Praise Factory

I am so excited to link to this site! Connie Dever from Capitol Hill Baptist in Washington DC has written this amazing children's ministry curriculum called "Praise Factory". It's been a long labor of love for her, and NOW it is all up on line for FREE! This is SERIOUS good news for children's ministries everywhere!

Since I moved to Louisville, and started working in the children's ministry at my church, Clifton Baptist, I've gotten to use Praise Factory. It's organized as a systematic theology, walking children through the teachings of the Bible in "Big Ideas". What I love about this curriculum is that you park on the same big idea for 3 weeks, and have 3 different stories, activities, etc. For example, tonight we finished the 3rd week of the big idea "God shows love for His people by caring for their needs" with the story of the burning of Rome, and the martyrdom of Peter. The story illustrated this big idea by showing how Peter's spiritual needs were cared for, and Nero, who thought he could take care of himself, ended his life in suicide, spiritually hopeless. Last week our story was about Hudson Taylor, and how God supplied his needs as he went to China. Usually the 1st and 3rd week's stories are Bible lessons, and the 2nd week comes from church history, or more recent events.

I love this curriculum. Clifton has had the opportunity to use it for several years now, because our children's director is a friend of the Dever's and we were sort of using it on a trial basis. NOW it's available for anyone to use! What a BLESSING to small churches or churches with a limited children's ministry budget! Please take time to check it out, and let your children's director know about it. I think it would work best for a Wednesday night children's program, but I think Capitol Hill uses it for Children's Church time, so it's pretty flexible. There are lots of activities and ideas that go with every lesson, you probably won't have time to do them all, but it give you a bunch of choices.