Product Updates

An Update on Poster Paper for An Illustrated Earth Coloring Posters

We are getting ready to launch the pre-orders for our Illustrated Earth Coloring Posters, but first we wanted to give you a short update on the paper that we’re using to print these posters.

We’ve been very pleased with our previous printer, and the quality of the posters we’ve sent out. They have worked well, and we know some folks have actually framed their finished posters. With our previous printer, however, we were limited in our paper options. So we are very thrilled to be able to share that with our new printer, a local Chicago family-owned business, we now have more options to choose from for our posters.

For our Illustrated Earth Coloring Posters, we’re going to be printing them out on 32 pound paper. Our previous posters were printed on 20 pound paper. I don’t know if you can tell in the photo above, but the paper is thicker, and is also a whiter paper. This also means that the illustration pops off the white page more.

For those of you who are interested, we’ve put together a little video to try and show you the difference between the two papers. And yes, it does feature a few appearances by one of our tried and trued product testers here at Illustrated Ministry, Caleb Walker Cleaveland (who is four years old). Be looking for the announcement of pre-orders starting for these posters soon!

An Illustrated Earth for Summer Sunday School & VBS

Adam Walker Cleaveland 2 Comments

As we discussed last week, many churches haven’t figured out the solution to the problem of summer Sunday School. Well, actually, there are many problems tied up in this one program:

Who will teach? Many churches want to give their teachers a well-deserved break from teaching, since many will do it throughout the school year. Many churches have their Christian Education hour during worship (which we are not fans of – but we know it’s a reality for so many churches), and so teachers enjoy having the chance to actually be in worship during the summer. And some churches believe they have a very small pool of potential teachers; if the regular teachers don’t teach in the summer, who will?
Who will come? Will anyone come? Everyone knows we’re not in the Field of Dreams-era of church and program life anymore. In the past, you could build a program, and the people would come. That’s simply not our reality anymore. Will young families come to worship in the summer? Some will. Some won’t. And it’s quite possible that even fewer will come if there are no options for their kids. Regardless of the theological implications, many parents covet those 45 minutes when their kids are in Sunday School and they get to feel like adults again, sitting in worship, singing, praying, and hearing a sermon.
What will we teach? So what do we teach in the summer if we’re going to go ahead and try it? Do we invest in expensive church curriculum, some that are over $300 just for the summer months, when we don’t have a guarantee of how many children will show up? How do I order pamphlets/lesson sheets for the children when we have no idea what our numbers are going to be?

It’s not an easy decision.

But…

Illustrated Ministry is trying to make that decision a little bit easier for you this summer with our new product, An Illustrated Earth: Celebrating God’s Creation.

An Illustrated Earth: Celebrating God’s Creation

Summer Sunday School We wanted to create a resource that could work for you in a variety of settings, with any number of children participating. We wanted it to be flexible, adaptable and fun. But more importantly – we wanted it to involve little to no prep time. With An Illustrated Earth, if you have children that show up for Sunday School, you will have a quality resource you can use to have a fun and engaging Sunday School class with them, and you won’t have had to put any time into the preparation of it. Likewise, if no one shows up next Sunday, you don’t feel frustrated or bitter, because you didn’t have to spend any prep time on the class, and so you can just save that lesson for next time.

An Illustrated Earth can be used throughout the entire summer as a summer Sunday School program. However, because of the way it is structured, it could also be used if you’re creating your own Vacation Bible School and are looking for content and activities. It could also be used as an intergenerational activity throughout the summer as well. There are many possibilities.

Below are a few details about An Illustrated Earth, but for all of the information, including a list of the stories that will be used, be sure to check out the product page for An Illustrated Earth: Celebrating God’s Creation.

Summer Sunday School Solution: An Illustrated Earth

An Illustrated Earth includes three modules of four lessons each. The theme is celebrating God’s Creation, and so you will find stories about creation, food, plants, water, and animals. Each lesson includes the following:

Opening Gathering Activity
Bible Story
Questions for reflection
Coloring (either small sheets or large posters)
Short prayer

Coloring Options: There will be a coloring component for each week (12 different designs), and you will have the option of just having kids color a small version, or order large coloring posters. The digital downloads of An Illustrated Earth‘s modules will come with 8.5×11 versions of the coloring designs. But you will also have the opportunity to purchase large 36″x24″ coloring posters as well. If you know you will have multiple classrooms, you may want to purchase more than one set of the posters, or make sure you also purchase the digital files so you can print more of them.

