There are local churches ‘saving’ spaces for when we ‘get back to normal.’ This means, there are spaces unused and off-limits to ministry with children and families. If ever there was a time for territorial caution tape to be torn down, it’s now. It will require hard phone calls to church saints, awkward zoom meetings with trustees, and not everyone is up for the challenge. I want to encourage you to have these courageous conversations. The days of playing it safe and walking away from a table (or zoom meeting) content or settling for whatever you are given, are over.

Perhaps you were chosen for such a time as this. (Esther 4:14) David Kinnaman of the Barna Group of researchers made the bold statement last week that one out of five churches will close in the next 18 months. Not one to jump down a hole of negativity, let me just proclaim in my loudest voice with a megaphone, for me and my church, “Not on my watch!”

There’s a great church whose reservations for their first Sunday in the building for the children’s services filled up in three hours. Three hours! All because the space the Children’s Ministry Lead was offered could only hold twelve kids. What happens to kids #13, #14, #15….#25? What happens to their family? What subtle, but very loud message is being conveyed? Loving families to Jesus doesn’t just happen in the Sanctuary. Faith formation is not just providing content and a distant sense of normalcy in a space that is not kid-friendly, but rather saying, “We stand with you, Mom, Dad!”

Several hours later, this warrior-for-kids texted me to share the senior pastor made those hard phone calls and the larger spaces will be available to kids the following week. She and I had prayed for that and God blessed it with a resounding, “Yes!” Maybe we should have prayed for more! Oh Lord, let us not be limited to what we can see. If Jesus came back tomorrow, would I stand before His precious face and say, “I tried, but they wouldn’t let me.” I just can’t!

Recently we enjoyed two infant baptisms at our outdoor, in-person worship service on the lawn. We said aloud, together, “With God’s help,” we will faithfully stand with these families to love their kids to Jesus with our lives. I gave party blowers to the siblings, the cousins, and the great-grandparents, because we stand in celebration for their legacies of faith. They can trust that I will speak up, wave the banner, and though I will submit to the authority over me, I will push the limits of what is comfortable to make sure kids hear other voices in their heads saying they are,“fearfully and wonderfully made.” I know this is your heart, as well.

Let’s be creative. Let’s be innovative. Let’s find out what it would take to get a YES and then work within those boundaries all the way to the margin. Andy Stanley shared at a Catalyst conference in 2017, “A single act of courage is often the catalyst for extraordinary.” We share the stories of courageous people with our kids all the time, but what about your story? Are you ready to be courageous?

Let’s give ‘em something to talk about!

Whatever you are facing, this may be your Esther moment, your Daniel moment. Put on the armor of an exile and I encourage you to prayerfully go with what you know and not with how you feel. I can’t imagine the anxiety Esther or Daniel must have felt, but whatever you are wrestling with to make more noise for your families will not get you killed. I am standing in the gap for you. Are you ready to step up, step out? Just don’t step aside! Don’t miss your shot (Hamilton!) You do know what hangs in the balance: Loving kids to Jesus!

“On the day I called, You answered me; You increased strength within me.” Psalm 138:3

Parenting With A Purpose classes offer tribe-building among our families with shared values and intentionality. The 90-minute classes include a parenting hot-topic, some dessert, discussion time, and no judgment. We started in 2018 with Sharing Your Faith With Your Family. As our families are navigating COVID-world, there is an even greater need to equip parents to be disciple-making-disciples. 

• Promotion Information: Parents, grandparents, and caregivers of children are invited to a discussion of practical ideas to navigate holy habits at home as we lead our children to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength AND love our neighbors as ourselves on Tuesday, 6-7:30pm. Dessert will be served.
  
• Take Away: Power of a Praying Parent by Stormie Omartian
• A McEachern saint’s famous homemade fudge. (Thank you, Rebecca McCoy!)
  
  Primary Resources:
• Resilient: Child Disciples and The Fearless Future of the Church by Valerie Bell
• Faith for Exiles: 5 Ways for a new Generation to Follow Jesus in Digital Babylon by David Kinnaman and Mark Matlock (Barna Group)
• Settle For Nothing Less: Engaging Kids in a Lifetime of Faith by Jana Magruder (Lifeway)
• Stride: Creating A Discipleship Pathway for Life by Mike Schreiner and Ken Willard
• Biblical exiles who ‘won’ at following God (Joseph, Jeremiah, Nehemiah, Ezra, Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego, Daniel, Esther, Peter, John)
• Plenty of personal stories

The goal of the evening was to give research and personal testimonies to the resilient disciples who continued to remain in Christian community and a growing relationship with Jesus through the remarkable moments of life at all stages and in all ages. There is more than enough information about children who left the faith or left the church once they aged into their teens or twenties. I wanted to share the remarkable stories of those who remained faithful to grow in their relationships with God and in Christian community. These exiles are the resilient disciples who lived, are living, in the tension of culture and have continued to love Jesus and His people through it all.

