Mid-March 2020
Hi everyone,
I’m happy to share! We’re all in this together. Let’s make it awesome! Having never been in this situation before, we find ourselves beginning with a big brain dump of ideas, inklings, and experiments to be conducted. Some of these pertain to the entire church, and some just to our children's ministry.
Here are some of the things we launched first or are working on right now. I'm sure they will evolve as time goes by.
1) Our worship is online and so are our devotions. You can see them at www.GloriaDeiOlympia.org. I did the first two devotions and tried to make them so they could be something kids could do/relate to. The first one especially. Our staff is taking turns with them. Some will be video. Some just audio. Some text. Some text and photo - whatever the person comes up with. I actually LOVE my first devotion - it was totally Holy Spirit inspired!
2) On my Facebook page and on our Gloria Dei Kids facebook page I’m sharing ideas and articles to support families getting their heads wrapped around homeschooling their kids.
3) One of my ideas/goals is to deliver 12x18 construction paper for kids to trace their hands and arms and decorate, then cut them out and save them for a banner that we are going to make when we are all back together, “God’s work. Our hands.” — That happens to be the ELCA tag line too.
4) Another goal is to make prayer table kits for home use and figure out how to get them to families. More about that in the next post below.
5) Since we have a large congregation we turned our conference room into COMMAND CENTRAL." We have printed out and posted the names of everyone in our congregation on the walls and as people/staff make phone calls and touch base with people we are updating the walls so we can see who is falling through the cracks. I think this is a good idea for children's ministry too -- keeping their names in front of you and having a system to keep in touch.
6) I’m also starting to work on how to do Good Friday/Holy Week for kids online. Happy to share or collaborate. I wrote a service that we usually do in person and I’m thinking of ways to adapt it, or different prayer stations that families could set up at home that help to tell the story, or doing a Godly Play storytelling or…. Guided imagery drawing, or ???
