Edmunds Update: New directions

This is the back story to possibly one of the most important new aspects of our ministry here in Mexico. We have known for some time that the Church in the US is losing young people at the age where in most families church attendance is at the discretion of the young person (6 in 10 by the time they reach 15 years old). The situation in Mexico is very similar, with one major difference. Many churches don't have cool youth groups or children's ministries to give young people a reason to stay. I had thought that this could be a future aim of our ministry here, but over the last year God clearly turned up the volume for us to hear the need more clearly. We have acted accordingly.

Shortly after we arrived in country last year, we started attending various churches in our area. We go to different ones because many of our Mexican pastors/board members have churches relatively close by, and this gives us more insight into their ministry and how we can position ourselves to be helpful to them. Last summer we visited a church close to us that only has 2 rooms for church, one for the worship service and another small room (10' x 6)' for small children. For elementary school-aged children, the church sets up a table outside the church on the street, and they watch YouTube Bible story videos on a laptop computer. When I realized that this was the only curriculum that this church had for children I was not surprised, as when I further investigated other churches, who also have 50-100 members, none of them had access to any curriculum other than what they could make up themselves. So last year we began to pray for a way to bring children's curriculum, training and materials to the churches here. Amazingly, Emmanuel Faith Community Church in Escondido sent us boxes of Sunday School craft materials, color templates, shirts, and caps which we distributed to churches here. Theses resources were graciously received.

In a previous post you may remember us mentioning a family, who we had met in March, who are one of the producers for Willow Creek's Leadership Summit in Latin America. This amazing family also has extensive experience in children's ministry and we had been talking about how we could start a conference here in this area for children's ministry teachers. You might be asking yourself, "Doesn't Mexico have children's ministry conferences?" Yes, there are conferences, but only in Mexico City and for most folks that isn't financially feasible. Plus, we know now that the best training isn't done by someone watching a teacher, but by practicing what they are learning. When we had asked one of our Mexican leaders about how many times he has had the opportunity to take his teachers to a children's ministry training, he replied that in the 14 years he's been in his location, there have only been 2 children's ministry conferences offered in this area in the last 14 years. For those of you who have ever taught children in church, imagine having to wait 7 years to advance your teaching skill.

Back in January, another church contacted us to see if they could help with VBS this summer. Remember how we have been praying for this since last August? They sent down their missions leader and children's (!) pastor to scope out the area and church we do VBS with each summer. When I heard that they were sending their children's pastor I immediately called him to explain to him the need we have down here for ANYTHING to do with children's ministry resources. Turned out that he already has an international ministry for children that is easy to teach, and he was willing to give us an entire year of his curriculum for FREE! All we had to do was to translate it. We quickly assembled a team here to translate the training manual and the entire 1st year of curriculum, some 350 pages in all. A great thank you to those of you who donate the funds for us to bring these conferences to pastors all year long. Now that the translation is done, it will cost $20 to bring and entire year's worth of curriculum to one church.

Training in Tepic, Nayarit

First Children's Ministry Training Conferences

So as not to overwhelm Pastor DJ, we only invited 2 pastors and their teachers to each 2 day training in two cities here in Nayarit. When we held the training however, we had over 50 people at each training with over 7 churches represented! We had clearly found an open door. We had scheduled the trainings in the afternoons and evenings so that people could come after work, but after the first training day, we were booked solid meeting with teachers and pastors in the "off" times from the mornings until the next training time, and then even after the training was finished, into the night. The second conference in Las Varas, Nayarit was even larger with 4 churches attending, and again more after-training meetings taking place with pastors and teachers who had questions regarding implementation.