Ministry-To-Children.com » Tony Kummer

What Kids Need to Know about “Same-Sex Marriage”

Tony Kummer — Thu, 17 May 2012 15:16:21 +0000

Times have changed. Today’s kids live will inherit a world where gay marriage is accepted and affirmed, even by the President of the United States. Christians who maintain the biblical witness against this practice will be labeled “bigots.”

So, what are the basics that every kid needs to know when they encounter these topics? What can we teach to prepare children to respond with truth and grace to world gone crazy?

The following is just a starting point. I’d love to hear your response in the comment section below, especially if you have started talking with your children about these topics. We’ve even posted a roundtable discussion about this issue.

These talking points should be customized depending on the age of your kids and their specific questions.

“Marriage is God’s idea”

Before there was any human government or even churches. God invented marriage between Adam & Eve. It was supposed to be one man and one woman, promising to love and care for one another in a special way for all their lives. He said it was a pattern for all their children to copy. Marriage was a good gift from our Maker. It helps us to have strong families and live happy lives. When men & women follow God’s plan, it shows a little of God’s own faithfulness and love. The Bible event talks about human marriage to explain the way Jesus loves his church. At the core this is a theological issue

“Some people say ‘No’ to God’s ideas”

When humans began to disobey God, marriage become much harder. Since we are all sinners, it becomes very hard to put others first and get along in marriage. There are many ways people have gone against God’s plan. The Bible specifically talks about divorce, adultery, and homosexuality. There do not fit with God’s plan and are called sin by different passages in the Bible. Many people think they have freedom to change God’s design in whatever way they want.

“It is not mean to disagree.”

We must love all people, but not hide God’s truth. There are many smart and nice people who don’t agree with what the Bible teaches. To speak up for what you know is not wrong, especially when done with attitude of respect. Christians should find way to be friends with all types of people, even when we disagree with something as important as marriage.

“Love means telling the truth”

Some Christians are shy to call same-sex marriage sinful. They think love and politeness prevents them from judging the choices that others make. It would not be love to hide the wisdom of God from people, especially when their choices will lead to sadness in their own lives.

“God can forgive & fix what sin breaks”

The Gospel is God’s power to both forgive and change sinners. Jesus commands all people to, “Repent and believe in the gospel.” (Mark 1:15). Christ has the authority because he lived without sin and died in our place. The promise is for a total restoration of any sinner back to God. “And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. (1 Corinthians 6:11 ESV)

“Sometimes the Government makes mistakes”

God has said to respect the government and even pray for leaders to have wisdom. Even so, any human government can make mistakes and choose to ignore God. We must continue to speak the truth and do what we can to love all people, even when the government is wrong.

This is just a starting point for this conversation and it’s an issue that won’t go away in this generation. Please leave a comment below to share your ideas or read our round table conversation on how it will affect children’s ministry.

I appreciate the dialogue earlier, but if we can’t agree that God has spoken clearly about marriage in Genesis 2:24… then we’re probably not going to agree on much else on the topic.

Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.
(Genesis 2:24 ESV)

That’s the verse that both Jesus & Paul quote when teaching on the issue. Matt. 19:5; Mark 10:7; 1 Cor. 6:16; Eph. 5:31

I am personally bound by the Word of God — even if the rest of the world (and many other Christians) think it’s foolish.

How will “Gay Marriage” impact Children’s Ministry?

How will “Gay Marriage” impact Children’s Ministry?

Tony Kummer — Thu, 17 May 2012 15:07:04 +0000

With the coming political firestorm over “same-sex marriage,” it’s going to be a topic kids hear about. If your children aren’t asking yet, it’s just a matter of time. As ministry leaders, we should think carefully about how we respond and find the right balance of truth & grace.

That’s why I sent the following question to several of my friends in children’s ministry. The idea is to learn from one another and be prepared to better serve children, to whom these topics can be very confusing.

