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5 Enormously Excellent Faith-Based Children’s Books
If you’ve been searching for faith-based children’s books to add to your library, you’ve come to the right place! It can feel overwhelming to search when there are so many options out there. So, we’ve put together a list of our top five picks that we’re currently loving. If you’ve got favorite faith-based children’s books, share them in the comments! DON’T HAVE TIME TO READ THIS POST RIGHT NOW? Download a PDF copy of this blog post to read later, or to share with friends or colleagues. Click here to download the PDF. God’s Dream God’s Dream by Archbishop Desmond Tutu…
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Helping Children Through Grief: Twelve Simple Ways
Helping children through grief can feel daunting. But there are simple ways you can help. Your role as a parent or significant adult in a child’s life can offer them the stable footing they need to walk through their grief and develop resilience. We’ve put together a list of twelve easy ways to do just that. So that we can all learn from the collective wisdom of this community, please share ways you’ve been helping children through grief in the comments below! Download Shareable PDF: We’ve compiled our list of twelve ways of helping children through grief into a 1-page…
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Community Spotlight: How Churches Use Our Advent Coloring Posters
Are you looking for a creative Advent activity for all ages? Over one thousand churches from around the world used our Advent Coloring Posters last year. It was an amazing experience for our team to follow everyone’s progress as they shared photos of their communities coloring the posters. There are so many different ways to use our coloring posters, and as we’ve mentioned before, there were children’s ministries, youth ministries, college groups, retirement homes, hospitals and entire churches that found ways to utilize these big coloring posters. I had a chance to hear from some of the folks who used…
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Popular Children’s Bibles Reviewed: A Child’s First Bible
A Child’s First Bible is one of so many children’s Bibles. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the variety and unsure of which is best for your bookshelf. So, here at ICM, we’ve compiled some of our thoughts and recommendations in this blog series where we’ll be reviewing some of today’s most popular children’s Bibles. Once you find your fave children’s Bible, check out our post on ways of reading scripture with your kids to get the most out of it! Quick Facts about A Child’s First Bible 255 pages 125 classic biblical passages Question for each story Age Range: 4-8…
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Advent Journey Coloring Posters
Our Advent Journey Coloring Posters are available now – ORDER YOUR POSTERS HERE. Thousands of churches around the world have used our large coloring posters, and we are particularly excited about this poster theme and illustrations. These six coloring posters will walk you and your community through the journey of Advent, Christmas, and into Epiphany. With these posters, your community can journey together, color and do art together, and have a chance to create meaningful intergenerational relationships. So many different groups of people have used our coloring posters over the years: Sunday School classes, youth groups, college ministries, nursing home…
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8 Innovative Ways to Foster Intergenerational Ministry in Your Church
Intergenerational ministry is quite a buzz term in Christian circles these days. But we know from research that it’s more than a trend and massively helpful in the development of lasting faith. It creates fertile soil in which seedlings can flourish. And yet, your church may be like so many on Sunday mornings with different age groups scurrying to separate corners of buildings to learn on their own. So, how do we get away from this? What can you do as a ministry leader to forge a new path? Intergenerational Ministry: More Than Just Planning More Fun Activities If you’re…
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One Colossally Simple Practice to Revolutionize Your Children’s Faith
DON’T HAVE TIME TO READ THIS POST RIGHT NOW?: No problem. We’ve formatted this blog post into a downloadable PDF that you can have for free! If you really liked this post, it’s also a great way to print it out to share with friends and/or colleagues. To download the PDF, click here. As parents, we want our children to grow into their own experience of the Christian faith and, more importantly, deep relationship with God that is a wellspring of joy and strength and peace. As a family ministries director, I heard often from teachers and parents how ill-equipped…
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6 Fantastic Ways of Reading the Bible with Kids
Reading the Bible with kids can feel daunting. We can feel unsure of how to go about it, especially in the midst of our doubts about Scripture. Maybe we’ve simply used up all the tools we have and feel bored along with our kids. We’re here to help! We’ve put together some fantastic ways of reading the Bible with kids that will inspire you and your children to dig deep together. Much of the following is adapted from Faith at Home by Wendy Claire Barrie who devotes an entire chapter to studying scripture with kids. Check it out! If you missed our…
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Book Review: Faith at Home by Wendy Claire Barrie
Faith at Home: A Handbook for Cautiously Christian Parents by Wendy Claire Barrie is fantastic. I’ll just make my assessment clear from the get-go. It would be a valuable addition to any home or church library. It’s better than its cover lets on and is a must-read for all of us interested in passing onto our children our Christian faith, a different understanding of the Christian faith than the one we grew up with, or our newly-found Christian faith. FREE PDF: We’ve put together some helpful information for you to know as you think about buying this new work by…
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Connecting with Kids Amidst School Year Craziness
I don’t know about you, but my summer is flying by like I’ve been drivin’ 90mph in a convertible. So fun! And so fast. Cue the tears and whimpering. As we prepare to say goodbye to summer, we may also be bracing ourselves for the increase in crazy that the school year can bring. Homework, projects, tests, sports practices, music lessons, tournaments, volunteering, productions, lunch packing can all seem somewhat daunting. And, holy cow, the driving. The driving! Now the driving is so often copious, but what if…? What if all that driving creates precious space for connecting with kids?…
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Community Spotlight: An Illustrated Compassion VBS at St. John in the Wilderness Episcopal Church
We have put together a concise summary of St. John in the Wilderness Episcopal Church’s experience using An Illustrated Compassion for their Vacation Bible School. If you are looking for something that would be easy to print out and take to a staff or committee meeting, you can download the free PDF here. Summertime is the season for VBS, and we are so excited to share with you how St. John in the Wilderness Episcopal Church used An Illustrated Compassion curriculum for their VBS program! We recently caught up with Rona Pasch, Director of Children’s Ministry at St. John’s, and…