Do you call an empty lot a house? Do you call an empty house a home? Do you consider a home alive when dead people occupy the house? Does the dead people reproduce life? A house is built with walls, a foundation, a roof and so on. A home is a house occupied by people. The people occupying the home are alive, which allows life to produce life! Like William Wallace ending the movie Braveheart by screaming “freedom” in genuine, torturous anguish only to billow throughout the crowd and echo throughout the towns and villages in Scotland, Ireland and England, I ask with youthful lungs, filled with extreme passion –…

Whack! Tom hits Jerry with the metal rod. Jerry, though seeing a few stars quickly rotating above his head, escapes through the miniscule mouse hole alongside the wall of the living room. Tom is the cat and Jerry is the mouse in the classic Tom and Jerry cartoon series, normally filled with scene-after-scene of a cat hunting the mouse. Last week my 4-year-old daughter and I enjoyed giggling at the humorous and seemingly painful scenes showing the hunt. Many times the cartoon leaves you in suspense, leading you to conclude almost certainty of Jerry’s death but always escapes. Is Children’s ministry like Tom and Jerry? Are we always hunting ways…

Polluting the air of our front yard is the stench of a dead possum in 98-degree heat. The lingering, stagnant odor consumes our inner most feelings of gagging. The smell of death immediately becomes noticeable each time one walks in the front yard. The hunt begins to find and remove the blanket of animal decay smell. Attempting to spray incense or enhance the neighborhood BBQ smell fails as the source of the smell continues to melt in the heat and deliver an amazing punch to the nose hairs. By removing the source of the horrific odor, our noses and stomachs resume normalcy in the normal smell of life. Death delivers…

What is the most important question to answer in children’s ministry? Is it how do we budget? Where do we get curriculum? Who should teach? Where do we get staff? What is our annual strategy? Who should we reach? Why doesn’t our pastor care about children’s ministry? Though these are good questions to answer, they are not the most important. What I am about to propose as the most important question may seem to some gloriously idealistic and even irrelevant for practical ministry. What’s the question? It is, who is Jesus?

Walking up to Mt. Everest, hikers and climbers never ask, "Where's Mt. Everest?" They know to expect grandeur and awe when gazing at the mountain. People often approach the mountain differently. Many set their efforts to climb to the peak and others enjoy finding pictures on the web to browse. No matter the approach, one thing stays the same, Mt. Everest is always there. Weather patterns change, rocks fall, people come and go from elevation camps, animals roam about and even people's travel methods to get there change. Regardless, Mt. Everest is there. Ask yourself, "Is the gospel message there, in our children's ministry?"

Looking at the flannel graph through my young eyes during the morning Sunday school lesson, questions rang out from the other kids asking if they may stick the next figure onto the board. Loud answers to the teacher's questions filled the room. Our tummies growled for snack time and our energy increased for playground time.