Summer Recap!

Morningside Children’s Ministry has had an incredible summer. If you haven’t been able to tell by the gap in blog posts allow me to shed some light in all that’s going on in Children’s Ministry at Morningside Lutheran Church this summer and moving forward!

So what’s been going on this summer?

Our summer Worship at the River has included activity bags with drinks, snacks, and coloring pages to help keep the children active during the sermon. We’ve also enjoyed keeping them active by playing catch before church started. Those kids didn’t care if it was 60 degrees outside or 95 degrees they still ran around, got sweaty, had fun, and killed some energy before praising Jesus with their families. It was always a blast.

Our VBS/Day Camp week was July 20 – July 23 this summer and we had just under 100 children running around the church. We as a team spent many hours, days, and weeks of the summer prepping for this week and it did not disappoint. There was an unmatched energy in the church all week. We played games (Samari, Ninja, Tag, and countless others) had snacks, sang too many worship songs to count, and did crafts ranging from paints, to tool belts, and key chains. We built forts with PVC pipe and blankets, did some science experiments and had some great small group and bible study times. We had lunch outside in the shade of the trees which the kids and leaders both loved equally. We raised enough money and food for the food pantry to pie three of our favorite counselors throughout the week and even surprised the director with a pie to the face from his fiancee. We had a program to share all our songs with our parents and got to watch skits with Storm Troopers, Luke Skywalker, and Darth Vader (including an epic lightsaber battle the last day). We learned lots about Jesus through our rotations and our small group time (Built on Jesus, Built on God’s Instructions, Built to Rise Up, Built to Go). It was a great week for all of the leaders and all of the children. Check our instagram for more pictures of the fun we had!

We finished the week off with a Pool Party at Lewis Pool. We had about 70 people there and it was a wonderful day for families to have fun together. Whether it was playing catch in the kid’s pool, going down the slides together, swimming, splashing, or being a part of our Cannonball Contest (an instant favorite with the children) that went on for about an hour. It was a great day and we will be sure to be doing that again!

What can I expect this Fall?

We are having a MASSIVE “End of the Summer Bash” August 30 at the Anderson Pavilion where our Worship at the River Services are held. It will be from 12 pm to 4 pm and will have food, inflatables, music, face painting, and games! It will be a great party for the whole family and you will have the opportunity to sign-up and register for Sunday School and KidFriendly.

Rally Day this year will be the first day of Sunday School which will be held on September 13. This years curriculum will be aimed at believing, behaving, and becoming more like Christ. Each lesson ties an old testament story together with a new testament story through Christ, I am thrilled for this curriculum and we are going through it as a church show everyone in the family will be going through it together making discussion and teachings at home easier.

In hopes of enhancing our communication with parents we’ll have our own Morningside Lutheran Children’s Ministry page that you’ll be able to follow in the future which will have pictures on it as well as insights on what’s going on in the future!

We are also trying to bump our Parent’s Ministry so be anticipating changes being made in how we interact with you so that we may build you as parents up more effectively and encourage you better. We will be having resource sheets available come the beginning of the year that you can so know where you can locate the best magazine, books, websites, apps, and devotions to help lead your family more efficiently.

We are have excited for this new year and hope you are too!

Summer Bathtubs and Summer Oceans

“If then you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth.” – Colossians 3:1-2

Summer is a wonderful time. Most students begin the countdown to when summer starts at approximately the exact same moment that they realized t’s over. Needless to say summer is very refreshing for all of us after a busy year (especially students). Summer gives us a chance for nice weather and being outside. It gives us the chance to lounge around just a little bit more. For students and children it’s all about staying up late, sleeping in later, and doing nothing they don’t want to do for three whole months. It relaxes and calms us in a way that only time away from our busy schedules does. However, this momentary breath of fresh air is only that, a moment.

Summer is a bathtub of grace, joy and peace. We have the ability to soak in it for a while and it feels great! We look forward to it, it relaxes us and takes our mind off our problems and allows us to escape ourselves. Unfortunately, after a while the hot water turns lukewarm and suddenly it’s not as relaxing. It’s not as fun. It’s not our escape. If you fight through that period of lukewarmness and try to continue to live in that moment, eventually the water will become cold and suddenly you realize you are lying in your own filth. Our paradise at first has slowly transformed into a prison. That’s because bathtubs aren’t meant to be lived in. They’re not suppose to be our main source of joy and our well for hope.

Summer allows us freedom and fun, but if we prioritize summer above God and use that freedom to self-indulge in ourselves we will never be truly refreshed. If we fall into the logic that summer is our well for hope and joy we will let summer consume us more and more and God less and less. We’ll start to get skimpy with our prayer life and neglect the Word of God and think it’s for our benefit after all what’s more refreshing reading the Bible or laying poolside? However, we will soon start to pay for our negligence to Christ through: shallowness, powerlessness, vulnerability to sin, preoccupation with trifles, superficial relationships, and a frightening loss of interest in worship and the things of the Spirit. Summer is a foretaste of heaven, but it will never and could never be a substitute for heaven.

Summer is a bathtub. Jesus is an ocean.  Jesus is an ocean of grace, joy, and peace that never runs dry and always overflows. He is at the center of all things, created all things, and sustains all things. It is He who calls out to us “Come to me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.” It is Him who can give us true rest and remove our burdens. It is Christ who faithfully and sacrificially laid His life down as a blameless, pure, and holy being through death by crucifixion so that we could freely accept the only grace and love that fills us. He is our ocean.

As we live in the moments of summer seeking refuge from the craziness that surrounds us, it’s vital to remember summer isn’t the freedom, it is Christ. Prioritizing time for Christ throughout summer will allow us true rest because we are using a glimpse of heaven with the power and love of giving Christ everything that takes us away from Him. Therefore if we look at the words of Colossians we can see the power of that mindset in summer. The mindset of remembering our prioritizes and not falling into the idolatry that summer is our hope and joy, because that will only lead to disappointment and emptiness. Putting our hope, anxieties, and faith in Christ and dwelling with Christ and seeking Christ is where we will find rest. We won’t find true rest by concentrating on the things of this world ever. It’s a valuable lesson we need to teach our children so they don’t fall in the empty patterns of the rest of the world. Because one thing is for sure, while we cannot live in the summer, we can live in Jesus.