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Doing Smart Things

March 1, 2011 in Personal with 10 Comments

It’s March, and I’m approaching my 35th birthday. Compared to some people (See Gina and Sam) this isn’t really that old yet, but I feel like I’ve learned a few things over the years. After 12 years of marriage, I’ve learned that there is a right time to say certain things to my wife, and most defiently other times that are not the right time. After 8 years of being a parent, I’ve learned that quiet and solitude are things of the past, and that coaching sports is never as glamorous as they make it sound. After 11 years of living in Texas, I’ve learned that things really are bigger here.

: Image Source: bizarrocomics.com/

And after 10 years of working in and around churches with all different sorts of ages (predominantly children), I’ve learned a few other things. Here is that list:

Prepare for the weekend. Even when you don’t think you need to, just go ahead and prepare like you need to prepare. I don’t teach every weekend, but I still prepare as if I am. You read that right. I take time to look over Kindergarten lessons, Elementary storytelling segments, and all small group materials. I’m not claiming to be totally 100% prepared, and ready to teach at any level; but I’m at the very least familiar with what’s going on in most every area I’m responsible for.
Say Thank You. Simply put, it’s my #1 gift to those that serve all around me. There are a few 1,000 ways to do this, but the easiest of these is to just say it.
Clean your shoes. I didn’t say this list was perfect, but I’ve learned that a pair of nicely polished shoes or clean converse’s can go a long way with people. Don’t believe me? Good for you.
Speak well of those that don’t speak well of you. There is no easier way to make someone look like a fool than to find positive things to say about that person (hopefully person and not persons…) that continually speaks ill of you.
Get good at shaking hands. There is such a thing as a wimpy handshake. If you disagree with this one, then I can guarantee you are offering wet fish handshakes to the rest of us. Come on, firm that handshake up and watch your respect level rise!
Be good at what you do. I guess this should be obvious, but whatever your job description is where ever you work; you should be exceeding this and more every day you do your job. Be good at what you do, is my little secret to you. You’re welcome.
Do whatever it takes to make kids like you. It is always worth the investment to spend time with children. After a while of being around kids, you’ll learn what it takes to endear them to you. When you’ve done this, then influencing their parents is gravy!

So I’m gonna push away from the advice table now. Here is my official advice from a nobody. But I have one final question:

What am I missing? Add your own advice in the comment section below!

Some ParentLife Love

February 28, 2011 in Ministry with 16 Comments

I have a new sponsor at jonathancliff.com. I’d like to introduce everybody to the greatness of the ParentLife magazine. What? You think you’ve heard of it before? Well if you’ve run in any of the LifeWay circles of the past, then you might have seen a ParentLife magazine. However, they’ve completely redesigned their cover, and done a massive overhaul to the content between the covers. The folks over at LifeWay were kind enough to send over a free copy for myself to look through and I have to say that it is a really well done parenting magazine.

Here are some of the things I liked about ParentLife:

The cover is wild and makes you want look at it further. It’s just a fun, inviting, humorous cover. The people at ParentLife do things well, and the cover will show you that right off the bat. (I’d also love to say that I love the texture of the paper used on the cover. Not that it matters, but it’s different and I liked it!)

It’s relevant. The material is extremely relevant and all the information is so easy to find. I loved the age sections with pertinent information for each age of kid.
Along these same lines, it’s also all-encompassing. There was an article for grandparents, single parents, divorced parents and their step-children, and even that rare breed of married couples living with their own children. This would make a great hand-out resource to the families in my church. Those with and/or without children.
It’s short and sweet. I sometimes have the attention span of an 8 year old; yet I was able to enjoy this magazine. It’s a rare thing, but there wasn’t an article that spanned more than 2 pages. Every article was well written, but it was concise and begged for my attention with it’s short span.
It had great ideas. It was chalked full of really easy-to-do things with my kids. From bible study ideas for my 8 year old, to play-time ideas for my 7 year old, and interesting do around the house craft things for my 5 year old. I walked away with ideas after reading it. Not something I can say with every magazine I subscribe to.

