A Change of Format

A few weeks ago I blogged about how I was inspired to try a new format in Adventure Mountain second service. We've had quite a few kids start attending two services because of the addition of adult education classes on Sunday mornings. So this week we gave the new format a try, and it worked great!

We've been using Promiseland's "Making it Connect" curriculum. We're still using it during both services, but now implement it differently second service. After activity stations, the kids were dismissed to small groups for Kid Connect time. Then we had worship, followed by the pre-teach of the large group lesson. A minute or two into the teach portion, the curriculum called for the teacher to read that day's Bible story. Instead, we had the small groups go over the Bible story themselves by looking it up in their leader's Bible (and kids who brought their Bibles looked it up too). Then the large group teacher continued the teaching until they were supposed to read the memory verse. Once again, we had the small groups look it up instead. The teacher finished the lesson (omitting the post-teach), and the groups were supposed to do their small group activity. Then we'd end with the post teach for large group.

We figured it would take extra time for the additional breaks, and began things 5 minutes earlier than normal. But our kids got so into the new format that we ran out of time to do the small group activity at all! The response from the leaders was great. Their kids loved looking up the lesson in the Bible. And the large group teacher had a much easier time keeping the kids' attention because they didn't have to listen for such a long period of time. The only improvement that needs to be made in that area, is have the small groups not spread out as far when it's time to do the verse look up, or remind them to come back in closer for the teaching time.

I'm excited to see how this new format continues to improve!