New Shirts!

We are so excited to announce the arrival of our new shirts!  These black polo shirts have our Maranatha Children’s Ministry Logo screen printed in blue on the front.  They need to be worn every time you serve on a Sunday and can be worn with nice jeans, black pants or khakis. 

You can pick one up this weekend in Lee Hall.  Than and I will begin wearing our shirts this weekend, you can wear yours the next time you serve. 

We are so proud of our team and can’t wait to see everyone around in the new polos!

Beep, Beep…

We are really excited about all the traffic that we have been getting on the blog lately.  If you have ever clicked on the “About” at the top of the screen, then you know that we want to use this blog as a tool to help us all grow together and be better at what God has called us to do.  With this in mind, it is very encouraging to us that last month was the 2nd busiest month, the blog has seen, in terms of people checking out what we are posting.

We hope that when you hit the blog you take the time to read what is going on and then apply the discipline to put these things into practice.  We want to grow, we want to lead you more effectively and we want you to be the best you can be, as you serve God by serving the children and families at Maranatha.

 Thanks for stopping by!

Another Great Idea…

We had a great group of Leaders stop by Lee Hall for some coffee, before they served, on Sunday.  We had a few new creamer flavors and the coffee lifted everyone’s energy level, on a busy weekend for a lot of us. 

One of our Care Leaders had the great idea of inviting other leaders to stop by and meet with her for coffee any Sunday morning.  What an easy way to stay connected.  If you would like to take advantage of this time to get together with your Care Leader and enjoy some really good coffee (we don’t mean to brag) than I suggest shooting them an email, during the week and setting up a Sunday to do so.  You won’t regret it.

A little further down the page is a blog listing who your Care Leader is, if you are unsure.

Let’s continue to Grow, Connect and Serve with one another!

A Couple Fun Events

There are 3 events in the next 5 days that we think will be a lot of fun.  We hope you are able to participate in as many of these as you can.  Here are the events.  They are all great ways  to Grow_Connect_Serve:

Tonight (Wednesday October 28th) Children’s Fall Festival.  This will be a great time for the kids.  We will have a bounce house, game stations, face painting, cold water and candy on the way out the door.  If you have a child; bring them.  If you don’t have a child; come help the children have a blast. 

Saturday (October 31st).  Middle School Nerd Party.  This will be a fun party for Middle Schoolers.  We are encouraging them to come dressed as their best nerd.  For some of them, this won’t be that hard.  If you have a Middle Schooler; bring them.  If you don’t; come have a blast with us, ya nerd.

Sunday (November 1st).  Family Picnic.  This is going to be a great time to hang out and connect with other families from Maranatha.  The picnic is at Jupiter Beach Park Pavillion and it is right after the 10:45 service.  So come to church in the morning and then let’s hang out at the park.  We challenge you to a game of Corn Toss.

We hope you have a chance to make it to at least one of these great events.  Let’s continue to Grow_Connect_Serve with one another.  We love you guys!

Also, don’t forget about the time change.  Set your clocks back 1 hour on Saturday Night (October 31st).

A Bigger Picture

At this time we have about 50 leaders that volunteer, on a regular basis, in the Children’s Ministry on Sunday Mornings.  As one of these 50 volunteers you probably minister directly to anywhere from 4 to 34 children depending on which age group, which service and which week you serve.  We wanted to share some of the numbers concerning the Children’s Ministry to help show you a bigger picture of how many children the team, that you are a part of, ministers to an a monthly basis.

Below is a list of the amount of children each age group had in their care, on Sunday Mornings, in October.

Nursery (6 weeks to 18 months) – 13 different babies.

Toddler Nursery (18 months – 3 years) – 16 different toddlers.

Pre-School Ministry (3years – 5 years) – 20 different pre-schoolers.

Children’s Church (Kindergarten – 4th grade) – 82 different children.

Middle Church (5th, 6th and 7th grade) – 43 different middle schoolers.

On Sunday Mornings, in the month of October, you were part of a team that had 174 different children in our care.  We hope that we were able to help these children grow in a relationship with Jesus and learn His word.  Thank you for helping the children experience life change through a connection with Jesus in our atmosphere of care.  Let’s see who God brings into the picture in November.

Children’s Fall Festival

On Wednesday, October 28th we will be having our Children’s Fall Festival.  This event is basically a fun night for the children and families of Maranatha Church.  We will have a bounce house, some games and candy in the Worship Center for the kids.  This isn’t planned to be a huge event for 100’s of people from all over the county (all are definitely welcome), but simply a party night for the children and their friends.