So here’s the thing. ParentLife has sent me a free magazine, and they are of course a site sponsor with purchased advertisement space on the side bar; but I really love their product. I hope that you’ll take some time to read my advertiser Disclosure Statement, and you’ll read that I don’t let just any organization run ads on my site. ParentLife is something I believe in, and after looking at this new re-design my wheels are already spinning with ways I could use this with some of my new and visiting parents at Trinity.

ParentLife has even offered to giveaway an entire 12 month subscription to their magazine to one of my readers. Yes, you read that right. A FREE 12-month subscription! There are a few 1,000 ways to run a blog contest, but I’m lazy and will make this totally random using Random.org to help me sort all the entries to find our winner. So to enter I’ll le t you leave a comment right here on this blog post to be entered. And with this post going out on Monday, I’ll let you leave a comment every day for 5 entries total. So to recap, you have 5 days to leave a comment on 5 different days to get your name in the drawing up to 5 times. Get it?

~~See you on Friday when I announce the winner of the free 12 month subscription to ParentLife.~~

We have our winner: http://www.jonathancliff.com/2011/03/parentlife-magazine-winner/

In the mean time take some blogging time to visit www.lifeway.com/parentlifeblog and read what the ParentLife people are producing for all the blog readers! It’s gonna be a great week. Now Go!

Doing Hard Things

February 8, 2011 in Personal with 7 Comments

“It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace the new. But there is no real security in what is no longer meaningful. There is more security in the adventurous and exciting, for in movement there is life, and in change there is power.” -Alan Cohen

So where to begin? My family and I have made a pretty gigantic change in the past two weeks, and it’s something that I think is worth sharing. You see, I have a pretty comfortable life. I’m not claiming to spend my afternoons sipping iced tea beside a swimming pool; but my life is pretty great. I’ve been married to my best friend, Starr, for over 12 years, and we’ve created this wonderful family to share life with. We live in a house we can afford, and drive two cars to shuttle around town. My kids don’t have the latest and greatest of anything, but still have more than about 99% of the rest of the world’s population.

Life was moving along swimmingly, with all of us settled into a station of comfort and ease. Then Starr and I began to get uncomfortable with how easy everything seemed to be.

When was the last time we stepped out in faith for something great?

How are we truly creating a better story for our family?

We preach, share, and teach family…family…family…, but how do we really live this out when not in the friendly confines of our church?

So we begin to look into something that we had always talked about. Adoption. We looked into it, but it didn’t feel immediate enough. I have no doubt that it will happen down the road, but felt we needed something else in the moment we were living in. Then we thought of something that was so unbelievably scary, that it almost seemed crazy. Fostering. We began this journey some 6 months ago, with endless parenting classes; and doing whatever we had to do to secure our license. Then two weeks ago, they arrived.

Two children that don’t look anything like my own, yet are in need of what my family has to offer. Not what I have as a father to offer, or what Starr has to offer as a mother…but what our entire family could offer. I’ve watched in amazement as my children have influenced these foster kids. They are changing hearts with their kindness.

And it’s still a journey that will grow more and more with each day, but it never would have happened if we would have settled for the comfortable. The desire to do hard things has changed our lives forever. Sometimes in our fear of what the future could hold, we settel for the easy. But here’s the thing I’m learning.

Easy things don’t hold nearly the potential as doing hard things.

Dear Parent Letters // Talk about Church

February 1, 2011 in Ministry with 4 Comments

The following is one part in a series of letters to Parents. All of it is meant with the most serious of intentions, and is not directed at any one parent. It is simply the writing of a man that has worked with children and their parents in a church setting for many years now.

Dear Parents,

You attend church, and all of us that work to prepare exciting environments for your children are thrilled that you do. It’s obvious to us that you value what the Body of Christ can bring to your life, and to your familie’s life by attending together. For that be commended. However, please allow me to humbly remind you that church attendance is only the first part of spiritually leading your family. This letter is written to encourage you to talk about your experience at church with your children. Do you ever ask what they really learned? Not just if they had fun (which is an equally valid question, just not the most important information to get from them.) Do you ever tell your kids what you learned? Do you ever think to fall back on what your kid has learned when the situation arises during the week?

Here what can happen if you fail to talk about what happened at church this weekend.

