Separating the kids will require you to split up some of your workers and will require you to have an extra room. If you are lacking an extra room or the workers, the other thing you can do is preach up and not down. What do I mean by this? When you teach your lesson shoot for the older audience. Something that I’ve been seeing, even in the church, is that kids are being forced to grow up faster. Kids are being exposed to things at much younger ages than they used to. This is just a subtle example, but have you noticed some of the adult humor that is being played in kids movies?

MTV has probably been one of the biggest influencers to my generation and each upcoming generation. Parents allow their kids to be exposed to things they shouldn’t such as “R” rated movies and other things. I remember being in first grade and my mom’s boyfriend would smoke marijuana in our living room with his friends. He would even give us beer to drink. My point is this: there are kids in Power House who are being exposed to a lot more than what I was when I was a kid. “Feel out” your site, but in my opinion, most of the younger kids will be able to relate to what you are saying.

For the sake of the younger kids, continue to use props and be very repetitive. Last week at Power House I taught on praising God all the time. The example in our lesson was Paul and Silas. Personally, I think praising God is a foreign concept to many of our Power House kids. They don’t seem to grasp what praising God actually is. The concept of being thankful is easier for them to grasp, so while I taught I constantly repeated “God wants you to be thankful all the time!”, “We need to give God Praise all the time!”, and “We have a lot to be Thankful for!” Using a prop, I began talking about my life growing up how there were times when we didn’t have money for Christmas presents. I remember twice having a box full of presents being dropped off on our front porch. The presents may not have been what I exactly wanted, but I had a reason to be thankful. I had a reason to praise God; at least I had presents for Christmas! I had a reason to tell God how awesome he was for supplying me a Christmas present. I told the kids more about my life growing up. I was vague with some parts so I didn’t have to go in detail for the younger kids. The older kids could just fill in the blanks.

I then showed the kids pictures I had from mission trips. I showed them the huts that people lived in and how they washed their clothes and took baths in the creek. I reiterated the point that we have a lot to be thankful for. Even the poorest of poor in America can get food, clothing, and shelter if they need it, but in other countries the poor just have to fend for themselves. By using props, being repetitious, and teaching up I would guess that nearly every person there would be able to leave that place with a good idea of what the lesson was about.

Here’s a quick recap:

When teaching to a wide range of ages, there are two things you can do to ensure that each child is being taught on their level.

1.Separate the age groups if possible
2.Teach up but continue to use props and be repetitive

This is something that Power House is currently dealing with at a few of our sites. It seems as it gets cold and as we go inside, we have an influx of teenagers who attend our program. I believe the teens come because they want something to do and somewhere to go. I think Power House is the best place they could be. Since the program is geared towards the 5 - 12 age range the teens will tend to get bored and resort to talking. So what can we do? There are a couple of things that we can do to effectively teach God’s Word on each person’s level.

Probably the best thing that can be done is to separate the ages. I would split the ages from at least 12 and up, and have a separate program for the older kids. Now that we are inside, most of our sites have an extra room available. For example, Sheldon and Lisa Dekryger are at the Traditions site. They go into a small apartment during the winter. They have the older kids upstairs in a small bedroom while the younger kids are down stairs in the living room area. Lisa sent me an email last week letting me know how things went. This is what she said,

“It was so cool we had 21 older kids in the room upstairs. They are SOOOOOO
hungry for God but don’t even know it. Half of my time last night was spent
just answering their questions!!!”

Having teenagers at the sites gives us an opportunity to make a greater impact in the neighborhoods.  Teens are searching, thinking, and making decisions now that will effect their futures.  It’s a great time to be a part of their lives, to help steer them in the right direction.

Stay tuned next week for part 2 of Teaching to various Ages

Probably one of the key things a person needs to realize when disciplining a child is:

Relationship = Respect

Kids do not respond well to people who are correcting them if that person does not have a relationship with them.  I call it the substitute teacher syndrome. Remember when you were in elementary school and there was a substitute in class? The kids would usually act more rowdy. Why do you think that is? The kids don’t know the substitute very well. They are testing to see how much they can get away with. The kids know their teacher very well. They know what the teacher expects. They have developed a respect for their teacher. This is a respect that the substitute hasn’t earned. It is much easier to deal with kids with disciplinary issues when you have a relationship with them.

