Kids Church Makeover

Our Kid's Church room is beautiful.  Truly amazing.  

About 15 years ago a team of talented artists got together and created this:

And this:

And have you seen the rest of the room?

We have loved this room and its beautifully cheerful design.

And yet here we are, wiping the slate clean...

Making room.  Creating space.

It feels CRAZY to me, to be whitewashing the beauty that was created here.

And yet I am convinced of what we are doing.  

The conviction comes from a vision for Kids Church to be more experiential.

Starting fresh for us began when we discovered Worship Response Stations.

About two years ago we began carving out space and time for the kids
to personally respond to God after each lesson.
And what we found is that kids truly want to know God's Spirit
for themselves and it is natural for them to learn to hear His voice.
...And so here we are, literally rearranging everything for more of that to happen.

Because at the end of the day, our number 1 goal isn't that our kids would just
know ABOUT God, but that they would KNOW Him for themselves.

Each Sunday we spend time responding to God about the message we've just heard.

You can learn more about this Large Group Response time here and here.  

Then we pray a prayer of blessing over them and invite them to
continue their worship by independently visiting a Worship Response Station
of their choice.  The lights are low, worshipful music is playing.
And they come up with notes to God like this:

So these beautiful walls are becoming blank slates to post permanent,
artistic and meaningful Worship Stations.

The new decor will be functional, filled with alters of remembrance
of what God is doing in our kids.  

So I guess you could say we are putting our "money" where our mouth is to do what it takes to make room for the Holy Spirit to interact with our kids ...so that they can experience God for themselves.  Regularly.  Repeatedly.

Today we wrote scriptures over all the newly-primed walls.

To declare who God is in our lives.

...To proclaim what we believe...

...and to claim His promises over this new season.

And so it has begun!  Our Kids Church Makeover.

Check back often for updates over the next 30 days to watch the progress.
We will be posting about each of the new Worship Response Stations as we create them.

Update: To see how the Makeover turned out, go here.

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.