First, you can communicate that what we do at church is separate from the rest of our lives. // As parents we should be teaching our kids that God is the center of our lives and worthy of organizing all that we do around glorifying Him. But when we fail to talk about what happens at church, we are quietly telling them that what happens at church stays at church. This isn’t Vegas; it’s important to live out what we learn at church outside of the church walls! Work to destroy the walls between church attendance and real life.
Second, you’re telling them that you didn’t learn anything. // You did learn something right? You are grateful for your experience in worship, right? You should be learning something, or being encouraged in some way with each encounter (and if you’re not please talk to someone.) Share with your children what you are learning, and how thankful you are for what God has showed you.
Third, to not talk about church is to miss a key step in spiritually leading your children. // That’s a daunting phrase right there, isn’t it? “Spiritually leading your children.” Throw out all those images of nightly devotionals, and long family prayer services. You might get to that point eventually, but right now we are talking about just taking a small but deliberate next step toward nurturing their spirituality. When you fail to ask children what they’ve learned at church you are missing the easiest of easy times to talk to your kid about spiritual things. Take advantage of the awesome team of volunteers and leaders that teach your kids each weekend, and just use what they’ve already taught your children to start conversations. I bet some of them will even put things in your hands to help this happen!

It’s not too late to start talking with you kids today about what happened at church. Please don’t miss the opportunity that you have each time you attend church to start spiritual conversations at home with your children.

Sincerely,

Your Friendly Neighborhood Children’s Pastor

Dear Parent Letters // Church as a Punishment

January 27, 2011 in Ministry with 10 Comments

Parent Discipline

Dear Parents,

You love your kid. That much is obvious by your willingness to set rules and then hold your children to obedience to those rules. As a pastor to children, I commend your commitment to follow-up your parenting rules with consequences for disobedient actions. Consequences are good things.

However, suspending your child from church is not a good consequence. It sets the wrong precedent. Well-meaning as it is, for many reasons it is the wrong consequence. Obviously it’s a different scenario all together if your punishment is to suspend them from a lock-in, extracurricular activity, or other church-related activity. But when the church doors are open to teaching, mentoring, accountability, and the right kind of Godly relationships…please don’t keep your child from this as punishment.

This what I normally hear in the “witholding church as punishment” dialogue:

“[Insert Name] was not obedient at school this week, and so I told him he has to sit with me in the sanctuary. I know he really loves church, and I just couldn’t let him attend with all of this bad behavior recently.”

What is wrong with this statement? Here is what you are basically saying to them.

You aren’t good enough to go to church, and I will use the adult service as punishment for your crimes.

Why is this bad? It’s bad because you are telling you child a few things when you do this. You are telling them that:

Adult Worship service is boring and is a worthy punishment. // Your adult worship services may indeed be boring, and if they are I hope that you work to make sure that you find a place to worship that isn’t boring. When you this strategy as a punishment, you are telling your kid that church is something to be “suffered through.” Why would you want to make that impression on your kids? That’s right, you wouldn’t.
Learning God’s Word is NOT something important. // I know, I know…you think this is crazy and believe that God’s Word is important. But when you deny your child the opportunity to learn God’s Word from godly people who have prepared all this week for the moment that your child would experience on their visit…you are communicating to your child that the lesson he would have learned is not valuable or life-changing.
God doesn’t want you when you’re disobedient. // This might be a stretch, but hang in there with me on this one. When you punish disobedience by witholding opportunities to learn about God, you are tying obedience/disobedience with God’s acceptance of us. Our Father in heaven has promised to forgive us of ALL confessed sin, and he has said that nothing will ever separate us from his love, and he has said that he has redeemed us from our past mistakes by sending his Son to pay the price for our sin. I say all that to say this…please be careful how you represent the most grace-giving, loving heavenly father in your discipline to your children.

I know that you love your kids, and you are trying to do your very best to lead them spiritually. But from your Children’s Pastor’s to your heart let me please remind you that there are many, many, many more creative consequences for disobedience. May I suggest suspension from television, video games, sporting events, after-school snacks, and I could go on and on and on?

Sincerely,

Your Friendly Neighborhood Children’s Pastor

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