Almost An Expert (but not really)

It’s a Saturday. My day off. You’d think I was sleeping in, having brunch and going for a nice relaxing walk down the beach. But no, I’m not doing any of that (although I would have got a sleep in if I didn’t forget to close my window overnight... the cockatoos woke me up early in the morning!) I’m not doing typical day off things - I’m busy looking for scratch art paper because we need some for an activity for kids church tomorrow (the black represents darkness / sin and when Jesus died on the cross, he took away our sin. He revealed who God created us to be - whole and without blame).   I’ve seen scratch art paper many a time in my various shopping travels. Can I find it now? 2 stores and it’s nowhere to be seen. Sold out.  So I’m now off to a third store to see if I can get some.   Why am I writing to tell you this?  Great question.  Partly, to vent about my frustrations of my past procrastination because now I’m having to do this on a Saturday... Partly...

The Greatest Showman is one of the best movies ever written.  I just saw it (weeks after everyone else, I know) and I was blown away by how great it truly was.  If you've been living under a rock, you might not know that this musical is all about the underdog proving to the world that they matter. Which is kind of what I'm all about- telling people that they matter.  The movie follows P.T. Barnum, a man who creates a show featuring 'odd' individuals- most notably a bearded lady, Lettie.  One particular scene had me in tears. It's a song called ' This is Me ' beautifully sung by the gorgeous Keala Settle (who plays the bearded lady). There are so many reasons I love this song- at the base level it's all about accepting who you are, but underneath all of that, I find it to be quite biblical.  The world says: no one will love you. God says: I love you.  This is Me lyrics:  I've learned to be ashamed of all my scars "Run away", the...

Working in Kid's Ministry can often seem draining, exhausting, lonely and a whole lot of other negative adjectives that burnt out people seem to feel. The other day though, I was reading through my Bible and I noticed just how much Jesus cares for children. And I realised something- God cares so much for these little ones, and he chose ME to work with them? What a terrifyingly, great privilege it is to be chosen to work with kids. I know without a doubt that God has chosen me to work with kids (whether it's for this season, or a life time- I'm still working that out!). John 15:16 says ' You didn't choose me. I chose you. I appointed you to go and produce lasting fruit, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask for, using my name. ' This verse is one that I hold close to my heart, it's a constant reminder that God placed my in this position for a reason, and he wants me to produce lasting fruit in the young ones that are under my care. We all kn...

This is a message I spoke at our kids club today. Thought I'd share it!  Put your hand up if you’ve heard of minions before? They look a little something like this (show picture of minion) I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but there are a lot of minions. And Gru uses them as kind of testers for a lot of his experiments in Despicable Me 1, doesn’t he. Here’s an example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnHqoWe4W74 (Despicable Me: Dr Nefario’s New Inventions The first minion floats out to space doesn’t he, and Dr Nefario and Gru don’t really care much. They’re like ‘eh’ he’ll be ok. Minions all kind of look alike, and there’s so many of them, that when one goes missing, no one really notices. I started thinking about this and thought, “I wonder if God thinks that we are his minions, if one of us goes missing, does he care?” And when I have a question like that, I go to the Bible, because the Bible is where we read about God and Jesus. In Psalm 13...

At my church for the 3 weeks leading up to Easter we are watching Disney movies and looking at different acts of true love. Each week we relate it to what Jesus did for us on the cross. At Easter we will go into a more in-depth view of the Easter story. It's something different, but the kids are loving it so far. Relating Disney movies to Jesus is working well!  Our memory verse for these 3 weeks was 1 John 3:16, and we came up with actions for the words to help kids remember the verse.  I've written here a general script for the 3 movies we are focusing on (Frozen, Aladdin & Inside Out). We found the relevant scene clips on youtube that we showed to the children.  FROZEN- WEEK 1 (Scene where Olaf says 'Some people are worth melting for') Over the next few weeks, we’re going to be watching bits and pieces of Disney movies to see what true love is, and at Easter time we’re going to talk about the best act of true love ever! Don’t worry, we’re not going ...