4/14/09

Implanting the Word

For the month of April we have encouraged all of our kids to enlist the help of their parents in memorizing 10 scriptures during the month. Each week the kids are given a chance to demonstrate what they have learned. All of the verses being memorized are ones that we are teaching about and experiencing in the big room lesson time and in the Studios.

Our goal is that every venue (teaching, experience, relationships, scripture memory) would meet together so that the kids 'get it' and it begins to permeate their daily lives as they interact with family, friends, chores etc. Psalms 119:104,105 "Through your Precepts I get understanding; therefore I hate very false way. Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path." Our Desire is that as Parents join with their kids, helping them to implant the word of God in their hearts, they will see it working its way out in their life.

Below are the verses we gave the kids, they were written in the New Living Translation but you can use whatever works best for you and your child.

John 14:6 1 John 1:9 John 3:16 Romans 8:34

Romans 8:9 Romans 8:11(a) 2 Cor. 5:17 Matt. 16:15,16

Jeremiah 29:11 John 14:3

4/6/09

April in the Loft

It is the desire of Southgate Kids to immerse our children in the adventurous and life forming Story of Scripture. In September we began exploring the creation narrative of Genesis. October and November we studied how God created humans in His own image and what that means for us to also be created in His image.

Through January and February, we began to look at the choice God gave Adam and Eve in the garden. We wrestled with why God put the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil in the garden and how God ultimately wants us to love Him because we want to love Him, not because we have to.

Further, during these months, we examined the lie and temptation proposed by the Serpent and the corresponding effects on humanity as a result of the choice to disobey God. In short, in Adam, we all were “disconnected” from God.

During March we began to see how Jesus is the Second Adam and came to restore everything that was lost with the original sin of Adam and Eve.

This month, we will be talking more about not only Who Jesus Was/Is, but also what He did for us on the cross. We will see that one of the things Jesus accomplished on the cross is a way for each of us to be “re-connected” with God. As a means of “remembering what Jesus did” for us, we will be taking communion Easter Sunday. The “remembering” Jesus instructed us to do in the Gospels, doesn’t merely look to an event that happened in the past, but to a Story this is ongoing in the present.

Our prayer is that our children will not only cognitively remember what happened long ago, but also will personally experience and be re-membered to Christ in an intimate and ongoing relationship.