BYBC- Takin’ VBS to the (neighbor)HOOD

This week is our Back Yard Bible Club! I’m super excited because it’s only a little bit about a production and a lot about building relationships and teaching the kids about Jesus! That is so my cup of tea 🙂

So our BYBC won’t look like a VBS at the first baptist church by any means. Not to knock the VBS because VBS is cool, but we’re doing this for outreach reasons and taking VBS to the neighborhood. We have our volunteers set up but PLEASE come to hang out with us even if you’re not signed up, and bring your kids to participate! It’s our goal to be present in this neighborhood a lot more in the future! The neighborhood is off George Washington Carver in Monroe. Everyone will be meeting at the WH at 2:30 to drive over there on Monday.

It really will be a lot of fun! We’ll have a Bible story, some small group time, GAMES, crafts, WATER GAMES, worship, snacks, and we’ll probably end with a few fun GAMES!

We’ll be there all week, Monday-Friday from 3:30-5:30pm. Remember to meet @ the WH at 2:30 if you want to carpool and serve.

On Friday after we wrap up the BYBC we plan to have a cook out so that we can get to know the parents and share Jesus with them too. Our families are definitely welcome to come hang out because you’re the ones who we need talking and sharing with the parents!

Why aren’t you doing your God-Time Cards exactly??

The small group leaders and I ask that a lot of the kids. They give varying answers. Usually along the lines of their moms and dads won’t let them print them off. I have a feeling that is not completely true but I thought you as parents should know that your kids are TOTALLY blaming you!!

The truth is that your kids will likely never be the ones to come to you about doing their GT cards, not at first at least. Spending time with Jesus is something that they will likely struggle with their whole lives. Satan knows that in order to get us to stumble all he has to do is distract us from spending time in the Word. Think about your quiet times. Do you do them everyday? Do you feel that inner struggle of reading your Bible verses doing the millions of other things you need to get done? Do you wish that spending time with Jesus everyday was more of a priority for you? Hearing a Bible story every Sunday morning will not develop a close relationship between Jesus and your child! I am always telling them that in order to be best friends with someone you HAVE to spend time with them! It’s obvious! And it’s obvious that these GT Cards are a good thing for families to do together!! So PLEASE find the time to instill this habit in your children!! They’re not going to instill it into themselves and this is definitely NOT somewhere to slack off.

Okay, so here are some practical time to do your GT Cards…

For all you home-school parents out there, incorporate it into your classwork. Find 15 minutes each day during “school time” to do GT Cards.

For the early risers, do them in the morning with your children while they eat breakfast before school. How much more positive could your morning be?

For the hectic morning people, don’t even try doing them in the AM. Dinner time is great or right before bed as long as it’s not too tempting to skip them because of how tired everyone is…

If you’re one to leave early to drop your kids off at school and spend 10 minutes sitting in line, have your children do their GT Cards then.

If you have to drop your kids off at school or day care really early, send your child with their GT Cards and tell them to do them before school starts. You will need to check each afternoon to make sure they really did them, but can give yourselves bonus points because you’re teaching your child not to be ashamed to let people see them spending time with Jesus!

If your family does their GT cards and have any other creative times to share with everyone, please do!!! And even if you don’t have a creative time that you do them, share with us anyways because it’s encouraging to hear about parents raisin their children to be authentic disciples of Christ!!

God-Time & Refrigerator Door Cards

We just finished our last week in our summer series of Responsibility and Service. It was a good Summer!! We learned that it’s our responsibility to serve others and that serving means “lending a hand to someone in need”.

