June 4, 2016June 2, 2016 Peter Witkowski Vacation Bible School

VBS 2016: What You Need To Know

Quick Overview:

submerged-blog This year, FBCE’s VBS is diving down deep into the truths of scripture. All five days, we will be looking at what the gospel has to say about our hearts. All kids, Pre-K – 8th grade, are invited to be a part of this amazing event. To register your kid(s), visit fbceastman.com. VBS will kick off on June 6th and end on June 10. Each night will start with the worship rally at 6:30PM and end with class room discussions at 9PM. If you would like to help with VBS 2016, please contact Peter Witkowski at 478-220-1084. (To help with VBS, you must be a member of FBCE in good standing.) Lastly, all VBS shirts, Cd’s, devotionals, and teacher materials can be purchased in the VBS headquarters located in CMC Room C103. It’s time to get excited!

What’s New:

Preregistration will close on Sunday, June 5, at 1PM. If you don’t preregister, you can still attend VBS. You just need to register the first day you come.
All VBS T-shirts, gear, and resources are located in Children’s Ministry Center in room C103.
The Busses will be running, but only kids age 4-12 will be allowed to ride the bus. All kids are welcome to attend. But kids under 4 or over 12 must find alternative transportation to FBCE.
Instead of having a meal, kids will be served a hearty and fun snack Monday-Thursday.
All preregistered kids (4’s-8^th grade) will be dropped off in the sanctuary.
All kids 3 and an under will not go to the worship rally. They will be dropped off in their rooms.
On Friday night, we will just have the VBS celebration. All kids will sit with their
parents in the sanctuary as we review our amazing week together. Bus kids must be accompanied by an adult to ride the bus on Friday night. The service will be immediately followed by a hotdog dinner complete with ice cream! On Friday, our closing service will start at 6:30. Nursery will be available for those 2 and under.
To serve on the VBS team you must be 14 or older and a FBCE church member in good standing.

Pray:

Please join us in praying for all those helping and for all the kids that are coming.

Pray for safety.
Ask God to give all of our teachers wisdom, patience, and perseverance.
Ask God to bless all who will be teaching with clarity and faithfulness.
Pray that no one will hinder the proclamation of the gospel.
Pray for God to save the lost.

June 2, 2016June 2, 2016 Peter Witkowski Children's Ministry

3 Lessons Church Leaders Can Learn From the Emoji Bible

The King James only crowd is finally cool again. Well at the very least, they have emojis. Earlier this week, the very first emoji Bible was released on ITunes. And it’s based on the KJV. How cool? As the anonymous translator told one newspaper,

“I think if we were to fast-forward 100 years, an ‘emoji’ Bible of some kind would exist, so I thought, ‘Why not try and make it?

In short, the latest attempt to produce a contextualized translation of the scriptures that today’s adults can relate to has popped out an emoji Bible. If you want to try it out for yourself: click here to turn your favorite verses into the emoji translation.

While I do not think anyone has to switch over to the Emoji Bible, we do need to realize what it signifies. It signifies that our world is changing. If we hope to reach the next generation with the scriptures, we Christians must be willing to embrace social media, emojis, and whatever else comes next. Believe it or not, the Emoji Bible is targeting people between the ages of 17-35. If Millennials are speaking emoji, what will their kids be speaking?

Now, I do not think we need to embrace emojis as a major form of biblical communication. The written word carries power that pictures cannot. The medieval church found this out the hard way. All those beautiful stained glass windows were placed in Cathedrals to help the poor understand the Bible. But those pictures lacked the gospel inspired insight of the Holy Spirit. Even today, millions of people interact with those pictures and have no clue what they really mean. God’s word is the power to salvation. No picture or group of pictures can take the place of the words found in Genesis, Psalms, Isaiah, Matthew, or Romans. In many ways, appealing to emojis is not so much a leap into the future as a step back into the past. (Nothing new under the sun). We already tried the picture book approach and should stay with the written word. But at the end of the day, I am not too concerned about the Emoji Bible’s effect on biblical translation. As Christ said, in Matthew 5:18,

4 truly, i say 2 u, until ✨✨✨ & 🌎 pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the law until all is accomplished.

3 Lesson

The Emoji Bible represents that our culture is reachable if we are willing to be fluid and creative. Again, I am not talking about doctrine or about the scriptures. God’s word is God’s word in every age.

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever – Heb. 13:8.

