternoon…

Then KIDSHAPER NEW ZEALAND, this is going to be phenomenal, I can not wait! I know I’ve said it before but I really do believe that Kidshaper is going to be a key that unlocks some stuff in kidmin in New Zealand… so that is Friday night then all day Saturday.

Sunday I have an even more hideously early flight to Sydney, but it will totally be worth it cos I’m going to see what happens at Hillsong Kids, so excited!

Hanging in Sydney for a couple of days then off to Melbourne for Kidshaper… yea thats two Kidshapers in one week, but a few from my team are going to the Melbs one soooo… obliged to really. Hehe, not hearing me complain!

Then back next Saturday and straight back into it! Looking forward to meeting up with as many awesome people as I possibly can along the way!

Today I’ve found a new appreciation for the book of Job.  Not quite because my life is a complete disaster… although my day was nearly there!

I’m getting organised for next months topic – we use other curriculums for the majority of the year and do about 3 months of our own stuff cos we want to do it really well.  So next month we are doing God is Good! We’re breaking it down like this…

week 1: God is our good Dad (just happens to be fathers day!)

week 2: God is good when things are bad (this is where Job comes in)

week 3: God has a good plan

week 4: Our Good God pursues US

Last night and this morning I was re-telling the story of Job (doing my best to not write it in my new favorite genre, Rhyme a rhyme every week might be a bit much!), so naturally today is the day that EVERYTHING goes wrong!  Now that I think about it, it wasn’t actually EVERYTHING, but my car started to play up… I had to run around and pick up kids from play centre and school, organise stuff for EPIC and then my car was needed to make the drive down to Balclutha and back in the evening.  I has a spare 20 minutes and took the car to the garage and talked to Steve (the best mechanic in Dunedin btw). I’ve got white smoke coming out the exhaust (apparently NOT a good thing) and loads of rust in the engine…

So I’m driving around frantically, starting to wonder how much fixing my car is going to end up costing and freaking out about how I will get everything done for tonight.  The stuff we’re teaching from Job seems more real… I found myself talking to the 3 year old I look after and saying, “things are NOT going good at all today, but even so, God is still good!”. I’m kinda glad I had her there, if not I would have been a lot slower to take control of my frustration and remind myself that God is actually good.

Car problems haven’t been resolved yet… still a little scared to find out how bad my car is and how much it will cost, but everything tonight worked out really well.  We all got to Balclutha and back safely, EPIC was off the charts, we had 18 kids and it was the first time we’ve run it down there… so that is 18 first time! Not bad at all!  So God is good when things are bad… and God has a GOOD plan! I like it!

I know I’ve already posted this on fb and tweeted it but it’s so funny, I’m sure it’s got more mileage in it…

The coolest 3 year old in the world (I look after her) said…

‎”I lost the plot. Actually it fell out of my heart”

then…

“I’ve got the plot back, it’s in my heart. It came to me at school cos it was scared of other people”.

I honestly don’t know what to make of this! Any interpretations?

I read this recently and had one of those “I’ve never seen it that way before” moments. It’s so flippen obvious. I can’t believe I’ve never seen it before…

“The harvest is great, but the workers are few. So pray to the Lord who is in charge of the harvest; ask him to send more workers into his fields.”

We spend so much time and effort dreaming up recruiting strategies.  We all know that personal invitation is way more efficient then desperately begging in front of a morning service.  We know that our team members are the best recruiters so we empower them to do so.  We have amazing welcome packs and a plan for how to get new recruits introduced to the weird way we do things.

Those things are good, actually they’re essential.  But the one thing that should be CENTRAL to bringing in “workers” becomes a tack on… Have you ever tacked “Lord use this amazing strategy that I’ve come up with to bring people in”? as you burn the DVD to be played during church or stapled the last new leaders pack.  How easy is it for the strategy to become the thing that we have faith in and prayer the magic spell to bring it to life.

I think it’s actually the other way around.  Prayer is the deal, strategy is the action that proves the faith behind the prayer.

Here are a few more thoughts…

• Workers aren’t just Kidmin leaders, they’re parents, kids and other people in the congregation who bring in the harvest.
• Every time we pray for souls we should pray equally for the workers.  The souls aren’t lacking, it’s the workers that are lacking.

