I vaguely remember reading CATW regularly about twenty years ago while working as a part-time youth ministry staff/church librarian at United Evangelical Church of the Philippines. UECP was actively involved with CCCOWE as one of the associate pastors, Rev. Wesley Chang, served with CCCOWE in an official capacity. This recent issue of CATW (Sept. 2005) had the theme "Children Matters" and that definitely caught my eye. It was refreshing to read how Chinese churches outside of North America were approaching children's ministry. There are a few articles of interest that represent significant progress in the thinking within the Chinese Christian community concerning the necessity and role of children's ministry in the church.
Children's Ministry and the Kingdom of Heaven by Anna Hui
Children's Ministry in Australia by Nancy Fung
Age Limit for the School of Mission by Lisa Chan
Children in Taiwan by Jennifer Su
Another article that caught my eye came from National Religious Broadcaster's NRB Magazine. Thom S. Rainer wrote an article titled "10 Predictions for the Church by 2010." Two trends are noteworthy to someone involved in children's ministry as myself. Trend #8: An increase in intentional evangelistic ministries focused on children and youth and Trend #10: The emergence of a children’s minister as the third full-time staff minister. Download a copy of the article at this link:
As Rainer said, undoubtedly these two trends are linked together as churches recognize the need and success of intentional ministries to the younger generation, they will want to find ministerial staff to lead those ministries.
Coming up soon, a list of blogs that I would recommend.
5 comments:
great artilces! and cool to see link to my site... great blog! i'll be checkin' in. :)
on trend/3rd pastor, in my first full time ministry, i was the 2nd pastor added, and i knew he was ahead of the times, and it worked! the chruch trippled in attendance in 2 years with a strong children's ministry, and then they were ready to add worship, and all those other positions. :)
Thanks for the compliment, Pastor Karl. I do enjoy your blog a lot, and consider your ministry influential on me.
I have learned and am learning a lot of new things from you.
Thanks for linking to my blog!
We certainly have a BIG responsibility teaching children about the good things God tells us in His Word, the Bible!
I started a blog with interesting information regarding children's web surfing.
Right now the "how", next I'll be posting articles about what to do.
http://parentalwebcontrol.blogspot.com/
Good Job! :)
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