God loves the senior ministers whose portraits are on the wall in the church parlor, but God knows the real saints are the ones who care for children. For almost 20 years, Julia Rassmann has been a big fun, big…
Three simple ideas for extending children’s ministry at church
It’s Sunday morning, after the morning worship service. Parents trickle to the nursery to pick up their children. Parents begin to talk and fellowship as children run in circles and tug on legs and shirts to leave. It’s Wednesday night….
BSK seeks input on youth and children’s ministries
Baptist Seminary of Kentucky is conducting an online survey to determine how it can best serve congregations seeking ministers for youth and children’s work. In recent decades, churches increasingly have been filling these positions with individuals from within the congregation…
Church religious education took more of a hit than worship during pandemic
Much has been written about the challenges churches faced in maintaining corporate worship during the pandemic, but little has been reported on the changes brought about in religious education. Yet a new national study from Hartford Institute for Religion Research…
I am good! Teaching children they are made in the image of God
If you ask people who grew up in church why they left, you’ll get a variety of answers. Maybe they were hurt by someone they trusted. Or they couldn’t reconcile an all-powerful and good God with the evil in the…
Book to help kids with faith questions turns out to help parents too
A book initially conceived to nurture the religious curiosity of children came to add assurances for adults nervous about giving wrong answers or feeling they should be much more theologically proficient when talking with children. “So many grown-ups feel like…
Raised a Baptist, Lance Bass feared who he was couldn’t be in sync with his faith
Talk to any adult who grew up in the 1990s and ask them to name the No. 1 boy band in the country at the time, and you’ll likely hear the name NSYNC. What most of those fans didn’t know…
In-person worship dropped in January as more churches were directly affected by COVID
Concerns about spiking COVID-19 cases led to a rise in the number of U.S. churches canceling in-person gatherings in January, a new Lifeway Research study shows. Meanwhile, the new research offers some of the most detailed data yet about how…
CBF Georgia adds coordinator for young Baptist ministries
Megan Turner Doud grew up Baptist without knowing of the diversity of the Baptist universe. “I didn’t know what CBF was. I didn’t know women could be in ministry. It wasn’t until I started looking for seminaries that I learned…