Kid's Church: Worship Response Stations

Welcome!  Below is last year's post about many of our Worship Stations for kids.
We'd also like to invite you to see our recently NEW and improved stations here.  

Today's post is for my new friend, Jan, in Singapore.  May God bless you, Jan, as you seek His Spirit for the children in your ministry.  You've already inspired me!  We pray blessings on your pursuit to create authentic worship experiences for kids.  

Every Sunday in Kid's Church we end with quiet, one-on-one worship experiences.  These are self-guided "Worship Response Stations" where we pray that our kids may experience a personal moment with God.  

This post is a description of some of our most-used stations.  They are simple, for now.  We will soon be upgrading them to something more artistic and permanent (Yay!)

Prayer Wall:

At this station the kids are encouraged to write or draw a special prayer to God.  Then they pin it to the board.  If they want privacy, they can either fold it in half, or face it inside.  The kids generally don't put their names on the requests so they are anonymous.

There is usually a teacher standing nearby in case anyone needs help or wants to pray together.  

When the wall becomes too full we take them down and add them to scrapbooks.  We often leave these scrapbooks out on the Prayer Wall table for anyone to look through if they are interested.  

Pastors Matt and Jenna are honored to pray over these prayer requests during the week.  

Most of them are very touching.

Promise Station:

Possibly the most popular station is the Promise Station (above).  The kids love picking out one of the brightly colored promises, rolled up into little scrolls.

Each scroll has a scripture printed on it: one of the profound promises of God.

Some of the kids save their promise each week in their Bibles as keepsakes.  Some of the teachers have even grabbed a promise scroll and find that it is exactly the encouragement they needed.  

God's Word never returns void.

Search My Heart Station:

This is one of my favorite stations.  It is a place the kids can open their hearts to God.    

This station came about one week when we were learning about King David.  King David was a man after God's own heart.  David always wanted to have a clean heart before God, and would often pour His heart out to Him.

God wants our hearts!  The kids come here to ask God for forgiveness (Create in me a clean heart, O God!), or perhaps to open up to God about something that hurts or saddens them.

Or, like David, they could praise God out of the overflow of their hearts!

Encouragement Station:

 We ask God to put someone on the hearts of our kids - to bring to mind someone in their lives in need of encouragement.  We all need to learn to be sensitive to the Holy Spirit's promptings and to enjoy the feeling of blessing or thanking others. 

The basket is full of notecards and stickers.  The kids see if God brings someone to mind.  Then they draw, decorate and write a personal note to lift their day.

Blessing Wall:

This is a wall full of praise reports and notes of thanksgiving.  It is so important for all of us to look into our lives and recognize how God has blessed us.  

Thank you for touring these stations with us.  

If you are a parent visiting this blog, would you take a moment to pray that God will touch your child (and all of our children) as they use these stations each week?

  Don't forget to take a minute to stop by our recently 

NEW and improved stations here.  

Kid's Church: God Is Faithful

This Sunday up in Kid's Church (our Sunday service for grade-school kids) we learned about the part of 

The Big God Story where God delivered the city of Jericho into the hands of His people.  (Joshua 1-6).

We follow the philosophy that every lesson puts God at the center of the narrative:
because God is the main character of every story.

And so, in this part of the Big God Story we learn that God is Faithful.

Consider the situation: God's people could never have crossed the Jordan River at flood time, or made the impenetrable walls of Jericho fall down (from the inside out!) by themselves.  

This part of The Big God Story shows that if we follow God's leading in our lives, He will be faithful   

. . . even if it means doing the impossible.

After our creative teachers shared the astounding events of this part of God's Big Story, the kids spent a few moments personally responding to God:

They love this time of the morning.

They sat expectably in the Presence of God, as the Holy Spirit's timely message was heard:

Kids, God wants to turn your fear into faith.

Remember?  God's people were afraid to cross the River Jordan when first they came to it 40 years before.  Remember? They were afraid to go into The Promised Land because the enemy seemed much too frightening.  Remember? Their time in the desert was a process; 

an intense process of turning fear into faith.  Remember?  This is what God does.

God turns fear into faith.

It was prophesied and spoken over our kids, by two different people Sunday morning, 

that THEY will be  A Generation of Faith - believing and seeing the miracles of God!
And just as it was once before . . .

This generation will be the ones to believe.

As a group, the kids were asked to respond to this word from God.  

We asked God to bring to mind something that makes them feel afraid.

And then they were asked to write or draw it on a sticky note

Stick their note to a brick

And add their brick to the wall.

We prayed over all these areas of fear . . .

We prayed that God would turn them into areas of faith.

And on the count of three . . .

We blew with all our might.  HARD.

And in one great breath, the wall of fear came tumbling DOWN!