A person is described as resilient who is able to withstand or recover quickly from difficult conditions. A resilient disciple is a follower of Jesus who remains active in Christian community and Christian service when culture and geography would encourage them otherwise. The biblical prophets write throughout the scriptures of the remnant of God’s people who sought to live faithfully loving God for the rest of their lives no matter what their circumstances. We tell the stories of these brave few with wonder and admiration. There is not a Christian parent or grandparent who doesn’t want that for their own children, but what does it take for us to grow those muscles in our kids? What really matters, over time?

Major info to share:

Three practices of soul training which equip disciples to make the greatest strides in their faith in Jesus:
– Bible Reading
– Generosity
– Service

The #1, by far, best predictor of spiritual health for young adults is regularly reading the Bible as a child.

Screens disciple.

That which dictates our schedules, finances, and conversations is a family liturgy. The local church can provide the resources to equip families so that whatever they do, they can do all of life to the glory of God.

What does a resilient disciple look like?
(1) Meaningful relationship with Jesus: through community and holy habits they find JOY in Jesus. Bible Reading & Prayer
(2) Cultural discernment: they participate in a robust learning community where they can think and talk of the scriptures.
Share testimony and stories of God’s faithfulness
(3) Meaningful intergenerational relationships with Jesus-loving people: the best way for kids to learn to love Jesus is to spend time with people who love Jesus.
Active in community
(4) Vocational Disciples: a theology of work, activity, leisure, time, learning/education
Calling to honor and please the Lord
(5) Countercultural Mission: a resolve to live differently than culture though a full-on participant in culture as the light of Christ.

In this season where children are part of the Body of Christ, though not together or included in many local churches, they are indeed exiles. This research is a perfect starting point to determine priorities in the local church’s partnership with parents/grandparents to disciple their disciples. Lord, let me be found faithful to equip my families to have a robust, vibrant, joyful faith that will fuel how they nurture their children into resilient disciples: to love Jesus their whole lives for the rest of their lives.

“We want to welcome you to the resilient church of 2050…the church that has been loving Jesus for all of their lives.” Valerie Bell, from Resilient: Child Discipleship and the Fearless Future of the Church, pg 205

This season of intense yet innovative faith formation looks nothing like the job description I was given when I was originally hired. What about you? Each of us brings something more to the table once we get our sea legs under us after the first year. When we dock our fishing boat at a new harbor we are given that original job description, then we typically don’t see it again. Understanding church culture, I got into the habit of updating my job description, even if only for myself, each year in January.

In that update, I assign percentages of how much time it takes weekly to accomplish each task with many bullet points assigned “seasonal”. Each year we learn new skills, adjustments take place in organizational charts, new services or buildings or leadership are added to the mix. All affect how we live out our roles and the realistic time it takes. I’ve heard of churches making a person’s job description a one-liner, but it’s not been my experience. My one-liner might read, “to create safe, irresistible and transformational experiences for children to love the Lord their God with all their hearts, souls, minds, and strength, and love their neighbors as themselves for their whole lives.”

We are naive to think that local churches aren’t going to be making changes in the weeks and months to come. Changes in leadership, budgets, space, updates to organizational charts, processes, systems, security, safety, school schedules, all have a part to play in the rhythm of church world. Rather than waiting with anxious breath and fear taking up space in your head, take an hour this week to take a fresh look and edit your job description.

No one knows what you do, but you. Make it a matter of prayer and release your leadership from knowing all that you do or how long it takes to do it. They already have in their heads what you do and it’s not even close. In all fairness, we don’t know what all they do either, and that’s okay. Don’t get caught in the comparison trap or the weeds of disappointment.

I spent time with a dear Kidmin champion recently who lost her admin and her part-time hours were cut in half. There is no animosity. She gets it. Her only instruction for what she should focus on moving forward was, “Just pick something and do it really well.” Well, part of her original job description included Safe Sanctuary compliance for the entire church, all-church special events, as well as all family ministry education in addition to typical children’s ministry tasks. Just since March she’s added online weekly children’s moments which include script writing for others involved, weekly recording and editing film, coordinating weekly practices for online church, parking lot kids events, an online family ministry presence, personal visits and various connections to her volunteer team and her students. How does she just pick something?

