Church has been unexpectedly enjoyable… that might sound strange (or may be not!) let me explain.

Looking through the job description in deciding to work at St. John’s, I was keen on the sermon preaching, keen on the occasional service leading, being around to meet and greet at sunday service and so on…I was a little less enthusiastic about ‘Fight Club’, which is what they call their sunday school for y3-6 boys.

so yes, the name sounds cool, but it is still a group of hyperactive boys around 10 years old who have an extreme reaction to the suggestion that they have a girlfriend.

I’ve never done kids church, i dont particuarly have any skills in dealing with (read: controlling) kids, and on a whole I just dont like them that much! (sorry to be so brutally honest, but they pick their nose, can scream at ultrasonic pitches, and have the attention span of a goldfish)

But that has been the surprise – Fight Club has been a real highlight of Sunday for me! The other two guy leaders are sensational and have made it very easy for me with all my inability to slot in. They are fantastic with the kids and I’ve been really impressed with the work they done at making kids church work for this particular demographic.

The background is that Fight Club was created to try to address the problem of guys in this age group almost without fail leaving Sunday school because the program missed the mark. mostly it was too much about making craft and felt pretty girly.

So they came up with a format which seems to work really well: We start by kicking a soccer ball around for 15min (=run them into the ground and wear them out early) followed by one of the leaders reading a small chunk of the Bible. We’re working through Colossians at the moment…this gets followed with a really short talk about the passage, a few questions then praying. This takes around 10min of the program…which just about works given aforementioned goldfish-esq attention span.

Then we’ve been doing what every young Sydneysider should: build a replica of the harbour bridge out of paddle pop sticks.

I think what works is that it is realistic about what interests guys that age, chasing a ball constructing stuff. and realistic about how much space they have to engage with information and Christian stuff. I think they like the name and like having a group of their own with no girls too. It has been exciting to see these young guys really engage with the Bible though. It was brilliant to hear them questioning and throwing around what it mean for Jesus to be the image of the invisible God for example last Sunday.

Good stuff. Fight Club, by the way was chosen in reference to 1 Timothy 6:12:

“Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called when you made your good confession in the presence of many witnesses.”

We use it as a memory verse for them each week.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 3rd, 2008 at 3:36 am and is filed under Reuben & Jodie's Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.