Confessions of a Kid's Worker: Am I just treading water?

I hope and believe there will be times when there are more optimistic posts in this series. But I don’t think that’s going to be as the new school year starts, because there is sooooo much to do right now.

I wrote out another to-do list for this week and despite working last week some of the same things are still on there and all of these things are urgent and I still haven’t finished planning Exodus for this term and I don’t have a complete day to sit down and do that.

So what do I do when there’s too much to do? Blog it - even if no-one is reading these it seems to work at getting the problem out of spinning in my brain. Pray about it - which should be higher up this list but hopefully will become more of my instinctive go to as I keep doing this.

Dear God,
Heavenly Father I need you now, I’m struggling with the amount of things I need to do and how badly I seem to be getting on with things. I’m sorry for when I haven’t worked as well or as faithfully in the last weeks as I could have done and have therefore created this problem for myself. I’m sorry that, despite knowing your power and strength and love and willingness to help, turning to you is still not my first instinct. Please forgive me. Lord, would I be realistic in the future about what I am able to do and more reliant. Please give me the strength and motivation today to work hard for you - not to earn any favour (I know I have that because I am in Jesus who has all your favour) but to serve and to find the joy in working for you and with you in each of these tasks.
Amen.

Confessions of a Kids' Worker: The threefold problem of rotas

Are there people out there who enjoy making a rota? I hope so, but I am certainly not one of them. As I see it there are 3 enormous struggles with putting one together…

1. Timing it Right

   Rotas require bizarrely accurate timing. Too early and no-one has enough dates in their calendar to confidently fill it in. Too late and everyone is all booked up or you’re giving people no warning. Too many dates at a time and it becomes unwieldy and impossible to manage. Too few dates and you’ve barely sent out the finished rota before starting the next one. It’s a Goldilocks situation and I’ve yet to get it just right.

2. Minding the Gaps

   I don’t think we have an actual volunteer shortage at the moment… it’s just that there are some weeks when everybody who is willing to teach is otherwise engaged. Or the only available helper needs their DBS renewing. And when it comes to solving this problem my mind is as blank as those empty cells on the spreadsheet.

3. Watching the Changes

   The rota always changes. Often at the last minute. There is no rota immune to illness, sick kids, mistakes (mine mostly) or a simple change of plans. And like the Theseus’ proverbial ship there’s only so many changes you can make before there’s none of the original rota left and you wonder why you bothered in the first place.

Fortunately God doesn’t despair when faced with an empty rota. While I don’t have many organisational skills or find much joy in filling in the rotas I know God is an organiser. How could he not be? He had a plan for our salvation before the beginning of the world and he carried it out. That’s organised. The first task he sets Adam, as a symbol of him reigning over creation under God, is very much organisational one. Jesus is also an organiser; he successfully sends out the 72 (and I shudder to think of a rota that size), and his event planning at the last supper is meticulous.

So I need to remind myself that, as I do my job with as much grace and joy as I can muster, I’m displaying the character of God as I create, as I teach and yes, even as I organise the rotas.

Confessions of a Kids' Worker: There isn't enough time

Maybe it’s because I’m part time.

Maybe I’ve just taken on too much.

Maybe I’m just really, really terrible at managing my time.

Maybe I’m dreaming too big.

Maybe I have supremely unrealistic expectations.

Maybe I’m too easily distracted.

Maybe I should volunteer more of the rest of my time.

Maybe my priorities are badly out of whack.

But there isn’t enough time…

To plan. to pray. to praise, to prepare…

To answer emails, to choose songs, to read Exodus, to write material, to think through the leaflet for that event, to learn the memory verse, to make a rota, to organise that meeting, to think through all age services, to write that talk…

To get the job done…

Confessions of a Kids' Worker: A prayer for getting started

I’d say about 80% of the time I don’t want to get started. It’s really not that I hate my job I just haven’t worked out how to begin my work for today. Today I’m also facing the triple whammy of

• didn’t sleep well

• I’m having a flare up

• I listened to a really good podcast on suffering on the walk in and this is not the headspace I need to be in.