Yesterday specifically we talked about serving in secret. We told the story in the Bible where Jesus told His disciples not to let their left hand know what their right hand was doing. He meant not to brag about our good deeds. When we serve we should be doing it for God’s glory and out of love, not for our own attention and praise! I lead the Kindergarden group and we molded something out of play-doh to represent a way that we’ve served other people. I told them not to tell each other or me what they were making because God doesn’t want us going around telling everyone about how much we serve others. He wants us to do it in secret. It was really sweet watching them! I couldn’t tell what any of their sculptures were but God knew and that was the point 🙂

Even though our Summer of Responsibility and Service is up we still have one more weekend before we deliver the school supplies to the Refuge Camp. That means you have ONE MORE WEEK to buy school supplies to donate. Please, please, PLEASE don’t miss out on this opportunity to serve these kids!! Your kids are excited about doing it so get excited that they’re excited and “lend a hand to someone in need”.

Here are the GT & RD Cards for the week

7.25.10GTCards

7.25.10RDCard

::Our Awesome Small Group Leaders::

We have an awesome group of people who serve in CLUB 252! Everyone of them play an important part in making Sunday morning happen and are all appreciated. In an attempt to introduce you, in case you’ve not met before, to all the small group leaders who are leading your children on Sunday mornings I’m going to dedicate a post to each and every one of them. If you as parents ever have spare time, and stationary, it would be super cool if you could drop your child’s sg leaders a note of encouragement. These are the people to partner with when discipling your child! How awesome if you decided you were going to nurture your child’s relationship with his or her small group leader knowing that there will be times when they won’t be willing to listen to you and will need another adult who can pour into them. The relationship between your child and their sg leader is definitely one you want your child having!!

This week I want to introduce you guys to Evan Holcomb. He leads our 3rd and 4th graders and he is our ONLY small group leader of the male gender. We need more guys like him so encourage your husbands! The kids love him because he’s a lot of fun to be around! He’s go with the flow and willing to help anytime we need him! Actually, one time my husband called him to ask if he could help move some big, bulky furniture at our house and he came right over. That’s just the kind of guy Evan is.

Evan is married to Gina, she’s asian 🙂 I’m not being rude by saying that. She is always joking about her asian’ness. They have a son named Anderson who is going into the 2nd grade. He’s awesome too!

Evan and Gina lead a small group, which Ryan and I happen to be a part of. They’re great leaders! Our community group has a lot oof fun and really feels like a family and it’s all because of their leadership! If you aren’t apart of a community group you should definitely check theirs out! Once we begin meeting with our c-groups again, theirs meets on Sunday evenings @ 6pm. Childcare is provided 🙂

God-Time & Refrigerater Door Cards

What in the world are you doing to put others first? Jesus put others first in countless ways, and He wants us to do the same (John 13:1-17). Me first or you first? Our words and actions answer that question every day. Do our words and actions help others experience Jesus’ love?

Here are the GT & RD Cards to do with your kids this week.

7.18.10GTCards

7.18.10RDCard

What in the World Are You Doing :to help the kids @ the Refuge Apartments:

Here are a few pictures of the kids we’re collecting school supplies for. Don’t forget to keep bringing in school supplies! We’ve got a lot but still need more!! Scissors and boxes of tissue especially.

::Our Awesome Small Group Leaders::

We have an awesome group of people who serve in CLUB 252! Everyone of them play an important part in making Sunday morning happen and are all appreciated. In an attempt to introduce you, in case you’ve not met before, to all the small group leaders who are leading your children on Sunday mornings I’m going to dedicate a post to each and every one of them. If you as parents ever have spare time, and stationary, it would be super cool if you could drop your child’s sg leaders a note of encouragement. These are the people to partner with when discipling your child! How awesome if you decided you were going to nurture your child’s relationship with his or her small group leader knowing that there will be times when they won’t be willing to listen to you and will need another adult who can pour into them. The relationship between your child and their sg leader is definitely one you want your child having!!

So with no further ado…let me introduce you to Jan McCance, one of our 3rd and 4th grade leaders. Jan is a teacher at Loganville Middle School. She is married to Kelly McCance who you might see in the kids areas working hard during set up and tear down. He’s a big help to our children’s ministry for that reason as well, and for the fact that he shares Jan with us 🙂 Jan and Kelly have two sons in high school, Cody and Tyler. They play baseball and must be pretty good because Jan is always going to tournaments that they’re in to watch them play 🙂

Jan is the volunteer who has been on rotation with us the longest. In fact she’s been a small group leader since before I even came to Crossroads. There are girls going into the 11th grade who say they remember her being their small group leader! You should feel very blessed if you have a child who she has ministered to!

