Reclaiming Confirmation: Stirring the Souls of Youth Research shows that adolescents seek relevant learning, place less value in organizational membership, and often stop trying if understanding is not immediate. How might the confirmation process be reshaped to be...
Wonder of Worship: Listening to a Diversity of Voices about Intergenerational Worship Wonder of Worship has completed its first year of the five year, Lilly Endowment funded grant regarding nurturing children through worship and prayer. We’ve done a lot of listening this first year and are ready to share what we’ve learned from child research […]
Children’s Ministry that Forms Faith: Abandoning the Entertainment Model – FULL *This workshop has reached maximum capacity and is no longer available for additional registrations. We all want church to be fun and enjoyable for children. But what happens when our goal in children’s ministry is to entertain instead of to form faith? What effect […]
Jesus’ “I AM” Statements in the Gospel of John Over three workshop blocks, this in-depth Bible study will dig below the surface of the seven I AM declarations in the Gospel of John. The sayings, such as “I AM the Bread of Life,” “I AM the Light of the World,” are remarkable, yet appear in […]
New Members…An Intergenerational Approach When a new family comes into our faith community, we typically invite the adults(parents) to a New Members class. There they learn all about our faith community and being Presbyterian. Yet, when youth and children come into faith communities, we send them off to Sunday school, Youth group, or Mid-week programming […]
Pop Culture Faith: Teaching the Gospel through TV and Film Pop culture influences the clothes we wear, the music we listen to, the attitudes we hold, and even the language we use. In fact, the average American spends two hours per day consuming digital media! Yet church educators are often unsure how to leverage television […]
Reading the Bible Queerly: Beyond the Basics! This workshop will help participants dig deeper into trans and queer approaches to the Bible in ways that can help them transform their teaching, preaching, and personal interpretation/devotional practices. The workshop goes “beyond the basics” by skipping over the traditional “clobber passages” and questions of “what the Bible […]
Lament WITH Children and Youth: Practices, Rhythms, Rituals that Empower Faith Communities to Address Loss and Injustice My story: In 2021, I lost both of my parents suddenly to Covid within 10 days. As a worship leader, I was immediately struck with how little room our faith communities provided for grief, let alone a framework […]
The Sunday School Struggle: What’s Flourishing, What’s Fading, and What’s in the Future? For many congregations, the “traditional” Sunday school of our childhoods is a thing of the past. Today, churches are doing Sunday School in a myriad of different ways and the choices can be overwhelming! In this workshop, we’ll look at current Sunday […]
Nurturing the Mental Health of Youth The adolescent mental health crisis has been at the forefront of national conversation, yet it continues to plague our local communities and congregations. The church has a unique opportunity to address the adolescent mental health crisis by allowing and equipping youth to rest in their identity as beloved children […]