Kidzworks IS Big Church!

By Jackie Ray


“Your parents will come pick you up when they're done with big church.”

“Have fun in little church, kids!”
 
“Do you want to go to big church with us today?”
 
“But mom, I want to go to BIG church!”

The truth is that there is no “big” or “little” church. WE are the church. We all come in different sizes, shapes, colors, and cultures. We all have different religious backgrounds. But WE are the church and we are not little in God’s eyes. We are a BIG deal to God.

Every one of us is created in His image. Every one of us was created to worship and glorify God with our whole selves. Every one of us needs to love God and love others.

"’Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind'; and, 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'" Luke 10:27

Kids ministry is not about providing child care so the adults can worship God... at least not in Kidzworks! When kids come to Kidzworks they serve each other, they worship God with their time, their resources, their full selves, their prayers, and their interpretation and memorization of scripture. They brain storm ways to minister to their friends and to bring them into relationship with God.

Kids do church BIG. In Kidzworks we worship God with gusto. Kids give an offering with joy. Kids sing and dance to the Lord with energy and excitement. They lead each other in worship. They run the technology. They lead the small group. They share scripture and prayer and experiences they have with God. There is nothing little about kids doing church. There is nothing little about doing church with kids.

God even says to us “Big” people - "Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” Matthew 18:3

As a minister to children, I am blessed. I am blessed when the Holy Spirit moves in the hearts of children and adults in the room. I am blessed when I hear a Bible story in a way I have never heard it before and God pokes my heart and says “HEY! That’s for you.” I am blessed by the fellowship that I enjoy with the kids. Isn’t that what being a church is all about? I say YES! Why do we segregate ourselves into “big people” and “little people” when to God there is no difference? We are the church.

Come do big church with us in Kidzworks. You will be blessed.



Jackie is our Janesville Kidzworks director, and is sold out to creating amazing experiences for your kids. If you're interested in volunteering for Kidzworks, contact Jackie here.

Project Hope - March, 2015

Project Hope

"I just felt like everybody treated me like a normal person,” said an elderly woman who showed up at Project Hope on Sunday. “I know that’s probably not a big deal to most people, but sometimes I feel like needing help makes me less or something. It was nice to get help and not feel like everybody thinks something wrong about you.”

It’s stories like this (and at least a dozen more) that make my heart swell with love and appreciation for the people I get to do life and church with. I watched parents serving alongside their kids. I watched teenagers (my own included) partner up and serve some of the most needy people in our city. I watched our prayer team lift the spirits of hurting, desperate people. I watched one family come through to receive services and then turn around and ask if they could stay and volunteer for the rest of the event.

I watched people from our community set aside religious and cultural differences for the expressed purpose of serving those who Jesus called “the least of these, my brothers…” And I watched family after family walk in and get served with dignity and love. I can’t explain how full my heart was as I saw people living out what it means to be the hands and feet of Jesus to a hurting world.

I know that some of us wished that we had more people show up to receive services, and we have some ideas for how to change that in the future, but I also know that God did exactly what he wanted, and our volunteers, our church, and our city are all the better for it. Stories of how God moved in our guests and volunteers are being told all around our church and small groups, and we’ll be sharing some of the ones we can in church this weekend (back at Lincoln!)

Jesus said this about his mission here on earth:

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
    because he has anointed me
    to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
    and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free…” (Luke 4:18)

If it was good enough for him, it’s sure good enough for us. People all around us are living in physical, financial, and spiritual oppression, and they don’t know the road that leads to freedom. It’s time that we help people find their way out of the darkness in the same way Jesus did for us.

"You are a chosen [people]... that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light." (1 Peter 2:9)



Do you have any experiences from Sunday afternoon that you’d like to share? Comment below or post it to our Facebook page.

Pyramid Schemes and the Extravagant Love of God

Ever feel like church is one big pyramid scheme? We need you to leverage your personal relationships so that we can fill whatever empty seats we have, and then we’ll build a bigger building with more seats that your friends will then have to fill. It’s a never-ending cycle that has the feeling of success, but is just another marketing strategy… and sometimes all we’re doing is selling our church, instead of making a huge deal about the extravagant love of Jesus.