So I’m going to do what I ought to do more often, even on the days I know how to get started and pray.

---

Father in heaven,
it is so good to know that you are in control and that you have a plan, because I don’t. Forgive me for not being better prepared than I am and thank you than I can completely rely on you - in the big matters and these small day to day difficulties.

Holy Spirit,
please give me today the strength, joy and enthusiasm I need. Inspire me with good ideas and fill me with love for the church I’m serving. Help me to rely not on my own experience, or sugar, or a well thought out plan but on my trustworthy and reliable Father God.

Lord Jesus Christ,
As I work today I want to be working for you above anything else. Help me to put you above my to-do list, about the guilt of not-getting-things-done, above even the volunteers who need what I’ll produce. May my work today be full of your goodness and grace and glorifying to you both in what I produce, with you help, and in how I do it.

Amen and amen.

Confessions of a Kids' Worker: The necessity of dance breaks

Today is an email kinda day. As in my to-do list has six instructions that look like

• Email … about …

and one which says clear out emails, because I’ve been away and had visitors so I’ve just been dealing with the urgent stuff and not really sorting things out. I also have two instructions to print, one to edit and one to plan (although that one deserves it’s own to-do list).

This is not a particularly fun kinda day.

So what do you do when your job isn’t fun? Have a DANCE BREAK! At least that’s what I do (and also only when I’m on my own in the office).

The two bangers which absolutely get me moving, get me out of my head and give me an energy boost:

What do you do when you need an itsy-bitsy break?

Into the Spider-Verse and the Leap of Faith

Miles in his Spiderman costume and hody crouches on the side of a building.

A young Black-Latino boy crouches on the edge of a building, music swells, he takes a deep breath, pulls down his spiderman mask, braces himself. Then as the soundtrack asks -What’s up danger? – he leaps from the top of a skyscraper and plummets, out of control, down towards the street below him.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. I want you to understand why Into the Spider-Verse and this moment in particular mean so much to me. So, here’s the proper context for Miles’ leap of faith.

Miles Morales gets bitten by a radioactive spider and tries to take on the role of Spiderman. His first and second attempt don’t go well at all.

Miles Morales as Spiderman falls between some buildings screaming ‘AAAAA!’

It’s not something he can do by himself. When Peter B Parker appears on the scene, he finally has someone to show him the ropes (webs?): how to unstick himself from things by relaxing, how to use a webshooter, how to swing. It turns out there are more Spider … people (?!) as well, none of whom have time to teach him anything, but they can show him what it means for each of them to be a Spiderperson.

He sees their unique skills and, more importantly, how they choose to use them. He sees their response to those they’ve rescued and to when they fail. He sees them fight, and get knocked down, and get back up again. Despite the lack of radioactive spiders in my life, I also know people who have shown me what it looks like to live through good times and bad, how to use my talents to help others, how to keep going when I just don’t want to. These people are in my church, in history books, and on nearly every page of the Bible. But, while I very much want to follow their example, I’m also afraid. Afraid that unlike my heroes, I would fail and fall and hurt.

When it’s time for Miles to prove himself, he can’t. He’s not ready, he doesn’t know how, there’s too much uncertainty, too much danger, things have already changed so much! What if there’s no going back? What if it’s the wrong decision?! He asks Peter B the question we all ask before a big decision: “When will I know I’m ready?” And receives the answer no-one wants: “You won’t. It’s a leap of faith. That’s all it is Miles, a leap of faith.”

The circumstances are different for each of us, but we all know that feeling: too much hangs on our decision and we can’t possibly know the outcome – maybe it’ll be all we hoped it would be but maybe it won’t. I know that feeling, I had it when I got married; when I moved countries; every job application, every message to someone I don’t know… I bet you know that feeling too, maybe you’re starting your own business, learning a new skill, taking an exam. None of these things are as physically dangerous as Miles’ leap, but they’re a leap of faith all the same.

