This past week my brother Russell had his induction service as Assistant Pastor at Yeovil Elim. I travelled down on the train and met Mum and Dad who had gone down a couple of days earlier. Spending a whirlwind 18 hours with my family was lovely, and I especially enjoyed being able to take Sam my 9 year old nephew to school. The induction service itself was great – a real sense of love and excitement from the church as they welcomed Russell, Becci, Chloe and Sam in (although they’ve already become very settled and active members of the church). I felt really proud of my brother and I know that they will be really happy at Yeovil Elim and God will use them all for amazing things. You can see one of Russell’s recent sermons here.

I have recently lead a couple of services back at my home church Elim Braintree. The 11.30 Young at Heart Service is an all age service incorporating songs, activities and stories designed to help children and adults engage together. It’s been a real privilege to be part of the life of my home church, giving something back after all the teaching and encouragement I’ve received over the years! With a wealth of Arise Ministries resources and ideas behind me I’ve been able to do things a little bit differently and have some fun while learning with the children and grown ups! Yesterday we were  thinking about Harvest and helping those in need and us young ones made this beautiful banner!

 

 

This week preparations are underway for our first Just A ‘Child’? Equipping Event of the new term – on Saturday 1st October at Fullbridge Church, Maldon. Really looking forward to sharing with people enthusiastic about children’s ministry and hopefully injecting some enthusiasm and vision for their ministry with children in the local area.

 

With the arrival of Viz-A-Viz Ministries’ new National Director comes lots of exciting plans, ideas, visions and things that will be happening over the coming months. To keep up to date with all that Viz-A-Viz Ministries is doing and planning, please sign up in whichever way suits you:

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>> In other news, Andy is preparing to move into his new place sometime this week so we’ve been busy painting his room and buying curtains! Please pray for a stress-free and easy move and that he will settle in quickly.

Tags: 'Just a child?', Arise Ministries, Blog, Braintree, Elim, Emails, Facebook, Twitter, Viz-A-Viz Ministries, Yeovil

The last couple of things I have done have been with the wonderful Ed Jones, director of Arise Ministries. Arise is a partnership between Viz-A-Viz Ministries and Girls Brigade Ministries. The strapline is “Equipping the church to reach a generation” with the belief that that children can become followers of Jesus, live as His disciples and tell others about Him, whilst children. Arise produce resources but mainly focus on equipping and working with churches in their children’s outreach.

Over the next weeks and months I will be working more with Ed and am really looking forward to it!

On January 30th I travelled up to Sandy Baptist with Ed and his wife Emma  (Rich’s Sister) and their 2 adorable children Ewan (4) and Evie (3). Sandy Baptist is ministered by Beth Powney (Emma and Rich’s Mum, who used to work for Viz-A-Viz and who I stayed with for the first 3 weeks of my first gap year) and so I was looking forward to seeing her and Stephen again. Ed was taking part in the family service and I came along partly to assist, but also to see how I might be able to help out more at future services Ed is invited to. It was really great and I ended up singing too which was good. The Bible passage was Mark 4: 35-41, looking at Jesus calming the storm. The angle Ed was taking was looking the fact Jesus was just on his way from A to B when the storm came. What are the storms that hit us everyday? And what are our fears? We did an interactive Bible reading featuring a large squirrel (No, Ed, that says SQUALL!) and an activity which involved creating lots of mess with polystyrene! The response was writing a fear on a pebble and placing it in a container of water – then later taking a pebble home to pray for that person and situation. I really enjoyed being part of it and working with Ed – and was treated to a really nice meal at Beth’s and an afternoon playing with Ewan and Evie!

This past weekend (4th-6th Feb) Ed, Sam La Roche, Andy Keel and I travelled to Eastbourne for the Children’s and Families Ministry Conference to run an Arise Ministries Stand. Lots of planning had gone into this including large orders of yo-yos and colouring pencils! The main focus of our stand was to promote ‘Just a child?’, the new training initiative from Arise. In each delegate pack was an outline of a child and a pack of colouring pencils. The task was to colour/draw/write on the outline what came to mind when you thought of children, fill in your details on the back and then hand in to us to receive a free ‘Just a child?’ yo-yo and be entered into a draw to win a full set of Arise resources worth £60.

On the stand we constantly played with yo-yos with gained attention – especially Sam with his super fancy yo-yo and tricks! Ed liked to think his ‘tricks’ wowed people…we humoured his many different stances that were basically the same thing!! Over the weekend we had lots of good conversations, for many linking up the resource ‘Alf’ (which is quite widely known and used) with the organisation behind it. Ed had a showcase on the Christmas resource -  Journey To The Centre Of The Christmas Pudding which went well, and a seminar exploring why holiday clubs should be part of a whole year’s outreach.

I really enjoyed being part of the team and helping enthuse people about their children’s ministry.

Looking ahead I’m planning on joining the Arise team at Baptist Assembly and Leading Edge this year, as well as helping out at a church weekend in April and also working on Junior Solid in July.

Tomorrow is Solid Remix at Chelmsford Cathedral which I’m on the technical team for, under the capable leadership of Technical Manager, Andy Keel!

Tags: 'Just a child?', Alf, Arise Ministries, Children's Ministry Conference, Ed Jones, Mark 4:35-41, Sandy Baptist, Yo-yos