After spending time with Ian, he developed a level of respect for me. Having a relationship with a kid can help prevent misbehavior problems from happening in the first place. I encourage you to find ways to build relationships with the children in your program. Handing out flyers door to door, taking time to find out more about each kid, or just playing a game of checkers can help you to build relationships with the kids in your program.

I would challenge all those who handle disciplinary issues with kids to not think that disciplining a child is a horrible thing.  Disciplining is a ministry opportunity.  Discipline is a one on one appointment with a child.  Discipline is derived from the word disciple.  We are here to disciple kids.  Sometimes pulling a kid to the side and giving them some direction is what it takes to help disciple kids.

I talked about things that you should do when disciplining a child, but here are a few things that you should not do when you discipline a child.

1. Never ever touch a child. Even if a kid is refusing to move when you have politely asked them to, do not touch them. There are a lot of good reasons why you should never touch a child. For one, there can be huge legal ramifications if the child’s parents felt you forcefully moved their child. Secondly, it doesn’t look good to the other kids, volunteers, or other adults. And thirdly, you are not communicating a Christ like behavior towards the child.
2. Never insult a kid in front of the other kids.
3. Never approach a child aggressively. Many children who have chronic disciplinary problems respond with aggression with more aggression.
4. Never yell at a child.

Stay tuned next week…

When dealing with a kid that is having disciplinary problems, the first thing you need to do is stop, and examine yourself. We have to be very careful not to discipline a child out of anger. You know and I know that we can tend to do some really thoughtless things when we are angry. Think about it, how many times while being angry have you said things that you wish you wouldn’t have said? When disciplining a child, step back, take a breath, and deal with the problem when you know you have control of yourself. If you are the type who is very impatient, have someone else who is much more patient deal with disciplinary problems in your program.

The best approach to confronting a child who needs to be disciplined, is to calmly sit down and talk to them. The more relaxed and calm you are the more likely the child will open up and talk to you. I’ve had a time where a kid was refusing to get up off the floor during a children’s church service. I got on the floor, laid down on my stomach, and calmly started asking questions. Like, did you not want to come to church today? Are you tired? Are you hungry? What’s the matter? I was able to convince the kid to come back to the back of the room and talk with me. I took time to show him around the sound booth. I found out that he was just acting up because he was tired. After finding the root of his problem and getting the child to place where he was thinking reasonably, I convinced him to sit in the back of the crowd, relax, and listen to the message.

Find the Root of the Problem

I’ve seen it many times where a kid would begin to act up because he was an older kid attending a program that is geared for younger children. The kid is misbehaving out of boredom. Boredom doesn’t give a kid the right to misbehave, but knowing the root cause can help me find ways to quickly fix the problem. I can give the kid a job to do, or give him a special responsibility that keeps him from being bored.

I feel that I can be more compassion towards a kid who is being a wahoo when I know and understand the root of the problem. I used to be part of a bus ministry. I had a kid that road my bus named Ian.  It seemed that Ian had some major anger issues.  One day Ian got in a fight with another rider on the bus.  After prying Ian off of the other kid, I sat Ian down and told him that he couldn’t ride the bus again for 2 months. I also told him that my wife and I were going to have him over on Fridays for dinner until he was able to ride the bus again. After picking up Ian a few times and visiting him at school, I began to see why Ian was so angry at the world.  At school, Ian was in special ed..  His teachers would degrade the kids, especially Ian.  At his home, I noticed that the electricity was shut off.  Come to find out, Ian’s mom would go spend what little money they had at the casinos.  When you begin to find out the root cause of the problem, you can easily become compassionate towards the kid who just caused mass chaos in your program.

Quick Recap

1. When confronting a kid that has a behavioral problem, be sure you have yourself under control.  Never discipline a child out of anger.
2. Find the root of the problem.  Finding the root of the problem can help you come up with a fix for the problem.  Finding the root of the problem also can help you to be more compassionate towards the child who is misbehaving.

Stayed tuned next week for part 2.

On Saturday, we will be having a make up day for the rained out John Ball Zoo event.  The event will be held at Harrison Park Elementary from 12 PM - 4  PM.  Let me know if you would like to volunteer.  We need help with:

• managing the inflatables
• Power House services
• handing out flyers on Friday
• other miscellaneous volunteer positions

I’ll keep you updated on these events.