Re-writing her job description of what she is doing before the cuts can help her partner with her leadership to choose and communicate priorities #1, #2, and #3 moving forward. It’ll give her and them a starting point to move forward to organizational health. They already have in their heads what #1 is. What if her #1 is their #52 or wasn’t even on their radar? Remember, the goal is organizational health. Her personal goal is ensure ‘surely goodness and mercy shall follow her all the days of her life,’ and wholeness. 

What are you doing and how long does it takes to do it? A fresh look at your job description will help. One way it’ll help is to see how far you’ve come, what you’ve learned, and the amazing way in which you have pivoted to continue sharing Jesus in fresh, new ways. Insert the well-earned confetti cannon here!

Where you are in September 2020 is way different than where you were in September 2019, and it’ll look differently in September 2021. Fix a cup of something warm and tasty and take an hour this week to update your job description, even if just for yourself. Editing your job description now will help you and your leadership prioritize when and if any adjustments need to be made in the future. 

You Just Gotta Know: Struggles and challenges look differently today. I’m standing in the gap for you. Perhaps you are facing your Esther moment, your Daniel moment. That moment when you feel a push to bravely speak up, wave the banner for your families with a louder voice, even fight for spaces and places to love your kids to Jesus. I’m standing in the gap in prayer and support for you. This blog post is the result of someone reaching out. I fully believe God wants to hang your picture in the gallery of faith between Hebrews 11 and 12. Can I help? Need a Mordecai or a Shadrach or Meshach to your Abednego? Let’s share the journey, the struggle, and the celebrations. You are in the World’s Toughest Race!  I’m on your team! Let’s give ’em something to talk about! If you can get to me, let’s do tea on my back porch. Who’s in? Reach out to dedereilly@comcast.net. 

“I thank my God every time I remember you. In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, being confident of this, that He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” Philippians 1:3-6

Distance learning has swept the world. The abrupt pivot away from in-person was required of teachers, preachers, therapists, doctors, counselors, and everyone else who serves the public en masse last March. Teachers being the creative folks they are began turning to Bitmoji Classrooms to offer community and connections to their students.

With the uncertainty of what the new school year would bring, many professional educators continued to jump on the Bitmoji Classroom bandwagon. It has became a game-changer for therapists, specialists, leaders, bloggers, educators, and especially many of us in ministry with children.

A Bitmoji Classroom is essentially a secure landing page which can hold all other elements you wish to teach as well as some next steps. Embedding and attaching links into the images built into the virtual classroom, students and families can take the learning as far as they wish with carefully and specifically curated content. Saving it as a downloaded pdf lets you share an uneditable page and the fun begins.

With a Gmail account the virtual classroom is built on a Google slide (or powerpoint slide) with transparent images curated from online image searches or your computer. Links can be inserted from YouTube, Google notes, Google docs, and more, all on one landing page/slide. You set the security and sharing capabilities for each virtual classroom/slide. Because it’s Google, the last change made stays and offers an updated link to share. If you have a Gmail account, you automatically have a YouTube account and can build a library of private videos to give your virtual classroom a personal touch directly from your church/organization. My hair is a mess in the first one I uploaded, so I can only go up from there!

The possibilities are endless, but we’ve begun to look at it for curating and preparing content as a starter page for all types of Christian education. We’ve set up a classroom for Sunday school (pictured above, but without links due to copyrighted material in the videos, but you get the idea,) a Hometown Family Mission Adventure for October to partner with the church-wide Stewardship campaign, and Advent.

Your teacher friends are already all over this and can offer a private tutoring lesson. An amazing servant leader discovered the possibilities and shared it with me. I tossed it out on Facebook asking if anyone knew about the bitmoji classroom and would be willing to chat. A fabulous girlfriend-in-the-Lord who is an elementary school target teacher tutored me virtually through a couple of hours. Our amazing IT Lead updated my church laptop with a recording camera and microphone. In less than a week, the online Treehouse was ready to start for Sunday school. I can gather participation metrics by the number of clicks onto the YouTube personal message.

Listening to a Church Communications webinar mid-summer reminded me that doing anything is better than doing nothing. A weekly email or social media post with links for content was fine, but I wanted more interaction and kid-friendly engagement. Want to learn more? These are the two tutorials that helped me the most. There is also a robust educators Facebook group which offers even more. We’re just getting started! 
Building a Bitmoji Classroom Tutorial
Hello Teacher Lady: How to Create a Bitmoji Classroom 

“You, Lord, are forgiving and good, abounding in love to all who call to you.” Psalm 86:5

Mr. Bob and I have just finished watching Amazon Prime’s World’s Toughest Race. 66 teams of five, four team members and an assistant, navigating over 500 kilometers/350 miles with nothing more than a map, a compass, and each other. Where the Ironman is an individual race, this is a team endeavor all the way. There are multiple checkpoints in the Eco-Challenge where they all engage in hiking, running, biking, swimming, paddle-boarding, repelling, rowing, sailing, rafting, climbing, and more all to be completed in eleven days hosted by Bear Grylls.

