3 Questions to Ask Before Buying Curriculum - Kids in Ministry International
There are so many attractive curriculum options in the market today, how is a children’s minister supposed to know which one to pick? After all, curriculum choices set the tone and direction of your children’s ministry for months, and sometimes years. They are big investments, and you are on a tight budget. Your entire children’s ministry structure will be built around the curriculum you choose, in many cases. So how does one decide the best one for his or her church?
What’s Your Vision?
These are great questions. However, the answers to them are wrapped up in more questions. For instance, before you can buy curriculum, you need to know what your vision for your children is. Too many churches for too long have simply done Sunday School programs because it’s whats expected of them, and not because they have vision for it.
Too many churches have kids ministry because it would look bad to parents if they didn’t have one, and they may very likely leave the church to find a place with a good one. Worse yet, many churches have kids’ ministry because pastors are taught that’s the way to attract people to their churches. This all spells “no vision.” That makes it easy to buy curriculum—just pick the ones with the flashiest, trendiest packaging and best advertising.
Producing Followers of Christ
But that’s not you. You do have a deep vision to see your kids become committed followers of Christ. So, in forming a vision for your ministry, ask yourself, “What is a mature follower of Christ?” Someone who is born again, filled with the Spirit, knows how to hear God’s voice and be led by the Spirit. It’s someone who has a strong devotional life, loves the Word of God, knows it, and is equipped to do the works of Jesus such as healing the sick, intercessory prayer, and more. That creates a big challenges for any curriculum publisher.
Three Core Values Every KidsMin Should have
There are three key elements every children’s minister needs to keep in mind when buying curriculum.
1. GIVE THEM MEAT. Children need the meat (deep truths) of God’s Word. Kids cannot live on Bible stories alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. Kids need doctrine. If you look carefully, most Sunday School and children’s church curriculums today build their whole lessons around Bible Stories, sort of like Aesop’s Fables, ending with a good “moral to the story.” KIMI curriculums, on the other hand, build their lessons around a foundational doctrine, and bring in the Bible stories to confirm and demonstrate.
2. EQUIPPING. To become true, committed followers, children need to be equipped to do the work of the believer’s ministry. This is a generation who is not satisfied to sit on the sidelines and watch everybody else do things. They want hands on involvement themselves. This means they don’t want to just watch grownups heal the sick. They want to heal the sick. They don’t just want to hear about someone else hearing God’s voice. They want to hear God’s voice for themselves. This means in every service we must actively allow kids to get out of their chairs and practice Mark 16:15-18* Kids in Ministry Curriculum do this very thing. Every lesson gives you an opportunity to create time for kids to practice what they have been taught.
3. PRESENCE. No matter how good the teaching is, it is mere head knowledge if the children to not have ongoing opportunities to feel, sense, and experience the presence of God in one way or another. Barna’s Research shows us that at least half the kids in our churches tell us to their knowledge they have never felt God’s presence. How can that possibly be? Part of it is because no time is made for this to happen, because curriculums do not build it in to their format. Kids in Ministry Curriculums do. Every lesson has one goal in mind—to bring kids into the presence of God.
So before your purchase new curriculum, ask yourself these three questions:
1) Will it teach your kids more than just the basic Bible stories, but go on to teach them the deeper things of God as well?
2) Will it make room for equipping our little saints for the work of the ministry?
3) Will it allow for your kids to experience the presence of God for themselves as it ties in to the lesson they just learned?
Kids in Ministry curriculums, and all of the other curriculums we have carefully hand picked as products on our site, will do all of these things.
Even the children who only show up occasionally to your services are impacted when they get good doctrine, an opportunity to “do” the works of Jesus, and experience the presence of God when they do come. Those are the things they will remember, long after a good story is told. The KIMI curriculums are unique in these three aspects.
To download free lesson samples, click here.
* Mark 16:15-18 He said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation.”
16 Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.”
17 And these signs” “will accompany those who believe: In my name they will drive out demons;” “they will speak in new tongues;”
18 they will pick up snakes” “with their hands; and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all; they will place their hands on” “sick people, and they will get well.””