To encourage Jan you can find her on Facebook or email the office and Nicole would be glad to give you her email or address so you can drop her a note of encouragement!  We love Jan!!

God-Time & Refrigerater Door Cards

Hey Families!

Awesome night tonight @ Kidology Live!! It is so much fun having all of our pre-school & elementary aged kids together with their parents worshiping! If you weren’t there you missed a good time, so make sure to make plans to be at our next one which will hopefully be scheduled for sometime in late September.

If you don’t have older kids in the student ministry @ CCWC then you may not know that this upcoming week is our Refuge Camp. It has taken the place of our summer retreat the past two years and as a volunteer it doesn’t make me miss those week long trips to youth camp at all! Basically we pack up and head south, but only about 30 minutes, to a church near Stone Mountain. We spend the week ministering to people between Monroe & Atlanta. The teenagers get to give of themselves in such cool ways. Not to knock the youth camps, but I just love that the teenagers get to see how much God cares about others and learn first hand how to serve those who have so little or even nothing at all. It also goes along with what we’ve been learning about in CLUB 252 this month, SERVING.

With that being said, I will be at Refuge Camp this week and out of the office, hence the GT & RD Cards being posted on Sunday night! I bet you didn’t think I was capable of being so on the ball 🙂

I also wanted to post this funny picture of the 1/2 grade small group acting as the good Samaritans & bandaging up poor little Eileen! They covered her in like a hundred bandaids & cloth bandages and then carried her on a beach towel, like any “good Samaritan” would do 🙂

And FINALLY here they are, the GT & RD Cards,  after much ado…use them wisely 🙂

7.11.10GTCards

7.11.10RDCard

July’s Operation Family Blueprint

I almost forgot to post the new Operation Family Blueprint! But here it is!

July OFB Instructions

This would be an especially good OFB to do with your family because it’s one of several application tools about Service that we have for you to use! Not only are we learning about Service in CLUB 252, we’re doing our own service project of collecting school supplies for families who can’t afford to buy them, and we also have Kidology Live this Sunday, July 11th, and will be learning even more about Service as a family.

What a cool way to spend your summer! I would love nothing more than to have our kids at Crossroads go back to school and tell their class that they spent their summer serving others!

“God’s ideas are so big, that they can use little families to do big things to change the world. We just have to be willing to serve.”

God-Time & Refrigerator Door Cards

What in the world are you doing that’s more than you have to do?

Jesus did more than He had to for people, and He wants us to go the extra mile, too (Matthew 5:41). Every day we have the choice to “get by” or to go the extra mile. When we do more than we have to for others, what does that show them about God?

Remind your kids that we look most like Jesus when we’re serving others, or “going the extra mile”!

Here are the GT & RD Cards for the week

July4,2010GTCards

July4,2010RDCard

ALSO, don’t forget to keep bringing in school supplies to donate to the kids in the Refuge Camp! This is an easy way you can serve others and get your kids in on it as well. We’ve opened it up to the whole church and asked another church to help us out as well because there are A TON OF KIDS living there!! Here are the things we’re collecting at Crossroads…

notebook paper, #2 pencils, glue sticks, scissors, boxes of tissue, crayons, small spiral notebooks & colored pencils

What we’re doing in the Dell household is spending $20 a week on a particular item, for example we bought 18 packs of glue sticks last weekend. I challenge your families to pick an amount to spend on school supplies each week and buy as much as you can.

Remember, God doesn’t bless us so we can keep it all for ourselves! This is a really cool way to teach that to your kids while helping other people’s kids!!

The tentative plan is to bring these supplies to the kids in the Refuge Camp on August 1st.