Looking for books to nurture children’s faith?

Advent will soon be here.  Are you looking for good books to share with children and youth in your congregation, family and friends?  Come visit Morton Presbyterian Church’s Young Disciples Book Fair online.  Its goal is to help you find books that nurture faith and to promote reading in general.  Reading together is a great way to cultivate spirituality and strengthen relationships.  We are doing this through childrensbookstore.com, an independent online book store that only sells children’s books. 

Here are the details:

• Dates: November 11-November 25, 2019
• Go online to www.childrensbookstore.com/morton-presbyterian-church. You can view the site now.
• Look through our posted lists of books on topics like “Who is God?” and “Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany.” Scroll to the bottom of the page and click on links to book lists by reading level.
• Search for books in the search box at the top right of the web page, or click on “Shop Books” near the top left to find books by subject, series, and more.  More than 200,000 children’s and young adult titles are available.
• Add books to the shopping cart, check out, and have the books shipped to your home.
• During the dates above, Morton Church will receive 30% of every book purchased.  After the book fair dates, you can still order through our page, and the church will receive 15% of every book purchased.

The web page will stay active after the fair, and people can continue to use the book lists and order.  We would love to hear your book recommendations as we continue to update the page.  What books would you love to place in every child or youth’s hands?

The book lists we created for the page are based on books we have used and loved, or they have been recommended by another source.  For example, the current issue of Christian Century has a list of books helpful for talking about difficult topics with children.  Read more here.

You can also find book lists, reviews, and recommendations for using children’s books in ministry at Storypath.com and Picturebooktheology.com.  I consult both of these sites regularly.

We are glad to share these resources with you.  If you choose to make purchases through our book page, thank you so much!  Money that we receive will help support and expand Morton Church’s ministries with children and youth in the church and community, which include Backpack Buddies at Coopers Elementary School to feed hungry bodies and summer book drives to feed hungry minds.

Please feel free to share this post far and wide.  Thank you!

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What to expect when you have children in worship

Laura and her Grandma at worship.

I am passing along two good articles about having realistic expectations of children during worship:

Christina Embree has so many good resources on her blog, Refocus.org.  Her post is Kids in Church: What Do you expect is going to happen?

Building Faith is another helpful site.  The post is entitled Children’s Behavior in Worship: Does Your Congregation Have Realistic Expectations?

 

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Small Churches Bless Children

Here is a post from a young pastor,  Rebecca Gresham-Kesner, who sees the wonderful gifts that small communities of Jesus can offer children.  It’s entitled Smaller Congregations are Great Places for Kids to Grow Up!  She is definitely preaching to the choir with me, and she gives good examples of what being a beloved community of people of different ages looks like.

This post pairs with one I wrote on a similar theme: Give a Small Church the Chance to Nurture Your Children.

We rejoice when God’s youngest are among us!

 

 

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