On Monday, January 6, 2020 I will begin facilitating a new Facebook Bible study reading through the gospels. The following blog was originally posted November 10, 2015 and gives the basis for this journey. If you’d like to be part of the new group, ask to join the private Facebook group here. 

When my Uncle John passed away 27 years ago, he shared in a recording for his family of wisdom and several life regrets. As a professing Christian, one of his major regrets of his life was not reading the Bible all the way through. In two weeks, 10 days to be specific, I will complete a journey that started on January 1, 2011: Reading through the Bible…in community. The community was within a closed Facebook group.

Our senior pastor sets a scripture to give clarity and a focus for our local church for the upcoming new year. On Christmas Eve 2010, He called us to ‘Let the Spirit of God grow in you’ for 2011. Seemed easy enough: be a part of a Bible study.

But I had some challenges:
1. I lived 50 minutes away from the church
2. I was on staff, so I could be seen as an ‘authority’, though FAR from it
3. Most of the congregation commuted to downtown Atlanta for work and had little time to carve out one more thing like a typical Bible study
4. I had just started at this church, so I had no real credibility in being part of a discipleship program…these folks didn’t know me from Adam’s house cat

So I opened a closed Facebook group to begin early January. The parameters were…
1. We’d promote it in the church and on Facebook
2. Starting in Matthew, we’d follow a reading plan, reading one chapter in the New Testament, in order, each day
3. We’d post our train of thought in a comment each day, though we’d take weekends and holidays off
4. The first one to post started with a comment (January 6: Matthew 1: ‘comment’) and others would add their comments to the comment stream.

We started with five commenters/members. We found after we read the New Testament that we wanted to continue, but with adjusted parameters:
1. Read one chapter each day beginning in Psalms and through Proverbs, taking the weekends and holidays off
2. Periodically promote it in the bulletin and on Facebook allowing others to join if one of the originating members knew them.
3. We’d keep on reading, keep on commenting, and if a fellow sojourner wanted to join in who was known by a member of the group, we’d add them

After finishing the New Testament, Psalms and Proverbs, we completed the first year. But found we wanted to continue this holy habit, this new spiritual discipline. So come January 2012, we started the Old Testament, one chapter each day, taking the weekends and holidays off. The first to comment started the stream for that day.

Today, we have thirty members, but typically have only three to five comment, or ‘like’, or view. We have members from all over the country and include both men and women. Members have come in and out in comment activity. Each one perhaps not able to carve hours out of their daily schedule to gather together and study the Bible in a typical way. Rather, we have dedicated to start out each morning with reading one chapter each day and commenting what is on our hearts and minds, a simple prayer, keeping it clean of dis-unifying rants, and just sharing in our pajamas or work suits and over a cup of coffee or tea or Diet Coke.

The accountability has been fantastic. The habit has been transforming. There are now a few folks who know ALL the colors of my rainbow through the lens of scripture…and I remember a whole lot more of what I’ve read. For goodness sakes, just when I thought obeying God couldn’t get any more difficult, I read in Isaiah 20 that God asked Isaiah to go around stripped and barefoot for 3 years….naked and barefoot for 3 years! And Isaiah did it! I don’t know how I missed that before.

We’ve decided to continue on through the New Testament again in two weeks. For just about everyone, they accomplished something rare, especially for Christians….American Christians: They read the whole Bible through.

Have you?

“The most frequent excuse for not growing in our spiritual lives is lack of time. Most of us live at the mercy of our schedule, instead of planning ahead and arranging our schedule around our apprenticeship to Jesus.” Rev James Bryan Smith, from The Good And Beautiful Life: Putting on the Character of Christ

Devotionals for children to partner with daily Bible Reading are difficult to find for middle to upper elementary students and I love everything about Breakfast With Jesus: 100 Devotions For Kids About the Life of Jesus. Vanessa Myers is a children’s ministry colleague from North Georgia. She’s a wife, mother of two amazing girls, soccer mom, Georgia Tech fan and Duke University alumni, and fabulous Children’s Pastor at Dahlonega First United Methodist Church. This is her second book and she knocked it out of the park.

Breakfast With Jesus: 100 Devotions for Kids About the Life of Jesus walks through the four gospels providing 100 short, kid-friendly devotionals. Vanessa chose the perfect colors, a fun layout, elementary-sized words which point children to Jesus. Inside are kid-friendly breakfast recipes and sticky situations sprinkled throughout. Want that long-lost sausage ball recipe? She’s got it! Vanessa presents Jesus as a kid’s friend and how they (we) can become more like Jesus today!

