Explores how the church can better minister to children inside and outside of the Christian education classroom. Draws on the Bible, psychology, and the authors' experience in various Protestant traditions.
Often, a disconnect exists between the way pastors, children’s ministry volunteers, and churches describe the health and impact of children’s ministry volunteers (and the overall functioning of an ongoing children’s ministry). The volunteer dysfunction that is evident in many churches goes beyond the building scenario or the current strategy that leadership is pursuing. If one asks the pastor of just about any local church how the children’s ministry is going, most pastors will respond positively. However, if speaking with a children’s ministry volunteer, one is likely to hear, “I am burned out, but I feel obligated to serve here because we have such a shortage of volunteers and I do love these kids.” Too often, there is no program in place to monitor the health of the ministry. Official training is lacking, church vision is blurred, and many children’s ministry volunteers feel like they are nothing more than large-group, unpaid babysitters. This book analyzes these problems and provides pragmatic, systematic steps to a healthier, more robust children’s ministry.
In the Garden of Eden, there was only one "No." Everything else was "Yes." In this short book on Christian childrearing, Douglas Wilson points out that we have a Father who delights in us and makes it easy for us to love and obey him. If that is the kind of Father we have, shouldn't we earthly parents do the same? Wilson explains how parents should not just try to get their kids to obey a set of rules or to make their house so fun that following the rules is always easy. Instead, he calls for parents to instill in their kids a love for God and His standards that will serve them well all their days. This book also features an appendix in which Doug and his wife Nancy answer various parents' questions about various applications of the principles discussed in this book.
Raising a child has never been more challenging. If you ever doubt yourself or wonder if it is worth the heartache, read this little book. If you worry that your family will not weather life's storms or if you fear losing your children to the prevailing culture, read it again. Why Children Matter offers biblical wisdom and commonsense advice on how to hold a family together and raise children with character. Johann Christoph Arnold, a father, grandfather and pastor, has written eleven books, including three on parenting and children's education. As the fabric of family and society is torn apart, this book offers up concrete steps to encourage parents faced with difficult child-rearing decisions.
This indispensable resource provides a flexible framework and a wealth of engaging tools for teaching mindfulness to children and adolescents with varying needs in school or clinical settings. Numerous kid-friendly mindfulness practices are presented, complete with step-by-step instructions, sample scripts, suggested variations, and discussion questions. The benefits of mindfulness for enhancing children's social–emotional competencies are clearly explained. Clinicians and teachers are guided to select and sequence activities for groups struggling with specific challenges: stress and anxiety, depression, attention problems, behavioral and emotion regulation issues, and trauma. In a convenient large-size format, the book includes 14 reproducible handouts. Purchasers get access to a Web page where they can download and print the reproducible materials.
Much ministry to children looks more like mere entertainment than authentic spiritual formation. But what if children's ministries were rooted in a mind set whereby we taught children, with our words and actions, how the story of God, the story of church history, the story of the local community, and the story of the child intersect and speak to one another? What if children's ministry was less about downloading information into kids' heads and more about leading them into these powerful, compelling stories? Beckwith aims to help ministers and parents create a ministry that captures children's imaginations not just to keep them occupied, but to live as citizens of the kingdom of God. In addition to providing theological reasons for formational children's ministry, the book offers examples of how Ivy and other practitioners are implementing a formational model.
Psychologist Madeline Levine, author of the New York Times bestseller The Price of Privilege, brings together cutting-edge research and thirty years of clinical experience to explode once and for all the myth that good grades, high test scores, and college acceptances should define the parenting endgame. Parents, educators, and the media wring their hands about the plight of America's children and teens—soaring rates of emotional problems, limited coping skills, disengagement from learning and yet there are ways to reverse these disheartening trends. Teach Your Children Well acknowledges that every parent wants successful children. However, until we are clearer about our core values and the parenting choices that are most likely to lead to authentic, and not superficial, success, we will continue to raise exhausted, externally driven, impaired children who believe they are only as good as their last performance. Real success is always an inside job, argues Levine, and is measured not by today's report card but by the people our children become fifteen or twenty years down the line. Refusing to be diverted by manufactured controversies such as "tiger moms versus coddling moms," Levine confronts the real issues behind the way we push some of our kids to the breaking point while dismissing the talents and interests of many others. She shows us how to shift our focus from the excesses of hyperparenting and the unhealthy reliance on our children for status and meaning to a parenting style that concentrates on both enabling academic success as well as developing a sense of purpose, well-being, connection, and meaning in our children's lives. Teach Your Children Well is a call to action. And while it takes courage to make the changes we believe in, the time has come, says Levine, to return our overwrought families to a healthier and saner version of themselves.
Presents a new paradigm for children's ministry in the emerging church of the 21st century and explores current ways churches are putting that vision into practice.
"Original artwork and materials explore children's literature and its impact in society and culture over time. A favorite childhood book can leave a lasting impression, but as adults we tend to shelve such memories. For fourteen months beginning in June 2013, more than half a million visitors to the New York Public Library viewed an exhibition about the role that children's books play in world culture and in our lives. After the exhibition closed, attendees clamored for a catalog of The ABC of It as well as for children's literature historian Leonard S. Marcus's insightful, wry commentary about the objects on display. Now with this book, a collaboration between the University of Minnesota's Kerlan Collection of Children's Literature and Leonard Marcus, the nostalgia and vision of that exhibit can be experienced anywhere. The story of the origins of children's literature is a tale with memorable characters and deeds, from Hans Christian Andersen and Lewis Carroll to E. B. .