If your child normally attends SuperClub or Midpoint on Wednesday nights this would be the perfect night for them to invite a friend.  Sometimes the first step in helping children connect with God is just simply giving them an opportunity to come to church and check it out.  A lot of families that wouldn’t normally attend a church “service” are likely to send their child with a friend from school, the neighborhood or a sports team, to a fun event or party that is taking place at a church. 

Think about some children your son or daughter could invite and come on out for a fun night at Maranatha!

Care Leaders

We hope you are enjoying this beautiful fall weather.   We certainly are!  Exciting things are happening in the Children’s Ministry. 

Maranatha is passionate about helping people experience life change through a connection with Jesus Christ.  Creating an atmosphere of care in the Children’s Ministry acts as a catalyst for life change for the families of Maranatha and this community.  

To ensure and enhance our atmosphere of care we are introducing Care Leaders to our team.  The role of the Care Leader is to communicate and uphold the vision of the atmosphere of care in every service.  You can expect communication from the Care Leader of the age group that you currently serve.    

The Care Leaders are: Desiree Stroumbas for the preschool age group, Arelis Teng for the elementary age group and Meg Sterrett for the middle school age group.  Please continue to pray for the Children’s Ministry.  We are anticipating great things!  

We appreciate all of you and are thankful to have such a great team.

 

Just a Small “Perk”

We are excited about a new thing in the Children’s Ministry that we are able to offer to each leader on Sunday mornings.  I’ll give you some hints: it is a warm liquid that is dark in color and can be sweetened or flavored depending on your preference.  Oh yeah, it’s COFFEE!

We will have hot coffee on Sunday mornings, before each service, in Lee Hall.  You are more than welcome to stop by and grab a cup on the mornings that you serve or any Sunday for that matter.  This should be a great way to wake us all up and give us another chance to connect with other leaders in the ministry.  If you want to enjoy a cup on Sunday, let’s be aware of a few things:

You will need to be pretty early.  Children arrive to our classrooms about 15 minutes prior to service starting.  We need to be in our classrooms ready for the morning before the children begin arriving.  Let’s not be in Lee Hall sipping coffee, chatting and neglecting our classroom responsibilities.

You will need to keep it clean.  There are services in Lee hall.  It won’t just be “the coffee room.”  It will be the elementary service room and an atmosphere of care.  Let’s not leave trash and half empty coffee cups lying around in there. 

You are important to us.  We wish we could do so much more than simply offer you coffee on the weekends.  If you have a favorite type of coffee flavor or any special coffee needs, please feel free to let us know and we will do what we can.  Let’s not pass up this great opportunity to hang out for a bit and enjoy some good coffee and company this Sunday morning.

“Mercy”

I just wanted to share my personal devotional from this morning with the team. 

Because we have violated God’s perfect standard, we have been declared guilty and there’s nothing we can do about it.  We’re at the mercy of the Judge of heaven.  God showed His mercy by sending His Son to take the punishment we deserved.  The next time you feel like retaliating against someone who has offended you, remember the mercy that God extended to you. 

“But God had mercy on me so that Christ Jesus could use me as a prime example of his great patience with even the worst of sinners.”

1 Timothy 1:16 (NLT)

“From 365 One-Minute Meditations from ‘God is in the Small Stuff’, Published by Barbour Publishing, Inc. Used by permission.”

Happy Birthday Blog

We are so excited that The Children’s Ministry Leadership Blog is now a year old.  We launched this site with the idea of communicating with, connecting with and equipping the team to do the work of the ministry.  We are happy that we have been able to do that for a year now and we believe that we have only begun to scratch the surface of what a powerful tool this blog will be for the team.

Something we would like to ask you to do as a part of the team is continue to check the blog often and even increase your participation.  Check it more often and comment whenever you can.  We want the team to have a stronger connection and this is an easy way to work towards that goal. 

We would like you to look back at the blogs posted a year ago and refresh your memory concerning what we have already communicated.  You can do this by using the “Archives” box to the right of this screen.  Scroll down to October 2008 and click on it.  That will bring up a page listing all the blogs posted during that month.  You will need to click on the title of a blog to view that blog.  Feel free to read any one that you are interested in.  We do ask that everyone read one or more of the following:  Things to Pray, I’m New and I’m Scared, A Moment to Reflect and From Your Head to Your Heart.  We can’t wait to hear from you.