To learn all of the details about An Illustrated Earth, please be sure to check out the product page, which will include a listing of the Bible stories the curriculum focuses on, as well as to learn about the different ordering options for the resource. We are really excited to share this product with you, and we are confident this will be a very strong curriculum option for both churches that regularly have a summer Sunday School program, and for those who have been thinking about it, but haven’t yet figured out how to pull it off in their context.

Please Share!

We would love your help getting the word out about An Illustrated Earth. Please just take a few seconds and share about this on Facebook and Twitter. Thanks!

An Illustrated Earth is your summer Sunday School solution. This 3-module, 12-week curriculum celebrating God’s creation…

Posted by Illustrated Ministry on Tuesday, April 12, 2016

An Illustrated Earth is a new resource for summer Sunday School or VBS programs. 3 modules, 12 weeks and coloring! https://t.co/Ub66gtSv7u

— Children’s Ministry (@IllustratedCM) April 13, 2016

Summer Sunday School: What’s a church to do?

Adam Walker Cleaveland 6 Comments

Having served churches in Idaho, California, Oregon and Illinois, I can predict the conversations that many of you are having about summer Sunday School during staff meetings now that we’re in the post-Easter era of the church calendar year. That conversation might go something like this:

Senior Pastor (SP): So, what do we have planned for summer Sunday School?

Children’s Pastor (CP): Yah…we’re still trying to decide if we are going to offer something.

SP: Okay – but we want to continue to offer something for our children during worship, because if we don’t, young families will just stop coming to worship during the summer.

CP: Right – but even when we offer something – people don’t come. Or we might get 1-2 kids one week, 3 the next week, and none the week after that. Besides, our teachers need a break after teaching throughout the school year.

SP: Okay – well, we can just get the youth to do it. The youth can just teach, right?

Youth Pastor: . . .
(the youth pastor says nothing, but simply loves the fact that the youth just got volunteered for something else in the church that no one else wants to do)

SP: Okay – scratch that. Well, what are we going to do?

CP: Honestly? I don’t know. We have the same conversation every year. The year that we decided to give teachers a break, which they deserved, and didn’t offer anything for children, some parents complained that there wasn’t anything for their kids to do, and so they didn’t want to come to church. But then the next year, when we did offer a summer Sunday School program for children, our teachers got burned out and weren’t very excited about starting up again in the fall for Kickoff Sunday. Besides, they would often put in a decent amount of prep time, gathering supplies, learning a lesson, making copies, etc., and then only little Jimmy would be there. And we all love little Jimmy…and little Jimmy loves this church – but that’s a hard place for a kid to be – the only kid there with the teachers? Who wants to be that kid?

SP: Okay – great. So, what I hear you saying is that we ARE going to have summer Sunday School?

Summer Sunday School

I’ve sat through this conversation so many times. And it’s not an easy one. I don’t think churches want to make program decisions that will cause kids and families to not want to come to worship in the summer. But it’s really hard to convince people to do summer Sunday School when you don’t know if people will be there or not, and it is often hard to find reliable Sunday School teachers for the summer.

So a church can decide to do nothing, and just accept the fact that they may see families less during the summer, or they can decide to put together a summer program, and then be frustrated when families don’t come and deal with frustrated teachers who have prepped lessons for no one.

I know there are some churches out there who have found creative solutions to this problem, and if you are one of those, I’d love for you to share some of your findings in the comments below. Or maybe you’re a church that is right in the middle of trying to figure out this decision for your community. Let us know what factors you’re considering as you think about this issue.

Little to no prep, flexible, adaptable and fun

Now, if only there was someone who was working on a curriculum that would be flexible, adaptable, fun and hopefully something that would require little to no prep for teachers. Something that a teacher could simply walk in and lead without having to spend time throughout the week prepping for a lesson. Something that would be a fun experience for 5 kids if they showed up one Sunday, and something that wouldn’t cause the teacher any frustration if no one came the next Sunday, because they didn’t have to work on getting the lesson ready.

If only there was someone who was going to announce a curriculum just like this next week (if you want to get updates, you might want to click here).

If only there was someone who was going to let everyone know that this curriculum would be called An Illustrated Earth: Celebrating God’s Creation.

If only the curriculum was going to come with giant coloring posters.

Genesis__Separation_of_the_Water

If only…