Question: What is the role of the children’s ministry when kids ask about the topic of same-sex marriage? Are there certain Bible truth’s you stress for kids that would make this issue less confusing when they encounter it later? How would you respond if several children raised the issue during your teaching?

Below are the responses from our participants. I’ve also posted my suggested talking points on this issue. You can Note: There is a print link embedded within this post, please visit this post to print it. this page and carefully read through their insights. This conversation is not complete without your insight. Please share your insight in our comment section below. You are free to disagree with any or all of these writers, just do so in a respectful manner. We don’t expect anyone to agree with everything the following contributors wrote!

Response from Jared Kennedy

Jared Kennedy

In the fall of 1997, I headed off to college. I planned to room with a high school friend, but, during that summer, he confessed to me that he’d been hanging with a number of gay friends, and he was struggling with same-sex attraction. He called me out of respect, because he wanted me to know before we were roommates. I was repulsed, took a posture of judgment, and, we ended up not rooming together. I’m convinced now that my repulsion and judgment was ungodly. And the sad irony was that I was also struggling with all kinds of sexual sin. My orientation was different, but my depravity was no less.

Many Christians and whole churches have lost confidence in the gospel when it comes to how they think about and respond to homosexuality. Some single out homosexuality as “the sin.” Many have strong emotional reactions to homosexuality that flow out of deep insecurity, feelings of repulsion, disgust, and threat. These reactions expose profound unbelief both in the gospel’s power to change lives and about the depth of sin in our hearts.

A children’s ministry’s approach to homosexuality begins with having a heart of hospitality. We must welcome and treat all people with dignity and respect. We should assume homosexuals are always in our midst and avoid all homophobic speech. We should repent of our stereotypes and prejudices towards homosexuals, be ready to welcome gay or lesbian couples raising children into our worship gatherings, and pray that they will entrust their children to our care.

We must remember that the world has never seen a perfect family. Since Adam and Eve, every family has been jacked up enough to be desperate for grace. Pick up your Bible, and you’ll see stories of homicide, gang rape, polygamy, concubines, incest, and prostitution before you even get out of Genesis. When we teach kids, we should be sensitive about explaining sin with age-appropriate discretion. But we should also be clear that everyone is capable of every sin. There is no sinful behavior that given the right circumstances my sinful heart will not adopt.We should help kids to see that we often act just like the sinners in the Bible’s stories. When teaching youth about sexual sin, we also must be honest about the sexual sins popular among heterosexuals (promiscuity, fornication, masturbation, pornography, lust, etc.). We should not single out homosexual sin as worse than any other type.

There are kids in your ministry who will ask about gay marriage, and there are kids in your ministry that are struggling with same-sex attraction. When the questions come, we must be clear that homosexuality is not God’s design for human relationships (1 Corinthians 6:9-11; 1 Timothy 1:9-10), but we can’t be simplistic about its cause. There may be biological factors that pre-dispose a child to more feminine or masculine behavior than is usual for his or her gender. There may be family factors that make it difficult for a young person to feel confident in his or her social gender role or which make opposite sex relationships unattractive. Emotional, physical, and/or sexual abuse can affect a persons understanding of their sexuality. We must be sensitive about each child’s story while affirming that each child either confirms or chooses to resist homosexual desires with their choices.

Our job is to help every family understand that they are invited into a bigger story of redemption and restoration. Every family is dysfunctional, but God has good news—no matter your family’s history, baggage, or present situation—change is possible. I know this is true, because I have changed. Over the past 15 years, God has been rescuing me from a lack of compassion and ungodly judgment as well as from sinful living. All family dysfunction can be changed. Homosexuality is no exception. The gospel is the power of God that is able to change anyone. The actual process is no different than the process of change for anything else in the life of a Christian. We need to give the kids in our ministry biblical vision of family (one that moves beyond cultural stereotypes), and they need encouragement to pursue that vision with the Holy Spirit’s help and ordinary means of grace—prayer, God’s word, repentance, faith, and community.