Extravagant love. That’s what church is really about. It’s not an organization bent on the business ideal of “success.” Its purpose isn’t to add more and more people into more and more seats to collect more and more money to build bigger and bigger buildings. 

The heart of everything we do as a church has got to be aimed at offering up the ridiculous, amazing love of God to people who feel unloved. And when you come to church and you hear us ask you to spend time praying for your friends, looking for opportunities to tell them about your Jesus, and inviting them to church, it’s not a marketing scheme. It’s not just another way to make sure we get our bills paid. 

Our hope is that you come to church every week and experience the profound love of Jesus, that you open up your heart to let him mold you into the person he wants you to be, and that your natural reaction is to want to help the people you love find that profound love themselves. We’re not selling our church. We’re not even selling Jesus. We’re inviting people into the same kind of love and forgiveness that we’ve found, hoping that they’ll experience God the same way we have. 

That’s why we don’t hesitate to ask you to pray about inviting your friends to church this month. Let’s face it: Christmas is a season that people are willing to try church for the first time. Who do you have in your life that could use a little “peace on Earth” this week? Let’s try not come to church alone this weekend… not so that we can feel “successful” as a Christian, but so that someone you love has a chance to hear about the extravagant love of God.

Hugging in Church

A hug is an intimate thing, isn’t it? Here… let me smash my body against yours and then we’ll wrap our arms around each other… oh, and what was your name again?

This is a phenomenon that you’ll only find in church. No grocery bagger is going to give you a big hug as they ask, “Paper or plastic?” No bank teller is going to hold you in a soft embrace because you bounced a check. But something weird happens when people walk into a church. The whole world goes nuts and wants to get their hug on. Well, almost the whole world…

I’m not a hugger. Let’s just get that out of the way. A firm handshake or a simple wave will suffice for me. But let’s be honest… a lot of people who show up at church are in desperate need of some deep connection. Maybe that hug they get from Vicki at the front door is the only human contact they'll have all week.  Maybe a moment in the care of Carl and Jane, with their heads bowed and arms around each others’ shoulders is the best way for someone to get a tangible sense of the love and grace of God. Maybe there’s something inherently spiritual about human touch, and that’s why people get all touchy at church.

But while I'm learning the value of physical touch, I also know that all this touchy-feely stuff really freaks some people out... especially new poeple.  I’ve got a friend that absolutely hates the moments we ask people to introduce themselves to somebody around them. I think he might be planning on bringing mace next time he comes to church.

So how am I supposed to know if you're the "Brothers gotta hug," Tommy Boy type, or a cold fish like me?  I think we should all wear t-shirts or something, 'cause sometimes it's hard to tell right away.

So, here are a couple of thoughts on the whole hugging in church thing. First, if you're a hugger, don't judge those of us who aren't. It's not because we've got some deep darkness inside. And if you're not a hugger, don't freak out when somebody puts their hand on your shoulder. In the immortal style of Taylor Swift, huggers gonna hug, hug, hug, hug, hug...

It's one of my favorite things about the body of Christ (a.k.a. the Church.)  It takes all kinds. Huggers, listeners, prayers, jokers, lovers, preachers, servers, healers, laughers, planners, and leaders. Wouldn't it be great if we could take 1 Corinthians 12 at face value?

Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many. Now if the [hugger] should say, “Because I am not a [laugher], I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. And if the [server] should say, “Because I am not a [joker], I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. If the whole body were a [leader], where would the sense of [prayer] be? If the whole body were a [preacher], where would the sense of [listening] be? But in fact God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. 1 Corinthians 12:14-18

Okay, save the emails about how I destroyed that passage. I know that Paul is specifically talking about spiritual gifts, but I just think it's time that we celebrate the diversity we have in the church and not expect everybody to fit some cookie-cutter version of what a Christian looks like. We should all just be a little more comfortable in our own skin, and trust that God has us right where he wants us and made us that way for a purpose.

What do you think? What roles do you play in the life of the church?