Children’s Ministry Seminars

Presented by David Goodwin

C.  DESCRIPTIONS

1.  Pastoral Care of Children

A pastor is responsible to God for the spiritual welfare of the church (Acts 20:28). The word pastor emphasizes the responsibility of caring for the church, as a shepherd cares for the sheep and implies the nourishing of and caring for God’s people.  In this workshop we learn about your important role to care, nurture, mentor, feed and counsel children.

 

2.  Active Listening

The leader-child relationship should be built on trust, respect, and sharing and above all, attentive listening to the child. This is sometimes called Active Listening or Empathetic Listening.  Active Listening empowers the child who is doing the talking by helping them understand their situation better and often opens their thinking to other and better choices they can make.  In this workshop you will learn how you can develop active listening skills.

 

3.  Child Development:  Faith Development

The development of faith is closely connected to the natural processes of human growth and development.  Faith is interwoven with these so we should look for faith characteristics appropriate for children at different stages in their development.  This will take account of emotional as well as intellectual maturing.

 

In this workshop we look at a number of clearly defined stages as we grow up.  Each stage has its own characteristics and builds upon the previous ones.  John the busy bouncy 2 year old will become John the 7 year old who loves stories, who will become John the 9 year old who enjoys being with his friends, who will become John the 13 year old who wants to be ‘in’ with his mates.

 

4.  Child Development:   Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

According to Maslow, every child has four levels of needs and three higher levels of growth.  These needs are in a hierarchy, starting with basic needs such as food and drink and lead to higher needs such as need for knowledge and understanding.  In this seminar we look at how an understanding of how we can meet the needs of children at each level in order to lead them to know and grow in Christ.

 

5.  Counselling:  Helping Children In Grief

Christians have not been encouraged to grieve, many have never seen a dead body and death is still a subject to be avoided.  Tears are perceived to be a sign that the person is lacking in faith.  The Bible does not teach it is wrong to grieve or to weep, quite the reverse.  The Bible gives many examples of weeping and mourning over death of a loved one.  Childhood is a time of great change due to normal and abnormal events.   In this workshop we talk about how to recognise symptoms of grief and how to help children through difficult times in their life.  

 

6.  Counselling:  Introduction To Counselling Children

In this workshop you will learn skills and techniques for counselling children who suffer from grief, neglect, abuse and trauma. We look at the counselling process including: the counselling relationship; listening skills; counselling techniques; bringing counselling to a conclusion.

 

7.  Counselling:  Working With Children Who Have ADD Or ADHD

ADD/ADHD is a medical condition but it is also a label that implies psychiatric illness and abnormality.  Most children hate the label because it gives no hope.  Others hide behind the label as an excuse for their behaviour.  ADD is often associated with badly behaved or naughty children.  In this workshop we define ADD and learn how to  remove the label that ADD children are abnormal or sick and instead see that they have strengths that can be assets

 

8.  Counselling:  Helping Children with Anger

Anger is often the presenting problem, it is the one we see the most often.  Yet anger is almost never the primary emotion, it comes from another emotion, a hurt, pain, frustration, etc.  To deal with the anger, we need to find what is really behind it.  We sho you how to do that in this workshop as well as giving some simple counselling and behavioural tools that will help you help your children start to deal in a more positive way when they are angry.

 

9.  Working With Special Needs Children

Children who are handicapped or have learning disorders, may not appear to be the same as ‘other’ children, but locked inside their bodies, are all the same feelings and emotions  All children need to be exposed to the love of God. 

 

In this workshop we learn how to react to the person - not their handicap.  Touch them, share with them!  The disabled child wants to be loved, accepted and to succeed.  A handicap does not lessen the need for the personality or emotions to develop.  Every child needs to be able to love and to be loved.

 

10.  Leading Children To Salvation

There is no experience compared with seeing a child really come to know Jesus and to see the security and happiness that comes as a result to that child's life. 

 

In terms of a person's life and calling, there is no more important time to receive Jesus than as a child. In terms of the ongoing ministry of the church, there is no more important work than leading children to Jesus. The responsibility of the church is to evangelise children before it is too late for them. 

 

In this workshop we demonstrate a simple yet effective method of leading children to Jesus and what are the pitfalls that need to be avoided.

 

11.  Follow Up:  Leading Children to Discipleship

Children need follow up after they have made a decision for Christ to ensure that have every opportunity to grow to discipleship.  In this workshop we look at the most important things a child needs to leant and how to mentor the child in their new found faith. 

 

We also do a brief look at how to use the Follow up With Foxy - a new Follow up system using the Foxy Cards developed by Kidsreach.

 

12.  Praying for Children to be Filled with the Holy Spirit

Children need to be filled with, and baptised in, the Holy Spirit, but at the same time, great care has to be taken to ensure the experience is not spurious, meaningless or anything less than God intended.

 

Lack of care by evangelists and ministers not skilled in dealing with children, has left countless numbers of children with a disillusioned feeling about the Holy Spirit and Christianity.

 

The Baptism in the Holy Spirit is a life changing experience.  Anything less than that is not what God intended.

 

13.  Self Esteem – Building Children’s Sense of Self Worth

Children need to have a sense of self worth because if they do, they will be able to overcome difficulties knowing they are worth so much to God that he would give his son to die for them.  This is quite different to how the secular world sees self esteem which tends to make children into the king in their own self-centred world.  At the heart of self worth in Christian terms is coming to experience the Father Heart of God.

 

14.  Theology of Children

In this workshop we look at what the Bible says about children and children's ministry and give you a brief look at some significant historical events that have given rise to the modern evangelical Sunday School or Children's Ministry as we know it today. This subject will have a profound affect on the way you do children's ministry and why you do it.