God didn’t make boys for Bass Pro Shops, ESPN, and Old Spice, but He does want them to grow up loving Jesus and others by leading, protecting, and working with wisdom (Genesis 2:15, 19-20). God didn’t make girls for pink doilies or Pinterest, but He does want them to grow up loving Jesus as powerful counterparts and life-giving nurturers (Genesis 2:22-23; 3:20; Proverbs 31). God didn’t ordain the Cleavers or the Cosbys as the perfect family, but he did create marriage as a life-long, loving, covenant relationship between a man and a woman—a picture of Christ and his bride, the church (Genesis 2:23-24; Ephesians 5:21-33). That’s a vision worth teaching, praying for, and pursuing as we train up the next generation.

References: “Discussion of Homosexuality” by Anonymous; “They Blew Up Walnut Grove,” in Zombies, Football, and the Gospel by Reggie Joiner.

Jared Kennedy blogs at http://sojournkids.com. He is the husband of Megan and the father of three girls-Rachael, Lucy, and Elisabeth. He leads SojournKids as Family Pastor at Sojourn Community Church, a multi-site congregation in Louisville, KY

Response from Nicole VanderMeulen

I received the invitation to comment on this topic as I sat at a conference titled “Children, Youth, and New Kind of Christianity” held at Calvary Baptist Church in Washington DC. The event included participants from every denomination I have ever heard of and people came from countries all over the globe to attend. One major theme that emerged is that Christians have a really bad rap. Through our hypocritical, judgmental, shaming ways we’ve done way more turning people away from church than welcoming them in. This is largely due to literal interpretation of the Bible. We are so quick to speak, yet so slow to act.

My dear friends, the Bible does say that a man and woman should be together and no man should lie down with another man, but it also says that we should sell our daughters into slavery, never eat shellfish, be put to death if we work on the Sabbath, avoid contacting menstruating women and on and on. So, please, if you choose to hold each word sacred and literal, PLEASE be consistent. Your picking and choosing of what to take to heart and what to ignore really flaws your integrity. To that end, please do not believe that you have the ability to decipher what is literal and what is metaphor. You don’t.

Alternately, consider looking not at single verses or specific Biblical facts, but try to examine the repetitive themes and big truths found in our sacred book. You’ll see over and over where God and Jesus gave forgiveness, grace, and love. Don’t forget the greatest commandment, “love your God and second to that, love your neighbor as yourself”. In fact, Jesus was often found associating with prostitutes, the sick, beggars, tax collectors and the like, the people that society viewed as “wrong” or “bad”.

While this is certainly how I would help children explore what the Bible might have to tell us about homosexuality, that wouldn’t be my first strategy for addressing the subject. This conference I was attending reiterated for me the importance of helping children think for themselves rather than telling them what to think. I would probably start by asking some questions like, “What do you think about two women or two men being in love?” “What do you think God thinks about it?” “Does it matter what we think about it?” “Are there greater sins than others?” “Do we all sin?” “Is it our job to judge or love others?” “What if someone you knew (best friend, mother, brother, etc.) told you they were gay? Would that change what you thought?” “Is it ok to hurt others when we don’t agree with them?”

As I continue to pray for a world of love, peace, acceptance, and social justice, with Christians right where we have been called to be, leading the effort, I leave you with this thought. “We should be fixing ourselves and helping others, not the other way around.”

Nicole VanderMeulen serves as the Children’s Ministry Coordinator at St. Matthew’s Lutheran Church in Renton, Washington.

Response from Amy Dolan

Amy Dolan

I was thrilled to hear the President’s comments last week on gay marriage. His words, in my opinion, were just the kick in the pants we’ve needed when it comes to serving all types of families in the church. We’ve been teasing the subject for awhile, wondering “What will I do when a family with gay parents comes to my church and wants to dedicate their child, volunteer in the ministry, and be fully participating active members in the church?” And now, with the President’s comments at the forefront of most American’s minds, we can consider the subject one of our most important priorities.