2004 - By August of 2004.  I became the new director of Power House. Power House went from 3 sites with the average weekly attendance of 108 kids to 5 sites with the average attendance of 201. From the months of August to December Power House had a total of 400 decisions for Christ.

2005 - Power House had 5 sites with the average weekly attendance of 233 kids. The over all attendance for the year was 5,613 kids with 431 decisions for Christ.

2006 - By the end of 2006 Power House had 6 sites with the over all attendance for the year at 4,857 with 294 decisions for Christ.

2007 - Power House had 6 sites with the over all attendance for the year at 6,656 with 354 decisions for Christ.

Current - Power House now has 8 sites with the over all attendance so far for the year at 5,095 with 383 decisions for Christ.

It will be awesome to see what God has in store for Power House in the next decade.

]]> http://powerhouse.reslifeblogs.org/2008/10/08/10-years-of-excellence/feed/ http://powerhouse.reslifeblogs.org/2008/09/24/summer-recap/ http://powerhouse.reslifeblogs.org/2008/09/24/summer-recap/#comments Wed, 24 Sep 2008 12:44:56 +0000 jonl http://powerhouse.reslifeblogs.org/2008/09/24/summer-recap/ Wow, school is back in session and Power House is going in doors again for the school year. It seems like only yesterday that we were just starting summer break.

Some of the awesome things that happened in Power House this summer were the start of two new sites, Holland and Lansing.

Our new Resurrection in Lansing started a site just over a month ago, they meet on Wednesdays. Our friends Jamal and Jamar, who were originally Power House kids at our Dickenson site, are now leaders at our new site in Lansing. Now that’s the epidomy of what Power House is all about! We want to get the gospel out to our kids and disciple them so they can rise up to be mighty men and women of God making a difference in their community and the world they live in.

As you work with kids or people in general you will notice that each person will only rise to the expectation set before them. Can we expect our children to succeed if we place a label on them that tells them they are not able to go any further than the boundaries society has placed on them?
(Welfare, divorce, drugs, teen pregnancy, gangs, alcoholism, learning disorder, poverty, race…the list can go on and on) As with any habit that starts or is broken we must be consistent in our efforts to teach that Gods word is true and his way is the best way.

How can you make a difference? Consistency is the key to showing a child that you are for real it shows them that you care and mean what you say. Each volunteer that Power House has from the set up to the leaders no job is small or insignificant, each person is vital to the TEAM! Like I’ve heard many times there is no I in team only Talented, Extraordinary, Attentive, Members. We appreciate and love each one of our volunteers that bring a talent and flavor of their own to our Power House Team.

The dedication of each team member showing their unique talent that God has gifted them with and being good stewards of them by sharing them and the love of God to our neighborhoods.

Power House has many exciting things just getting ready to explode and end 2008 with a great big BANG. I pray that you keep your eyes open so you don’t miss a thing. God is Big All over me God is Big all over Us God is Big All over The World! Matthew 5:16 “In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.”

Acts 20:24 “However, I consider my life worth nothing to me, if only I may finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me-the task of testifying to the gospel of God’s grace….”

So Let’s keep our eyes set on the purpose for which we are called and don’t put God in a box! We have Power House in Greater Grand Rapids area and now in Holland (who are on fire for God and doing great things) and now Lansing. Where will Power House be next? Think about it maybe other ministries will come to train for sidewalk Sunday school here some day like we did at Metro.

Char Chandler
Power House Intern

To encourage the kids to do their Bible Adventures we take them to play laser tag after they complete 13. We do laser tag trips about twice a year. We just got done taking a group of about 13 kids this last weekend. We have another group about the same size that still need to go.

I had a parent call one time looking for the nearest Power House site. Their child went to Power House, but the family relocated to a different neighborhood. I was able to direct her to the nearest Power House which was just around the corner from their new home. During the conversation the mom encouraged us to keep giving the kids Bible Adventures. She explained to me that while living in her old neighborhood, her child would bring home the Bible Adventures and she would help her child complete them. At the time, she wasn’t going to church, but she would open her Bible to help her child to do the Bible Adventures. It encouraged her to get back into church. Isn’t it amazing what God can do with a little piece of paper called a Bible Adventure?