That’s when his dad comes to talk to him.

Miles and his dad separated by a door. they both press their heads against it wanting to communicate better.

You can see and hear and feel the love from dad to son. It’s always been there but it’s clearer, more raw, more vulnerable and more emotional here (I’m not crying, you’re crying) – and it’s only after hearing this from his dad that Miles is actually able to take the leap of faith.

Miles’ leap of faith is not one of blind faith anymore. He can follow the example of other Spiderpeople who have made that same decision. And while he, for sure, doesn’t know what will happen; he’s now confident that he will be loved, whether he succeeds or fails.

That love is what makes the difference for me. Even though I’m aware that the people who love me can let me down, because I let down the people that I love too, I can be confident in how much God loves me. And I hope that is something you know too. Just as Miles hears (again) his family’s love for him as he stands on that edge, every time I approach something I’m afraid of, every time I would rather flee than fail, I can look at the time that God himself went to the cross and died for me – looking at that I can’t ever forget how deeply, how perfectly, how wonderfully I’m loved.

When Miles finally jumps, the glass shatters, it’s stuck to his fingers because he isn’t relaxed about it, he’s scared – it’s a jump into the unknown but one that he can now make. And he doesn’t fall forever. He soars.

Miles as Superman rises between buildings, joyfully shouting ‘WOOOO!’

Kids in Church

Whether you have just 2 kids in your church or 20 or 80 who are regularly there you need to think about how to include them in your church family - both in services which they stay in for but also if they’re going out to a Sunday School or a creche.

The Gospel Coalition recently published this article: 25 Tiny Ways to Welcome Kids in Church which contains very helpful ideas for the adults in the congregation to know, love, serve and engage the kids. There’s only one idea here I disagree with: under love it suggests you carry a treat - but unless you know the allergies of and have parental permission for every child and are prepared to find every kid and give them all a treat I do not recommend this as a good tactic.

Since you’re likely to have kids in services over Christmas and you’ve got a chance to rethink how yo do things for the next year, check out my favourite ways to get children an young people involved in the life of the church.

Easter Saturday: Not exactly a walk in the park

Today I sat on a bench by a pond. The sun shone in a cloudless sky (most unusually for Hamburg in April) yet the cool breeze made it bearable. The birds chirped a constant tune, quietly enough so it didn’t irritate, and the geese honked; loudly, but only a couple of times before they flew away. Trees, hedges and grass blended into a lush green watercolour-esque background, punctured by the occasional pops of yellow and purple flowers and the still water reflected it all back to me.

The bench was in the Friedhof Ohlsdorf, the largest cemetery in Europe and the fourth largest in the world. The flowers were those laid by headstones or planted on the graves, and I could hear the birds because of the hushed tones people tend to use around the dead. And I discovered, against all expectation, that a cemetery is the perfect place to spend Easter Saturday. Whether your cemetery is full of mossy crumbling gravestones around a village church, gothic Victorian marble mausoleums or neat rows of identical military graves, there are two good reasons other than peace and quiet to visit one on Easter weekend.

Cemeteries are a reminder of our own mortality. We use hushed tones out of respect for those mourning, but there is also something quietening about the realisation that death comes to everyone. In western cultures we are normally kept distanced from death; even in a global pandemic most of us knew death only as an ever-climbing number on our screens, only occasionally reminded that each of those numbers represented a person who was loved and who would be missed daily. Surrounded by names, birthdays, death dates and messages of love carved into headstones; we have to face that death is personal and that, on an unknown day, we too will pass away. At a time when the shops are filled with spring pastels and chocolate and bunnies, what a much-needed reminder that Easter weekend begins with death. The painful, naked death on a cross of a man who had brought life to so many others.

