Thursday, October 20, 2011

The Homeless Blogger...

Hello friends. My name is Kenny Conley and I’m the homeless blogger. What does that mean? Well, I have a blog over at childrensministryonline.com. My blog was very sick with a nasty virus, but things are better now. Since she’s recovering, I’m still not quite home yet or putting out a bunch of new posts yet. Like always, I’ve got something to say… I just didn’t have anyplace to say it. So, thanks to some good friends, they’re giving this homeless blogger a couch to sleep on and letting me finish off the carton of ice cream in the freezer.
The Homeless Blogger: More Things I’d Tell the Old Me
I recently wrote 2 homeless blogger posts about things I’d tell myself if I could speak into the version of me 15 years ago. Obviously it’s too late to do that, but perhaps these posts might help someone who is where I was 15 years ago.

Focus on Parents. They’re the key to this whole thing!
I’ve been sharing this story with a lot of people recently. I remember about 9 or 10 years ago, it was my first opportunity to speak in big church... on a Wednesday night. No, I wasn’t ready for the prime time yet. So, I was going to do what any children’s pastor would do with an opportunity to have the main stage... I was going to talk about serving in kidmin.

I remember being totally jazzed about the opportunity. I was going to pull out my Bible and speak the Word of truth and show how serving in the children’s ministry was God’s will for everyone’s life. :)

To this day, I remember what happened next. As I started digging into the word for the meat of my message and I remember getting really frustrated. Every verse and passage dealing with equipping and training kids to know God didn’t fit the angle I was hoping to take. It seemed more parent directed than “serving in kids church” directed. I had an epiphany that day. I remember a thought coming to my mind saying, “Hmmm, I think there’s something to this.” I quickly went back to message prep and didn’t think much about my forgotten epiphany until just a few years ago... when the Family Ministry movement really started to gain traction.

I truly believe that there is a very valuable place for ministry to kids in the church. A strong children’s ministry is why I’m doing what I’m doing today. However, in most cases, parents are going to make or break a child’s long term walk with God.

Two days ago I wrote a somewhat “touchy” post about discipleship in kidmin on Gina McClain’s blog. Personally, I don’t think discipleship really happens in children’s ministry (this is my own opinion). The key to effective discipleship is TIME and 1-2 hours a week doesn’t really add up to discipleship in my book. When students are dropping out of faith at a rate of 70-80%, I’d propose that what we’ve called discipleship is far from what Jesus would call discipleship. It’s not because we don’t mean well, we just don’t have the access to kids to really disciple them... but parents do. If you ask Reggie he’ll tell you that parents have 3000 hours a year of unscheduled time with their kids. That’s plenty of time to disciple a kid or two... maybe ten.

If we really want to make a long term difference, we gotta tap in on that influence. We need to equip moms and dads to disciple their kids. They really are the key to this whole thing.

Thanks Bro. Jim for hosting my post. Sorry I used up all your hot water. Is it wrong so wrong to take 45 minute showers? Look for my next post by following my tweets at twitter.com/kennyconley

See past homeless blogger posts at the following sites:

Small Town Kidmin

Jenny Funderburke

Sam Luce

Dustin Nickerson

Brian Dollar

Matt McKee

Gina McClain

Ryan Frank

Spencer Click

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