Each devotion offers scripture, a conversational teaching story about Jesus, closing in a prayer and a “Follow Me” challenge for the day. This is all developmentally appropriate for middle to upper elementary to read on their own or an early elementary student to be read to. This devotional is also one which can be repeated because it clearly lives in a kid’s world with situations and suggestions to apply to every day. I ordered multiple copies for some special Oregon grands and their friends for Christmas knowing it was ready for shipping on December 16.

As the New Year is here, holy habits start anew. Daily Bible reading is a holy habit that we share with the Christian saints of the past and faithful disciples of today. A devotional is a great way to partner with daily Bible reading which we know is the #1 spiritual activity that makes the greatest impact on a child’s life as a follower of Jesus to remain a follower of Jesus throughout the rest of their lives. (Lifeway, Nothing Less: Engaging Kids In A Lifetime of Faith, Jana Magruder, 2017, pg. 53) 

Want a free copy of Breakfast With Jesus? Tag a children’s ministry champion or parent friend who could use this fabulous resource with their children on this Facebook or Instagram post. Every friend tagged counts as a separate entry. On Friday, December 27, I’ll announce the winner and Vanessa will send to you your very own personal copy of this wonderful book.

The next stop on the Breakfast With Jesus blog tour is Dec. 30 with Stacey Shannon at www.familieswithgrace.com. I’m off to get those sausage balls ready for Christmas morning. Merry Christmas!

“Jesus said to them, ‘Come and have breakfast.’ None of hte disciples dared ask him, ‘Who are you?’ they knew it was the Lord.” John 21:12

Congratulations Kate Morris, Family Ministry Director serving Acworth United Methodist Church located in Acworth, Georgia will be receiving her own personal copy of Breakfast with Jesus!

This week’s guest blogger is Hannah Harwood, Director of Children’s Ministries serving the families of Sam Jones United Methodist Church in Cartersville, Georgia, a suburb of the Greater Atlanta area.

I love out of the box events. My absolute favorite events are when families are invited to gather in community to do something out of the ordinary. I have been at Sam Jones United Methodist Church for little over two years. My first event was actually our Happy Birthday Jesus party when we all went together to see The Star and packed out a movie theater. The next Christmas, we gathered together and made Gingerbread nativities. I was so excited to find The Manger Project for this year.  This event by Dema Kohen was a perfect fit for our church community.

First, I ordered the blueprints and contacted our Building and Grounds Supervisor who is always game for an adventure project. He took the blueprint and purchased enough wood to make thirty kits for thirty families. He packaged the thirty kits into VBS crew bags and included a sandwich bag of the needed nails.

I also contacted a church member who works for Home Depot and asked for donations of their child-size work aprons. I looked into my box of safety goggles for another event and put those to the side as well. Because it would be a very loud event, I also created a sensory friendly room.

In our sensory-friendly room, I purchased Advent posters from Illustrated Ministry and several easy crafts from Hobby Lobby. I set up that room with the posters and lots of brand new colored pencils. New pencils are a source of so much joy!

We have an amazing preschool at our church. We made sure and not only invited our church families, but our preschool families as well.

We intentionally set up fifteen tables in the main room and decorated using plastic tablecloths. We set up all the kits on a long table and displayed the aprons, safety goggles, and extra hammers. Each family was invited to bring their own hammer. For food, each family brought their favorite Christmas snack and we set up a fun hot chocolate bar.

As people arrived, they were encouraged to color a banner and put their food items on the table. It was so fun to see all the families color together and even our Pastor joined in on the fun. Once everyone arrived, we invited each family to pick a table so that two families shared a table. So many of the parents met new friends. Our carpenter explained each part step by step. Next, came the Carol of the Hammers. Be prepared to take lots of pictures as it was so much fun to see each family work together and take turns building their manger. Even the littlest ones got to take a turn hammering. After we finished the project and wrote the date with sharpies, it was time for food and fellowship. The entire event lasted around an hour and a half which was perfect for our families’ busy schedules. Now… what adventure should we go on next year?

Hannah Harwood is a wife, mom, and loves her coffee. Hannah can be contacted by emailing hharwood@samjonesumc.org.

“and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them.” Luke 2:7

Jesus, children, grandchildren, and tea are four of my very favorite things. Sally Clarkson’s new devotional, Mom Heart Moments: Daily Devotions for Life-giving Motherhood speaks of all four with great encouragement and raw emotion.

I typically don’t use a devotional as part of my daily quiet time, but rather read the scriptures, journal, and pray using prayer books to guide me. I feel my prayer vocabulary is limited. Prayer can make things happen that won’t without it. Prayer can make things not happen that could happen without it, as well. For almost twenty years, I’ve used Stormie Omartian’s Power of a Praying Wife and Power of a Praying Parent each day to pray specifically for my husband and my children, now my grandchildren. It’s organized into thirty chapters with very specific prayers for various areas of my people’s life. It helps me to go beyond, ‘Fix them, Lord,’ or ‘I lift up…..” Thirty days, one for each day of the month.

