{"id":974,"date":"2016-03-31T17:10:21","date_gmt":"2016-03-31T23:10:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wwv.group.com\/childrens-ministry\/?p=974"},"modified":"2016-04-27T11:46:59","modified_gmt":"2016-04-27T17:46:59","slug":"why-kids-need-curriculum-that-points-them-to-jesus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wwv.group.com\/childrens-ministry\/blog\/sunday-school\/why-kids-need-curriculum-that-points-them-to-jesus\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Kids Need Curriculum That Points Them to Jesus"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Our kids team recently had the opportunity to lead an All-Staff meeting at our multi-site church. We had the pleasure of leading an experience that unpacked how uniquely different God has wired the children we get to serve. We discovered that we have a very diverse group of kids. Children in our ministry have different interests, hobbies, extracurricular activities, and most of all, different styles of learning.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Why Kids Need Curriculum That Points Them to Jesus<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The question we ask as a team over and over is how our lessons point someone to Jesus. We\u2019re passionate about pointing kids to Jesus and experiencing transformation for these important reasons:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Our time with kids is limited<\/strong> (most of have about an hour each week if the kids come to church every week), and we want to maximize that time!<\/li>\n<li><strong>Technology savvy kids can get just about any information they want<\/strong>. What they can\u2019t get online is personal relationship with Jesus. That\u2019s where we come in\u2026 and we do our best to give kids deep meaningful relationship that comes through Jesus and committed leaders.<\/li>\n<li><strong>We don\u2019t want kids just giving \u2018Jesus\u2019 or \u2018church\u2019 answers<\/strong>, but we want them to be engaged in thoughtful, personal discussions about faith.<\/li>\n<li><strong>We want kids to have a personal relationship with Jesus.<\/strong> While we believe that Scripture memorization and knowing information about the Bible helps tremendously in faith formation, that does not equal personal relationship with Jesus. At the end of the day, we want kids who love and follow Jesus, not just know about him.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Use Transformative Resources<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>As we\u2019re always looking for transformative resources to aid us in giving kids Jesus, we\u2019re really excited for the release of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.group.com\/category\/ministry-resources\/childrens-ministry\/sunday-school\/dig-in.do\" target=\"_blank\">DIG IN Curriculum from Group<\/a>. We both had the opportunity to navigate through the <a href=\"http:\/\/diginapp.group.com\/LessonBuilder\" target=\"_blank\">DIG IN curriculum engine <\/a>recently, and we think this is a great tool that could help navigate through challenges we face currently. Here\u2019s why:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li><strong>First of all, it\u2019s completely customizable<\/strong> which is very important for a multisite context where each campus has different facility setup and sizes.<\/li>\n<li><strong>There\u2019s a great variety in activities. <\/strong>There are so many different activity blocks that support the Core Bible Discovery, and we have the freedom to choose the ones that best fit our needs as well as limitations.<\/li>\n<li><strong>DIG IN is flexible with any ministry format.<\/strong> We both also have served in small churches as well as single-site large church to know that having the option of multi-age\/age-based Large\/Small Group or Sunday School options are valuable. We no longer have to eliminate great content due to the format that it comes in.<\/li>\n<li><strong>DIG IN is from Group.<\/strong> We both have used Group\u2019s curriculum in the past to know that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.group.com\/category\/ministry-resources\/childrens-ministry\/sunday-school.do\" target=\"_blank\">Group\u2019s REAL (Relational, Experiential, Applicable, and Learner-based) <\/a>philosophy has proven to help kids connect with Jesus in real, tangible ways that lends itself to transformation in God\u2019s beautiful time.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>We\u2019re definitely looking forward to digging into the new DIG IN curriculum\u2026 you should check it out too!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Our kids team recently had the opportunity to lead an All-Staff meeting at our multi-site church. We had the pleasure of leading an experience that unpacked how uniquely different God has wired the children we get to serve. We discovered that we have a very diverse group of kids. Children in our ministry have different interests, hobbies, extracurricular activities, and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":78,"featured_media":975,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-974","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sunday-school"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v24.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Why Kids Need Curriculum That Points Them to Jesus - Group Children&#039;s Ministry<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Here are the reasons we\u2019re passionate about pointing kids to Jesus. They need to experience transformation AS KIDS. 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