September 20, 2008

Dear Co-workers in Christ for the ministry of "the least of these",

We praise and thank God in CBF for the great work and moving of the Holy Spirit among our young people. We believe this is the time of God's blessing and the time of revival and change among our children. It is our sincere prayer that all CBF children may truly meet Jesus during thier time in CBF and commit their lives to him. We greatly look forward to this great work and your co-working with us.

This is the first CBF NEWSLETTER that we want to send out so you may know exactly the direction, activities and prayers we have for the future of CBF. We very much hope to involve you in CBF and hope that this may be a great step to develop unity in prayer and purpose among us. We thank God for our 20 precious teachers and 16 classes this year and really hope to keep you informed and involved in your child's spiritual growth. May God richly bless us in this new year to truly reach children and expand his kingdom though our elementary schools and each of our children one by one.

Purpose:
To inform you about our New Curriculum, Direction for CBF, Future Plans & Prayer Topics. Also to give you an opportunity to meet your child's teacher.

Schedule:
12pm Presentation on CBF Goal, Direction & Prayer ~ 20min
12:30 Break-out session between teachers and parents. ~20min

The Break-out session we hope will be an opportunity for you to discuss with your child's teacher about what they are learning, so that you can also be part of this learning process at home reinforcing what is being learned and going deeper into it. We also hope to learn your prayer topics for your child so that we can help them individually and be more effective in truly growing them spiritually. We want you to help us help your child.

Parent Participation Sign-up
In CBF we have realized that without working together with you the parents there is such a great limit to what we can do. It is our truest desire that we can really reach each child at a deep spiritual level and really befriend and truly help and grow each child. To do this we desperately need your help. We need parents to be involved in CBF but we are not asking for much. We will have a sign-up and we would like to ask you to sign-up to serve one event or to attend worship service. This would be an active serving role for just one day. It may include cooking, or keeping a good environment in worship or helping M. Rebecca with trophies for contests, etc. We greatly appreciate your serving and having you around will really help the children to know that you support and are involved with their CBF time.

Capture the Flag Teambuilding Activity Next Saturday 9/27, 12pm
To start off the new school year right, we will be having a teacher and class capture the flag game at Warren Park after CBF worship service. We really need every child to attend so that we can start the year off right and build bonds between teacher and class, while having lots of fun!

Flag Football after CBF Activity, Warren Park, Starting 10/11, 12pm
With all the excitement of Perdue and our double duty of CBF SBC, we didn't have much opportunity to organize a good summer program of games. But now it's the SEASON FOR FOOTBALL! This will be flag football, no contact, and will be after CBF each week. Sign-up forms will be given to children in the coming weeks. Participants should remember to pack a lunch, food will not be provided.

Bible Movies after CBF Activity
CBF recently purchased the NEST Bible Stories series of 50 Bible story DVD's we began showing them last year and it was very successful. We will begin this probably December or when it is clear the weather is too cold to continue football. Participants should remember to pack a lunch, food will not provided. Movies last about 45min.

Hallelujah Light Festival, October 30th? (tentative)
Last year's festival was a great success, we thank God for the inspiration and hard work of Amy Stasinos and Sarah Yu. This great program inherited from Toledo CBF is an alternative to Halloween and includes a brief, pointed message, followed by LOTS OF GAMES, with LOTS OF CANDY!! Kids are encouraged to come in a costume and have lots of fun and fellowship! If you would like to get involved with this talk us or Sh. Amy or Sarah.

Thanksgiving Activity, November 22nd (tentative)
We are planning to do some big craft activity for Thanksgiving. We have not begun to discuss this yet, but the "Valentines to Jesus" in February, was such a great success; so, we want to plan a similar activity to help our children to truly give thanks for all that they have. If you have any great ideas please shoot us an email or call us, we'd welcome any ideas you have!

Teacher Training
It is our prayer that we may provide the best spiritual education for your children. This past year our primary focus was developing a comprehensive Biblical curriculum for all grades and our teachers rose to the task and prepared a huge amount of materials which we are now putting to great use and which we will show you an overview of at the PTA meeting.
In this next year our focus is on teacher training. We hope to try to find worshops and training opportunities in vibrant Sunday School ministries to learn what many well established children's ministries are doing and how we can transform our CBF into the kind of vibrant, exciting, life-giving ministry that gets kids excited about meeting Jesus. We're praying to especially grow in our teaching technique, to teach at an age appropriate level that really reaches kids at their level and helps them to comprehend God in the way that they can understand.

Children's Discipleship Programs for upper grades
We want to look into discipleship programs that some ministries use to train children in discipleship, in the disciplines of Bible reading, prayer, and mission. As our ministry is excellent in the area of disciple raising we want to begin to think about programs for really discipling children who are ready to get serious about their spiritual life.

CBF Shepherding
We are praying about having CBF Shepherding, wherein older children are responsible for a number of younger children during worship, to help them to learn to pray and listen to and recieve one word from the message. We really are trying to find more ways to encourage the children to take an active role and take ownership of their worship service.

With all these activities and prayer topics, your input is very valuable to us. Please freely tell us any great ideas you have, concerns or prayers. Thank you for your participation, we are looking forward to a great year and great co-working with you to grow and bless your children in this year.