I am discussing our methods of communication. Here our three things the Emoji Bible teaches us:

1. We can connect with our culture

Did you notice that Emoji Bible was not published by Lifeway, Zondervan, or Crossway? It was self-published. The days of taking years and months to respond to change are over. Anyone can communicate at any time. As the church, we need to embrace our technological world. We need to blog, host video conferences, and tweet. We need to be willing to quickly and thoughtfully engage our culture. If we wait till Sunday and Wednesday to influence people, we will reach fewer and fewer men and women. We need to be ready to spontaneously connect with the world around us as needs arise.

2.We need to be embrace to change

As I said earlier, I do not think the Emoji bible is a huge step in the development of Bible translations. But it is a great attempt at going with the culture. And we need to learn from its author. We need to seek to reach people where they are and with their language. If everyone is on Instagram or Snapchat, then we should go to Instagram and Snapchat. If people start communicating primarily through Facebook live streaming, then we should start live streaming. The Emoji Bible is showing us that we need to be willing to let the tools of yesteryear fade. Instead pridefully clinging to what has worked, we need to embrace the spontaneity of this generation and our kids’ generation. We need to be willing to change.

3.We need to be creative

I know the Emoji Bible is not a great work of art. I know it’s not going to be placed in the Louvre anytime soon. But it is super creative. People are talking about it because it represents out of the box thinking. It represents creativity. It represents something new. We and the people in our churches need to be creative. We need to be finding new ways to communicate the amazing story of the gospel. It’s not boring. Our God’s not boring. We need to reflect God’s character when we communicate the word.

Final Thoughts

I do not know what language our kids will speak. But I am sure of this: to reach kids, to reach this current generation of millennials with the gospel, we must embrace the methodology behind the Emoji Bible. We must seek to reach our culture by being willing to change and by embracing creativity!

May 26, 2016May 26, 2016 Peter Witkowski Children's Ministry, Discipleship

Should We Excommunicate The Kids?

excommunicate blog Church discipline is making a comeback. And it should be! For a church to be a church it must affirm the purity of the gospel and the purity of the the God’s people. God is holy. All those who truly love him, will seek to purify themselves. And when a man or woman continues in sin and refuses to repent after being approach by two or three witness, the sinner should be brought before the church. Hopefully at some point during the discipline process, the man or women will repent. But If no repentance ensues, the sinner must be kicked out of the church and treated as an unbeliever. Such are the commands found in Mathew 18: 15-17.

If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.

But should we make our kids walk through church discipline? In the Old Testament, parents could take their unrepentant and disrespectful kids to the elders and have them stoned. Can we and should we take our kids before the church and have them excommunicated? The easy answer is, it depends.

Um…No

In some cases, the answer is a flat out no. If the child is not a member of the church, then we do not discipline them. All children come into the world with a sin nature. All kids are sinners and all act like sinners. If they have not repented and accepted Jesus, we cannot expect them to respond to God’s divine means of repentance and restoration. Expecting church discipline to bring an unbeliever to repentance would be like expecting a soccer team to thrive in the NFL. It’s not going to go well. They play by different rules.

For this reason and others, some churches are very slow to admit children into membership. Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington D.C. will only baptize people who are 18 or older. And while I do not think we have to make 18 a special benchmark age, our churches should be slow and methodical when considering children for baptism and church membership. If a kid is not a believer and not a member of a church, they are not subject to church discipline. Yes, we should pray with them and for them. We should counsel them with the word (evangelize them). But we should not discipline them in front of the church.

Why…Yes

In other cases, the answer is a resounding yes! If a child or a youth has made a credible profession of faith, has been baptized, and has been admitted into the church as a member, then he can be disciplined. If the child refuses to repent of lying, slander, sexual immorality, or any other sin, then their parents should practice church discipline. Their parents should involve the church, bringing a trusted friend or pastor into the situation. Lord willing, the child will respond well and repent. But if he does not, the child should be taken before the church. And if that still does not drive the child to his knees, he should be excommunicated.

Final Thoughts

In short, we should not hastily kick our kids out of the church. But if we are going to have biblical, healthy churches, we must be willing to excommunicate those who refuse to repent even our kids and teenagers. As 1 Corinthians 5:11 says,

But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler—not even to eat with such a one.

Because church discipline is such a monumental and necessary thing and because following Christ is no easy accomplishment, we must not hastily rush kids down the aisle, baptize them, and admit them into membership. We must make sure our kids understand what they are doing. The church is no country club. And if we do enroll a child, we must be willing to discipline him. Are you ready to excommunicate the kids?