Several years ago, I also began using Susanna Wright’s new edition of John Baillie’s A Diary of Private Prayer. The prayers are organized by morning and evening with special prayers for Sundays. Anybody else need special prayers for Sundays? A Diary of Private Prayer was originally published in 1936. There’s something to be said for being guided by the prayers of the saints, the dutiful, and those who totally understood conflict, hope, and change.

Anyway, Sally Clarkson is on the grandmother side of life. She raised four children, and moved around the world with her husband. Her books include titles such as The Mission of Motherhood, The Ministry of Motherhood, Season’s of a Mother’s Heart, just to name a few. My first Sally Clarkson book was the fabulous Life-Giving Home: Creating A Place for Belonging and Becoming which is all about providing the sacred space, faith-filled traditions, and an environment of hope and love for your family in your home.

My daughter just finished Different: The Story of an Outside-the-Box Kid and the Mom Who Loved Him which Sally wrote with her son, Nathan. From early childhood, Nathan was bursting with uncontainable energy and diagnosed with anxiety and OCD. Bravely choosing to listen to her motherly intuition, Sally dared to believe that Nathan’s differences could be part of an intentional design from a loving Creator with a plan for his life. Sally has spent some devotional-prayer time on behalf of her son and both she and Nathan share their stories. No Stepford children here…no Stepford mama, either. She’s got some scars and she’s had some amazing celebrations.

Today, Mom Heart Moments begins with Isaiah 40:11, then jumps right into, Somewhere along the way, I decided to put the load of guilt from all the ways I had failed into the file drawers of heaven and mark forgiven over them. (pg. 346). Yesterday, the short devotion included her admission to being overwhelmed because I felt trapped and wondered if I would truly make it through the rest of the years of my children being at home…..DON’T STAY THERE! MOVE ON! The day before she spoke of of an annual Christmas tea when she and her daughters would also invite two or three women or girls who didn’t have family or friends in town, or who we thought might need some special encouragement.

This devotional is where I’m at. One day recalling a memory of great joy, another day wondering if I can remain strong with a holy energy on those ministry marathon days.
As you begin to consider how you want the new year to begin, perhaps a new devotional, a new prayer book, or the start of a new holy habit might be just the thing to jump-start the weary. I decided not to wait until January.

What do you use to guide your daily devotional time?

Parenting Relationships and Friendships is a class offered through a Parenting with a Purpose initiative which has been in my heart and mind for several years. The goal is to offer a 90-minute class filled with stories, laughter, sacred conversations, and tools to grow in our relationships within our families, our community, and with Jesus. Information about prior classes can be found here.

Healthy and effective communication skills was the focus of Parenting Relationships and Friendships. We have a counseling center on campus led by an associate pastor and several counselors. They are the first responders of our local church when life happens that would leave a family in grief, chaos, uncertainty, and needing next steps. I wanted my parents to meet these gifted and trained folks before all that, ‘before-before.’ I wanted my parents to know they have access to resources provided by their church family to walk through whatever comes and before whatever comes, comes.

Class agenda – opening/greeting of the purpose and goal of the class
• Associate Pastor spoke of the intentionality of dialogue rather than lecture with small group scenarios and tending to a restored relationship over perfect behavior.
• Transitioned that the next 10 minutes would be really uncomfortable, but we’d be better after which led to the Counseling Center Counselor sharing about suicide: differences between mood swings and depression, warning signs, domain, length of season, etc.
• Last thirty minutes I led them through a Holy Listening Stone exercise with a small set of stones prepared ahead of time by my amazing assistant.
• Closed with my personal testimony of prayer for my children using Stormie Omartian’s Power Of A Praying Parent. This book has thirty short chapters with fabulous prayers to be claimed for your child(ren) for each day of the month. The prayer vocabulary and the systematic way to pray through your child’s seasons is made so much easier with a tool like this book. There are things that won’t happen unless we pray for them. There are things that may happen unless we pray against them. I don’t know any Christian who feels they have adequate prayer vocabulary. This is a must-have-parenting-resource.

Each participant was able to take away multiple handouts from the speakers, a pre-made set of Holy Listening Stones, and their own copy of Power of a Praying Parent. This I know: each Christian parent wants their child to love the Lord their God with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength AND love their neighbor as themselves. Let’s give them the tools to do it!

What are the tools and resources your local church can offer your families to battle the war for the hearts and minds of their children AND the children you influence in your world?

“Fools think their own way is right, but the wise listen to others.” Proverbs 12:15