Here’s the thing: It’s time. Whether gay families are active participants of your church or not, it’s time to consider how we might serve all types of families by loving, serving, caring, helping, and training so that all parents might be the spiritual leaders and influencers that their children so desperately need.

As children’s and family leaders, we talk a whole lot about parents as the primary spiritual influencers, and occasionally we complain about parents who don’t recognize and embrace their role. As the church, we so deeply desire coming alongside parents providing training and encouragement for the long road of parenthood ahead.

But, my observation has been that this practically only applies to traditional two-parent-mom-and-dad families. Most conferences I attend, books I read, churches I observe, and conversations I have include parent training aimed at these types of families. My hope is that we’d include all types of families in order that all types of children would grow in their faith and become lifetime followers of Jesus.

Something to keep in mind: When a gay family steps into any of our churches, it’s a risk. And when that family is open about who they are, it’s an even bigger risk. Yet, when they do, and when they ask for our help in raising their children, I think, it highlights their commitment and strong desire to raise faith-filled Godly children.

Let’s listen. Let’s ask questions and listen to each family’s answers. What has their story been thus far, both in life and in faith? What are their dreams for their children? How can the church help accomplish the family’s dreams?

And then let’s serve. Let’s do our best to encourage and empower parents so that regardless of their journey thus far, they are strong and able to raise spiritually strong children.

It’s time. Time for us to be mindful as we live out our calling to the fullest, and to serve families in the church for the sake of spiritual growth for all children.

Read more from Amy on her blog or follow @adolan on Twitter.

OMC Game: Bring Camp Fun to Your Church

Tony Kummer — Thu, 17 May 2012 02:00:01 +0000

Tonight we played the OMC game to mark the end of our Spring session of kids ministry programs. It was a blast, even with only 30 children playing.

OMC stands for Organized Mass Choas. It’s a game developed by the CentriKid camps and published by LifeWay. Here’s how it works:

Set everything up in a large outdoor space. You’ll need water balloons, pool noodles, shaving cream, and other random outside items.
Divide the kids into any number of teams.
Each child draws a task card. Often these require silly or messy activities. When they complete it they get another.
When the time is complete, the team with the most completed cards wins.

The whole system of the game is brilliant. We’ve played it at camp several times, but this was our first attempt to bring the fun back to our regular church group. I’ve had a free copy from LifeWay waiting for this end-of-year field day.

The starter kit form LifeWay includes printable directions, a shopping list, and DVD with directions. You also get several hundreds of the game cards. With just about an hour of planning, I was able to create an insanely fun experience for our children’s ministry.

This would be a perfect “old-clothes” day activity for VBS. The larger your group the better, but I think it could work with groups as small as 10. But that might require you to remove task cards that involve multiple players.

You can read more about the game on the CentriKid blog. If you’ve ever tried it, we would love to hear your reaction too. Just leave a comment below.

Printable Baby Dedication Certificate

Tony Kummer — Tue, 08 May 2012 18:40:55 +0000

Click above to download this certificate of baby dedication

I didn’t like buying baby dedication certificates and wanted a little more control over what information was required for the form. So put together this simplified keepsake to give parents after the ceremony with their child.

Download:

Easy to print PDF document (simple format for any church)
Microsoft Word Doc (for custom editing)

Just be sure to print these on certificate or heavy resume style stationary. You should print the document 2-sided and then fold into this bulletin format.

This is an important keepsake that families will cherish as their children grow in the Lord. I’ve also left space for the pastor to write his own short note or prayer under the Bible verse on the inside flap. This extra touch will mean even more in years to come.

Curious about how other churches handle the dedication of infants? Read our think-tank post where children’s ministry leaders share about how their church conducts this service.

