Flame: Creative Children's Ministry

It seems such a long time since I lasted posted but the reality of ministry leading up to Christmas is a bit crazy! I was lucky enough to be given a copy of Illustrated Children's Ministry' s 'An Illustrated Advent for Families' and some of our families have been working their way through it in the last few weeks. Although, so close to Christmas,  it seems the wrong time to be reviewing an Advent product, I wanted to make sure that we had given it a good go! There is so much to recommend about this product and, though it may be too late this year to start using it, I am entirely sure that next year's version will be just as amazing! For a single family to purchase a digital copy of the pack costs $10 or about £7.50 and there are options for churches to buy a licence to send it to multiple families for a really reduced price, which is a great bargain.  What is helpful is that a downloadable sample is available so you can get a taste and see if this would be...

This year I have seen a variety of lovely ideas online for helping children and families to get involved with the Advent season.  Drawing on some of the ideas I've seen, I've come up with a little bag of things to give out (along with prayer ideas for each item) which will take people through some of the main Advent themes.  Putting the bags together doesn't take all that long when you have everything you need and it's quite therapeutic to paint a whole load of Baby Jesus stones! If you want to find out a bit more about the baby Jesus stones, click here. For each bag you will need: A prayer sheet ( click here to print), A felt or paper star, a felt or paper heart, a pipe cleaner, a baby Jesus stone, a tea light candle, an organza drawstring bag (I used purple bags to reflect the liturgical season. First paint your baby Jesus stones. I used white and brown paint and a black paint marker (but a sharpie would probably work too). I also covered the finished pain...