Greenflame

Jottings on science, religion, technology, pop culture, photography and faith from the Aotearoa New Zealand

Category: Children’s Talks

  • Passing on the Faith: The Childrens Sermon

    I do children’s talks on a regular basis at my church. I find them challenging, but on the whole they seem well received by both children and adults. Because of that I particularly bit near the end of this article where he talks about the importance of creating a welcoming environment – one of the…

  • Trinity Sunday and Rublev’s Icon as childrens talk

    I’ve been pondering a children’s talk about the Trinity that doesn’t fall into modalism or tritheism, so I was interested to see Steve’s spin on it. See: sustain:if:able kiwi ยป Trinity Sunday and Rublevs Icon as childrens talk.

  • Children’s Talk – The Parable of the Lost Coin

    It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything in the Children’s Talk section of this blog. I’ve done a number over that past 6 months (including the pneumatology for infants talk with a stick blender), but the most recent was the Parable of the Lost Coin. For this I wanted to capture that sense of…

  • Research report on childhood spirituality in NZ

    Received an email today saying EIDTS (the Ecumenical Institute of Distance Theological Studies) has put Peter Donovan’s research report Childhood Spirituality: A vital concern for NZ churches on their web site. I’ve had a quick skim and found the various resources and organizations listed in the second part looking useful for my spirituality courses. I…

  • It’s Not That I Don’t Like Children’s Sermons…

    As a parent (and also as someone who from time to time is scheduled to do ‘talks’ with children in church contexts) I found this article helpful in framing some of the questions I have about church and children. See ‘Conversations on the Church’s Vocation in the Public World: It’s Not That I Don’t Like…

  • Damaris Media and Prince Caspian

    Damaris have produced some multimedia and study resources for schools and churches in conjunction with the new Prince Caspian movie. See Damaris Media: Prince Caspian. Free CD-ROM of resources if you’re in the UK.

  • Children’s talks that didn’t quite work (and some that did)

    We’re not on for a children’s talk at church for a while, but I’ve been trying to thrash out some ideas that work and some that didn’t in advance. I thought I’d jot them down here because, as Steve found out in Adelaide a while back (see e~mergent kiwi: stories of failure), it’s useful to…

  • Of Swiss army knives and biblical genres

    On the children’s talk again today. Had a few ideas rattling around in my head, including one involving paper airplanes and Isa 40 and another involving something based on a game show. In the end decided to go with an talk introducing biblical genres to children. Started with an apple and asked how we might…

  • The flexible jelly bean

    Jelly beans rock for children’s talks at church. They’re colourful, taste great, universally recognizable by the kids, and relatively cheap as a prop. You can use them individually, by the handful, or in massive numbers. Today I was doing the children’s talk slot in church but I’d been busy all week things – thinking about…

  • Dangerous journeys – Jesus as the different kid at school

    The previous post mentioned Simply Simon: Gates & gorillas which got me thinking about a children’s talk I did a while back at church. I’d been sitting in the playground at school waiting for my kids to come out of class and was again astonished by the range of ethnicities that spilled out of the…