But there is so much more than death in a cemetery in spring. I saw flowers blooming and cherry blossom petals falling like gusts of snow, the terrapins clambered onto a log to sunbathe, and some plants that were probably asparagus spears (although they could have been the start of a completely different plant) were poking six inches out of the riverbank. I imagine some of the birdsong was probably about eggs and hatchlings and there were two adorably fluffy goslings following a mother goose across the grass. In the midst of death new life was everywhere. Even in the southern hemisphere where Easter arrives in the early autumn there are so many reminders of life being given and sustained, as the harvest is gathered and celebrated. It’s a reminder of the glorious resurrection, that the man who was God defeated death, not merely surviving it but reversing it and living again without death.

Easter begins on Good Friday with death and darkness but by the time the sun rises on Sunday morning we’re celebrating that new life has broken through. What could be a more appropriate way to spend the day in between then in a place where both the sadness of death and the joy of new life meet and mingle.

Joshua is my (accidental) favourite...

In 2016 I was co-organising the children’s work for my church’s weekend away. Where possible, we wanted to cover the same theme that the adults looked at, but then they chose this title for the weekend ‘Looking in Back in Thankfulness and Looking Forward in Dependence’ which doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, and 4 -12 year olds don’t always carry the kind of context which makes them able to talk about church life in those terms.

After some careful thought we decided to take the beginning of the book of Joshua as our theme. Standing on the boundaries of the Promised Land he must look back at the rescue from Egypt and all that God did for them in the desert, and he can look forward to all the goodness of the land God has promised them and look out for the dangers that are sure to come. Perfect! I enjoyed planning and running that very much, we even wrote a song, in which we rhyme way with quail.

Perhaps it was these fond memories that made my brain leap to Joshua when we needed a theme for a holiday club in the autumn of 2021. The children’s pastor here wanted to do something Old Testament, because all of our online videos were stories out of the Gospels and my notes say that my first option was doing several OT heroes whose lives all point to Jesus (much like the New and Better series). But we ended up running with that theme in our Sunday school classes, across all campuses, and we just so happened to get to Joshua by the time the holidays came round!

I could have used some of the material from the 2016 weekend away, as I’m now in a different country so it would have been new for the kids, but while there’s some natural crossover I wrote 5 days of brand new material! I do really love that new project feeling, so of course I started a new one, but I also get those same vibes from the Israelites standing on the edge of the Promised Land.

Also, you can see in Jesus is the New and Better Joshua that the parallels to the one who brings us into a new land are great, and natural, and easy to make and if there’s something I love more than talking about Joshua, it’s talking about Jesus.

That’s how Joshua turned out to be my accidental favourite.

Pastors, are you preaching to children?

I was reading Gentle and Lowly by Dane Ortland and he made a passing reference to the pastor and theologian of the Great Awakening, Jonathan Edwards, preaching to the children in his church.

This was the first time I had heard that. It doesn’t fit how we usually think about the man who preached ‘Sinners in the hands of an angry God’ - he is far too serious surely? It turns out that was normal for Edwards to preach, while everyone was there, to one particular age group. Harvard’s collection of the Works of Jonathan Edwards has counted 3 sermons just for 1-14 year olds between 1739 and 1742 - which is one a year. That doesn’t sound like very many but it is three times as many sermons as he preached specifically to the elderly or to the middle aged. (I should mention that his normal practice seems to have been to preach to everyone there and attempting to apply it to a wide range of his congregants.) It shows how much Edwards valued the children.

We so often say we want our kids and our youth to feel part of the church, but we have difficulty putting that into action - I’m including myself in this. Edwards shows us one way to do this, one way to show them that they are loved and that they’re wanted in your church is to have the pastors (or vicars or elders) teach them. There are a bunch of ways that this could be done:

• Have a pastor teach in Sunday School as a one off

• Have a children’s talk in your Sunday Services

• Preach a sermon for just the kids in your normal service

• Have an elder give their testimony at a kids event

• Get church leaders involved in after school clubs

• Have preachers on the Sunday School rota

What have you already tried and which of these ideas appeal to you?

If you’re inspired by Jonathan Edward’s example then you should read Ricky Njoto’s article on Three Things Jonathan Edwards Teaches Us About Youth Ministry.