By popular demand, Phil’s mom Dr. Scottie May returns to the program to talk more about children’s ministry and the place of kids in the church. Where has children’s ministry been? Where is it headed? Don’t ask Phil – ask his mom!
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This is an excellent podcast. Maybe my favorite so far. Ironic since I was drawn to the podcast because I love Skye’s commentary and ideas.
I think Scottie’s work in very important. After a 13 years in a Willow Creek style church as a children and family pastor, I’m not trying to start an organization to help churches with the development of, what I call, the family model of ministry. Information is found at http://missionalfamily.org. Scottie’s history or discipleship is right on. Her analysis of the need of children is insightful. I’ve shared the podcast with my church’s leadership team. We are one of those new churches, and we teeter on whether we should go with something completely new or go with what we know (the boomer model of family ministry). Thanks
When I was single, I was in a charismatic church that was family integrated. The children were always in the services, worship and prayer times with us and it was sweet to see the little ones learning to participate. It would be distracting at first, but we all learned to adjust, accept and love having them with us and the Lord often used them to teach us things. It would be beautiful to see little toddlers and preschoolers on their faces in worship and prayer (whether they were mimicking or not) and being free to dance during worship times. We are no longer in that church, we are married and have children now and do miss that opportunity for our own children, but we are seeking to build that in our home. The church we are in is very much into children’s ministry and has a good one. I appreciate that at least the older kids (6 and up) remain in the sanctuary with the adults during worship and then are released to their own service for teaching. Still, some parents choose to keep their children with them the entire time and I am also glad for that freedom. I just started leading the preschool church class out of the leading and burden that they were not having a consistent teacher to use that time to help them grow. Through His leading, I pray I can be an instrument of helping these little ones come to know Jesus in a deep way. I love what I’ve heard other children’s ministers say, “There is no Junior Holy Spirit” these little ones get the same One we do. 🙂
I just found your podcast this week and have listened to several episodes. This one was so interesting to me as I have really been thinking about how modern churches separate the family. We were feeling like we dropped everyone off when we got there and met up again to leave — togetherness was only in the van on the way there! Now we keep all the kids with us in the worship service and we all sit together, but we are one of the few families to do this and my seven year old is the only one of his age not in children’s church.
On another note, we’ve loved Veggie Tales since our teenagers were little. I still say good night to my seven year old with, “God made you special and He loves you very much!”
I just found your podcast and I am really enjoying listening to you guys! My husband and I have 14 month old twin girls and are big fans of Veggie Tales and What’s in the Bible. This podcast really sparked my interest. Scottie was super insightful! My husband and I have struggled finding a church since we’ve had our girls. The church we were attending encourages that you put infants older than 4 months in the nursery. For every event “child care is provided and strongly encouraged.” We didn’t feel comfortable doing this, not knowing the people in the nursery every week. They also had a policy that the parents can’t stay with the children because it “just makes it more difficult when you leave.” So we decided to look for another church that would fit our parenting style. We want to be invoved with our kids at church. For almost a year we have been having home church streaming various sermons into our living room. We desire to be a part of a church like Scottie describes where families worship and pray together at church. If anyone knows of a church like this in Southern California please let us know.
Strangely enough “furl” is a real world. ”
v. furled, furl·ing, furls
v.tr. To roll up and secure (a flag or sail, for example) to something else.)
v.intr. To be or become rolled up.
This isn’t the Scottie May episode. This is about America (not) being a Christian Nation. Great podcast, btw!
I worked with your mom briefly at David C. Cook Publishing back in the 80s–or was it the 90s? I remember her saying that her son was developing some children’s projects with talking vegetables. I was like, “OK…?!?!”
See what God did. Even if it didn’t all turn out as you were planning–see what God did. And see what God is doing. God bless you, Phil and Scottie!