Secular music/artists with Christian Themes

What songs do kids hear on the radio that they might not realize have a Christian message and/or what artists do they hear on the radio that they might not realize have a Christian singing background? And what ideas do you have about how to use these?

Johnny Rodgers event

OK - so let's use this area to talk about how this night is being planned. I think everyone liked the idea of starting our 3000 hours reminder here. We also talked about T shirt giveaways, and encouraging many families to attend. What else can we do to make the most out of Johnny's time at RiverTree?

ServeFest

We talked a lot last night about different ideas for children and their families to serve in the community. We talked about a recognition and idea sharing board too. Finally we talked about coordinating a "Free Carwash - No Donation Accepted" event.

Dinese - will you post the ideas you documented as a response to this post?

Jen - can you document our plans for the recognition/idea sharing board (or at least continue the discussion) here?

And here's a question for everybody - is "ServeFest" this whole concept of families serving together or is it a particular event?

Please join in the discussion on these topics!

9 week Summer curriculum

So where do we begin? First, what are the dates we're looking at and how quickly do we need to get something together? Is this where we want to try some creative new lessons and take a whack at applying some of the fun and innovative stuff we learned at our conferences?

I'm wondering if this is something that should be included in the vision sharing discussion that we're planning to have with the Drama and RCS teams.

Let's open this up and just get some conversation going about this topic. I'm not sure where to start, so Jamie or anyone else, maybe you can give us some direction on what we want to accomplish, and by when, etc.

April 6th Meeting notes

After tons of great discussion on many topics, here are the major takeaways from the meeting...

In an effort to focus our efforts on a smaller number of things we agreed to prioritize some of the many great ideas we've all been discussing. The items below are what we'll focus on in the near term...

• Drama - We all feel that many opportunities exist to use drama/performance arts to further engage kids. There are opportunities to use this in weekend services and in special event and family ministry events as well. As a first step, Dave will arrange a meeting with Dave Huthmacher, Dinese, and the pre-school team members to share vision, discuss ideas, opportunities, and next steps. Also, Dave and Dinese will arrange a meeting with others that have participated in, or have expressed an interest in participating in River City Studios and other Childrens' theatrics, to do the vision sharing, and to begin planning the June River City Studios Family Event. We'll include naming the event as part of that agenda.
• Family Ministry is a theme that we'll continue building. The first big event in that theme is the Johnny Rodgers event. We have a special opportunity to engage and teach families and should strive to make the very most of it. Team members agreed to challenge themselves to find at least one family that wasn't already planning to attend and encourage them to come. Also, many great ideas were discussed about making that a WOW night. One of those was that we could launch the 3000 hours tagline/theme. I'll create a seperate post for the team to collect ideas and further plan that event.
• ServeFest - We had lots of great discussion on how to build on the community service initiatives that Greg has propoted in "Big church" with the kids. I'll create a seperate post to collect and share those ideas. Steph and Lisa took action items to talk to folks about the car wash event. Jamie will be working with Michelle D. on communications.
• 9 week summer curriculum - we discussed taking 9 weeks off of Kidmo to change things up a little and to try some new things. Again, I'll creat another post to continue that discussion.

We agreed that Fall might be a good time to look again at how to involve children in serving on the weekends. And, while Dinese has some responsibilities for the August Jackson Park event, it's really being handled by another group and shouldn't require much attention from our team.

The next meeting will be at 6:30 on May 3. In addition to discussing progress on our action items, we'll discuss the success and lessons learned from the Johnny Rodgers event.

Did I miss anything?