Guest Blog Posting by the husband! Enjoy!

When is it time to yell BUCKETS?

A little over a year ago, my wife and I added one of the best inventions known to man into our household…the DVR. It has freed-up tons of time and eliminated hours of mindless commercials and promos. You basically select the programs you’d like to view and at a time of your choice, you can watch them while fast forwarding through all the promos and commercials.

It was during this time that we realized that we’ve been so conditioned to sit through commercials that we noticed, (or my wife faithfully noticed), I wasn’t grabbing for the remote to forward past the borage of products. In case you don’t know, it’s one of those MAN things that you don’t like to be told how to “drive” your remote, so we decided to come up with a code word for “hey dummy your watching commercials unnecessarily” or “change the channel”. Trying to find something totally unrelated I chose “BUCKETS”.

Whenever we are watching TV and I hear the word “BUCKETS” I’m scrambling for the remote… time to change the channel or fast forward. Just today I became aware that God many times is yelling “BUCKETS” and we are so stuck in our routine that we ignore or are unaware of the need to change or fast forward. The world is spinning at break-neck speed and the church or even just Children’s Ministry is tootling along in its same routine. We become so focused on program, curriculum and process, and we lose awareness of on our intentions, relevancy and creativity.

We can only stay in God’s perfect plan is if we are willing to listen to the cry of “BUCKETS” and change channels or move the program forward. The bucket cry will happen, you just need to choose to react and engage.
Is the vision of your Children’s Ministry to be a “maintenance ministry- one in which you have a clipboard with a check-off list? Or are you ahead of your ministry focus by questioning the purpose and motives in each step ? “Buckets!” Now go.