I’ve got the privilege of tagging along with ACTS National Leadership Team as they travel around NZ to catch up with leaders from the churches.  This is the third year I’ve come along, and this year I get to go to the Auckland and Rotorua days for the first time.

I’m really looking forward to it, I just LOVE connecting with people who do kids ministry and other church leaders. We live in exciting times and God is doing some great things around New Zealand. Especially looking forward to hanging out with Zoey, kids pastor at Park City in New Plymouth for the weekend… hope Kiwi Kidmin will get some blog posts out of her soon!

If you want to follow along, here is the plan…

Tuesday 8th: Invercargill
Wednesday 9th: Christchurch
Thursday 10th: Wellington
Friday 11th: I head to New Plymouth for the weekend to hang out with Zoey and Park City Church
Monday 14th: Auckland
Tuesday 15th: Rotorua
then finally back home on Wednesday 16th to Dunedin!

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1. You have nightmares about Chris Pooley’s shoes

2. During the adult service you “strategically” reposition yourself to sit between two adults who aren’t listening to the sermon

3. At Revolution you do actions to all the songs. If there are no actions you make them up as you go

4. You put your hand up to speak at your LifeGroup/Hub

5. You turn around and give “the look” when someone behind you is giggling at Revo or Shake

6. You spend more of your life on the floor then on chairs

7. You’ve got “Crazy Praise” or “Love Never Fails” as your ring tone

8. You spend more time around the foosball table then the coffee machine after the service

9. Every time someone is preaching and tells you to look something up in the Bible you think it is a race and yell “GOT IT”

10. The only day of the week that your LifeKids T-shirt doesn’t get worn is washing day

Reading through Acts I get to some places where I think, “why can’t we just stay here, this is nice”. It was nice that all the believers spent most of their time together and shared everything.  It was nice that Peter and friends hung out at Solomon’s Colonnade and healed people that came from all over.  It was nice that the authorities were a little scared of what would happen if they tired to take these guys out because they had such a big following.  But every time there is a nice story, the next paragraph gets a little uncomfortable.

Imagine though what would have happened if God hadn’t moved them from one challenge to the next?  I’m sure you know as well as I do that their success would have gone to their head.  With out new challenges, how is it going to stay about Him and not us? How are we going to take new ground? How can we give God glory by doing things in His strength and not ours?

Their heart wasn’t set on success, on getting to a place where they were running a great operation and where they were in control of what is going to happen next.  Their hearts were set on giving God glory!  That is why they were able to praise Him in prison, in persecution, and right up to the moment they were killed.  Even in their death God was given the glory!

This really challenged me today. Is the underlying goal in my life to do whatever it takes to get comfortable in my job, my ministry, my relationships etc or is it to give God glory?

Thinking bout getting bunks for a while now. Saw them on special at the WareHouse. Purchased them.

One piece was really damaged. Took it back and got it replaced. And that was trip one.

Noticed that there were no screws in the box. Back to pick them up. That was trip two.

New piece I picked up earlier didn’t fit. Back for trip three. They couldn’t replace it so had to go home, load the whole lot into my car.

Trip 4 was to get an entirely new unit. All done.

Until I try to put the ladder together. Wholes the wrong size for screws. Flatmate kindly took it back for me, that was trip 5. New bar for ladder one cm too short!

Just decided I will make trip 6. This will be with the whole unit (once I’ve taken it down). And I’ll get my money back while I’m at it… then take advantage of the old bunks at my parents place that I forgot about (thanks in advance mum and dad)

We all know that God rested on day 7 so I’m hoping this will take the same pattern.

We’ve just finished an incredible day of networking and sharing vision with 12 kids leaders from ACTS Churches in the Lower North Island.  Nikki Collings from Paraparaumu Family Church got everyone together.

I am so excited I can hardly contain it about the things that God is doing up here.  We hadn’t even finished our worship time at the start when everyone started praying and sharing half the stuff I was going to talk about.

There is POWER when we come together and support each other, get in each others space, share creativity, call out the gifts that God has placed in each other.  I also did a little rant about social networking… you can expect to see some more from Kiwi kidmin coming soon!