Click on this preview to download the certificate as a PDF document

21 Safety Mistakes to Avoid

Tony Kummer — Tue, 08 May 2012 12:49:50 +0000

This workshop covers the most common dangers that churches overlook. For each, we offers some quick suggestions for managing risk in your children’s ministry. To get the most benefit, join in the conversation questions below. You can also download the session notes or watch this clip directly on YouTube.

Group Discussion (comment on this page)

After viewing the workshop, please answer the following in the comment section, then read through the other answers and interact with at least one other student’s comments.

In your church, which of these safety mistakes are most obvious?
What is one think you can change right away to manage risk in your children’s ministry?
What other common safety mistakes could we have added to this list?

More Resources (links to further reading)

Look for more workshops on this topic coming soon . . .
Read free or print this article from Ministry-To-Children about safety.
Read articles from Children’s Ministry Magazine about safety.
Read this post from The Inclusive Church about this issue.
Listen to an audio interview on safety from Dale Hudson’s blog.
Read more articles on this topic from Christianity Today.

Jesus Loves Children with Special Needs!

Tony Kummer — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 18:55:49 +0000

Watch this video clip and listen for God’s Spirit as Meaghan Wall explains what it takes to minister to children with special needs. Please share with your friends. Click here to leave a comment below.

You can watch more of her interview along with Amy Fenton Lee, recorded at the Orange conference 2012.

Adorable Boys Sing “He Arose”

Tony Kummer — Sat, 07 Apr 2012 20:10:16 +0000

I was looking for Easter hymn “Low in the Grave” or “Up from the Grave He Arose” and found this adorable clip on YouTube. It appears to be a recording of two brothers presenting a music special at a small church.

They really sing their hearts out and get most of the words correct. This may be my new favorite version of that classic hymn. I’m pasting the lyrics below so you can follow along.

Up from the Grave He Arose Lyrics

Low in the grave he lay, Jesus my Savior,
waiting the coming day, Jesus my Lord!

Refrain:
Up from the grave he arose;
with a mighty triumph o’er his foes;
he arose a victor from the dark domain,
and he lives forever, with his saints to reign.
He arose! He arose! Hallelujah! Christ arose!

Vainly they watch his bed, Jesus my Savior,
vainly they seal the dead, Jesus my Lord!
(Refrain)

Death cannot keep its prey, Jesus my Savior;
he tore the bars away, Jesus my Lord!
(Refrain)

Click above to watch on YouTube

Last Minute Ideas for Easter

Tony Kummer — Sat, 07 Apr 2012 15:31:02 +0000

If you’re looking for a last minute supplement to your Easter Bible Lesson, this page is a great place to look.

Here are some of the most popular free resources from our website, plus a few more from other sites that we recommend.

We also recommend the following from other websites.

If you need even more help, you can browse all our Easter Resources on the website.

Jesus’ Resurrection Video for Children

Tony Kummer — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 19:45:59 +0000

The Jesus Storybook Bible does a wonderful job telling the story of Easter morning in the Bible. Here is the animated video clip of that chapter. It would be a powerful addition to any children’s Bible lesson about Jesus rising for the dead.

You can watch the video directly on YouTube also, but no download is available. So you will need an Internet connection to watch online with the children in your ministry.

"God's Wonderful Surprise" from the Jesus Storybook Bible

Video: The Easter Story Using Candy & Peeps

Tony Kummer — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 19:34:04 +0000

I found this playful version of the Easter Story on Jenny Funderburke’s blog. I thought it would be a nice option for teenagers and feed some good conversation about what the Resurrection really means. It includes scenes from the Gospel’s acted out using traditional Easter candy.

You can watch it on YouTube, but you’ll need an Internet connection to use it in your ministry. Leave a comment below to let me know what you think.

For younger children, you could show the video along with your Easter Bible lesson, then have them act out the story using their own candy

Story of Easter Told Using Candy