Sunday, May 16, 2010

Milestone -- Standing Stones

My husband Bob and I had a great time on Thursday and Friday evening in Goshen, IN talking with the members of Greene Road Church about faith, children and milestones. When we entered the church a display cabinet caught our eyes. On the wall on shelves were 20 stones. Written on each stone is a child’s name and the year they were baptized. When the child makes profession of faith that date is also engraved on the stone and the stone is given to the individual.

These stones are selected by a member of the church, cut and polished by a mason in the church and then the design is made by another member on the computer and sent to an engraver. The congregation is invested in making these stones! These stones are displayed in the church lobby in a cabinet and serve as a testimony both to the people who’s names are on them and to the rest of the congregation that they are part of the spiritual lives of these people, that they have made a commitment to them in baptism and that they are important to the other members of this church.

What a great way to see milestones events recorded!

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

More Milestone Ideas

Recently I received an email from Massachusetts asking if any church had a Faith Milestone program. I don’t know if I answered that email very well. Every congregation has some Milestones such as baptism and profession of faith.

Here are a couple of ideas that may enrich your Milestone program:
  • Two great songs to sing during a Milestone celebration are “One Generation Calls to the Next” by Greg Scheer or “By Faith” by Keith and Kristyn Getty and Stuart Townend.

  • A church in Michigan is presenting a Bible to each of their fifth graders. The Bibles were on display in the fellowship hall for two weeks. Congregation members were invited to underline a favorite verse and put their name by the verse in each of the presentation Bibles. The Bibles were then presented to the fifth graders during our worship service.

Monday, May 03, 2010

The Fabulous Reinvention of Sunday School

The Fabulous Reinvention of Sunday School by Aaron Reynolds was recommended to me a couple of times so I purchased the book but never read it until this week. Reynolds has worked at Willow Creek so his vision of Sunday School is for large groups with an emphasis on performance of the story. He presents this as the only way to do Sunday School. This isn’t my situation so the beginning of the book was a little slow for me.

But when Reynolds focuses on how to tell a Bible story, the book came alive for me. Reynolds gives many bold, useful examples and ideas for how to tell a story. He has advice for adding sound and lighting and even for sprucing up the classroom environment. I found the ideas very helpful, practical and fun.

Even though I really liked parts of the books on storytelling I take issue with the some of what he writes. For example:
Make sure the application is in every lesson. If it’s not, give some real thought to adding it in. Because our job isn’t just to tell [the child] the story of Gideon. Our job is to make sure she knows that the story about Gideon …is a story about [that child].
Reynolds does not discuss on what a good application is or why an application is needed. I also think some of his applications miss the mark. In the above quote I would change that to say “that the story about Gideon.. is a story about God.”

While I have some real reservations about what he says about applications overall the book is fabulous, as advertized in the title. I wish I had read it long ago.