The co-ed teams are made up of various extreme sports athletes of various ages and stages in life. There is an 18 year old racing with his dad, a dad racing with his two daughters, men who have shared life in sports for more than 25 years, twin sisters, and even a dad with early onset Alzheimer’s racing with his son and two friends who is an icon in the Eco-Challenge community. The assistant team member provides clean clothes, racing equipment like mountain bikes, hot food, and all the cheering encouragement they have in them at each checkpoint to support the racing team members. Broken bones, concussions, cuts, boats falling apart in the dark, hypothermia, jungle rot, infections of every kind are treated by medical volunteers all along the way. If and when they cross the finish line the assistant team member is there to meet them and they cross over together. It takes planning, preparation, and sometimes sheer grit to finish the race. Their reward? A medal and I’m sure there’s a t-shirt in there somewhere. 

We in ministry with children and families are on the world’s toughest race. We are called to provide, secure, implement, and follow up the sharing of Jesus in multiple modalities, in multiple developmentally appropriate ways, in an unknown land, with nothing more than a map (Bible), a compass (prayer), and each other. Where many in the local church are just now trying to get their ministries off the ground after being on the sofa for almost six months, we’ve been at it like extreme athletes. We grieved for what was lost in April, we pivoted to build new servant-leader teams in May, we have the scars of repelling into summer on the sharp rocks in June, the weariness of rowing in rhythm in July, the hypothermia of frigid and frozen leadership in August, yet we continue to do what we didn’t even know we couldn’t do heading into fall.

Phone conversations with my peers this week included “I don’t want to be part of something that is dead,” “They called me and told me I share too many ideas in the staff zoom meeting, so I need to pull it back,” and “I feel I’m in a Whack-A-Mole game and all of my fellow staff members have a quarter.”

Hear me clearly….YOU were created for such a time as this! YOU were a Jesus-follower before you were a staff member, so you have permission to share the love of Jesus in whatever way possible on a personal level. Release any expectation you have for the people you are waiting to hear from. Really! Sing the song, “Let it go! Let it go!” Take a day and both grieve and celebrate the ministry you led before. Write it down. Look at the pictures. Then get up and go big by thinking small.

How do you go big by thinking small? Like the teams on The World’s Toughest race, there will be times to row, to climb, to swim, to hike, to bike, to eat, to rest, to keep going at multiple checkpoints in a new way. Keep moving. Only those who will speak life and live out innovation and creativity with a can-do, positive attitude and who are moving can speak into your life. Oh the eye-witness stories we have read and studied of that short season when Jesus led his closest disciples. He taught them, rebuked them, loved them, lived life with them, and died for them. We’ve been reading and studying those stories for two thousand years and people have come to a saving knowledge of Jesus because of them.

Jesus healed one at a time. Jesus taught most effectively in small groups. He walked. He slept. He ate. He laughed. He prayed. He took time alone, then because of His compassion, He lingered with the lonely, the wandering, and the lost.

For those in large churches…. think old school and lots of really small groups. Jesus’ smallest group was three: Two Sons of Thunder and the one who said, “Lord, if it’s you, call me out on the water.” A small group and in a small amount of time, they rocked the world for Jesus! No bells and whistles (technology). They used what was in their hands like fishing, stories of fiery furnaces, eye-witness testimony, a boy’s lunch, dreams and visions as they met along the way (parks, driveways, parking lots, text messages, phone calls, postcards, notes, and chalked neighborhoods.)

1. What’s in your hand? (Exodus 4:2)
2. Who’s on your team? (Matthew 18:20)

Sonja Wieck, a multi-Ironman competitor, heard about “the race that eats Ironman for breakfast.” She took it as a personal challenge. I won’t tell you what happened, but something she said stopped me in my tracks, “I was made to do hard things.” 

Because YOU love the Lord YOUR God with all YOUR heart, soul, mind, and strength and love YOUR neighbor as yourself….. go into all the world and make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world. YOUR world. It’s not going to be easy, but you were called for such a time as this and you can do hard things especially among the remnant of the exiles.

The World’s Toughest Race is not easy and we run our race for so much more than a medal and a t-shirt. Just think of the stories of God’s faithfulness you will have doing hard things! Let’s give ’em something to talk about for years to come! Because WE WERE CREATED TO DO HARD THINGS. I’m on your team and I’m cheering you on! And I’ve just placed an order for new t-shirts.

“My zeal wears me out.” Psalm 119:139a