What if ...

At our small group last night we were discussing loving together. And said the challenge was that we don't know each other that well. We asked what it would take to get to know each other better. So ..
What if we met with our small group more regularly even every other day. Maybe these times would be prayer times, sharing communion together, annointing of oil, laying hands on each other, speaking blessings over each other and of course singing God's praises. The kids would be there of course.
Billy Ritchie over in England has thoughts on these lines too.
What does it take to make this "What if... " a reality ? Choosing to make it a priority and finding like-minded people. Anything else ? ... WHat do you think ?

It broke Dad ! Can you fix it ?

I'm not a poetry kind of guy, but every once in a while a poem will really grab me. Ratna, one of our amazingly hard working and caring office staff here at First Alliance Church shared this poem with me last night.

First I was reminded of my son who had just yesterday morning asked me to help him build a Lego project, but then immediately after I start to help him pushes me out of the way so he can build it. A few minutes later he comes and grabs me again and syas he really, really really needs my help this time, because it seems to be broken and not working out right.

Next my mind goes to Moses and his grasping God's calling on His life to save his people in Egypt. He starts off by killing two Egyptians who abusing his fellow Jews, which he seemd to think fitted into the plan. However that only made him have to wait another forty years to nove into his calling!

Anyway I'll let you read the poem ...

Broken Dreams

As children bring their broken toys

with tears for us to mend,

I brought my broken dreams to God

because He was my friend.

But then, instead of leaving Him

in peace to work alone,

I hung around and tried to help

with ways that were my own.

At last, I snatched them back and cried,

"how can you be so slow?"

"My child," He said,

"what could I do?

You never did let go."

Author unknown

Family Ministry

I didn't realise there were quite a few ways of doing family ministry. Jon Erwin presents us with a great working table of Family ministry models. There are many options. There are several organisations individuals promoting literature and methods for family ministry as well. Two that that we've taken ideas and resources from are

Mark Holmen's "Faith begins at Home" - great book - we were able to distribute this to our parents last year. This year the book has expanded into Church wide package, which we're looking into here at FAC. Mark Holmen is coming to GTA in May and we're taking a group of our parents to hear him.

Orange is all about family ministry. I went to the Orange Conference last year in Atlanta. It reinforced my changing philosophy of ministering just to children. Since at Church we have the children most Sundays for 1 hour and the parents have between 80 and 100 hours - unstructured time with their children each week we need to find a way to help parents make better use of some of that time for things of God. This is especially important when we look at Deuteronomy 6 - charging the parents with sharing God's words with their children throughout the day.

So this year we've added a monthly FamJam to our family ministry schedule where the whole family come together. This is on top of Families Eating And Sharing Together (FEAST) which we started last year.

Blogged recently on my Family ministry blog about Keeping hope alive!
On Sunday our parent group (FEAST) discussion was around chapter 5 of Dr Tim Kimmel's Grace-based Parenting. It's focus is for us to lay a foundation of hope in our kids lives.
Childhood is a time we should move our children from dependence on us todependence on God. And knowing there will face challenges they can’t handlebutGod can.
Tim goes on to give us two things that are needed to raise hope-filled kids
A) They need to see/watch parents who place confidence in the only trueGod. When they see parents who say the right words but without much joy, with much fear and lack of love for not yet Christians they get a mixed message.
B) They need to be raised by parents who treat them the way Jesus treats us. With grace.
The importance of this really struck home when I read about 17 young adults in a Welsh town hanging themselves and 3 youth in Northern Ireland
As Jesse Jackson says we need to "Keep hope alive!"
Dr Kimmel goes on to say that childhood is a time we should move our children from dependence on us to dependence on God. And knowing there will face challenges they can’t handle but God can.
He also talks about parents being there for their kids so the kids know that there is someone bigger than there problems. This helps them understand as they get older that God is bigger than any of our problems.

It just takes a spark to light a fire

It just takes a spark to light a fire. We do not even know the "fires" we have started. Some good, some not so good I'm sure!
Take this guy over here at the Fermi Project (check it out here). He's choosing to serve his community for an hour a week and somebody has copied his efforts.
At my church we're going through Forty days of Community and part of the small group actvitiy is to find a way the small group can show love. My group hasn't decided yet what we're going to do. I'm excited to see what we do, especially now that I'm thinking that our spark might just start a fire. Maybe with others or maybe even with the individuals in our group, maybe even me :)