We have all had a rough year, but pastors have had to pivot in a way they have never been trained to pastor! Many are working out of their comfort zone and expertise. Pastors need to feel some love and appreciation now more than ever! Here are some Physically Distant friendly ideas:
  • Download one of the postcard prompts and send it out to your families. Ask them to send you a picture of it filled out. Use it in online worship or print as booklet.
  • Take your pastor's photo and have it made to a cardboard cut-out. Pick and outdoor location and invite people to stop by and take a selfie with the cut-out. They can actually get close to the cut-out for a picture. Collect pictures and share them during worship.
  • Collaborate with your Children's ministry team and Youth Ministry and organize a dinner delivery to the pastor's home from a restaurant in your town.
There are tons of resources you can use for free. Also, if you have a United Methodist Women's group, celebrating Children's Sabbath is on their list of things to do in order to meet one of their recognition criteria. They could work with you to help create resources, as volunteers on the day of the event etc. Officially, Children's Sabbath is October 16-18, 2020. 
All Saint's Sunday is Nov. 1

You may want to pick a couple of pages out of this book to share during a children's message or for small group activity. Below the book link is a video of the author talking about the book.
The link above is to purchase the viewing rights for the movie Kids and the Saints. This would be great for your 4th and 5th graders. While the picture book I'm a Saint in the Making pictured above, would be better for your 1st-3rd graders.
I don't normally write curriculum for programming, because there is usually so much good stuff out there, but during a pandemic we have to do things differently. Very few publishers have Advent and Christmas altered curriculum to help a Children's Program in a pandemic. So I spent some time creating some user friendly lessons and brainstorming with a talented team. Thank you to Karen Swales, Christi Crawford, Jessica Butler and Katie McLean for the zoom creative sessions and sharing what you have created with for the conference ministries for Advent and Christmas. There are LOTS of choices and I hope you find one or two that you can fit to your church. If anything maybe it gets your creative juices flowing!
I have created 5 social media memes that you could post each week of Advent as a family devotion. They are excerpts from Traci Smith's new book Faithful Families for Advent and Christmas. You may have seen me share her book on our Facebook page. In her book, she gives permission to use five excerpts from her book on social media. Her book is great to recommend to families on how to make simple Christmas traditions spiritual.
This is a 5 week multi-age Advent Sunday School curriculum that can be sent home, taught in-person and most importantly both types of families get to learn the same lesson.
Safe Community outreach!
Lots of information and supply links to help you plan.
Karen Swales has written you a Zoom Christmas Program complete
 with Zoom backgrounds.
Stars of Wonder by Rev. Rebecca Bruff would not be a book to use in a ministry setting for instruction, but it is a sixty page fictional story about four magi children journeying to the Christ Child that is a wonderful read aloud. It is full of whimsy, and crafted storytelling. The illustrations are fill the pages with cozy colors. It would be a great bedside book for parents and grandparents to read a couple of pages each night before bed. Children will see themselves in the each of the young Magi. Click the picture to order as it would be a great grandparents book.
Emily from Theokat Kids will be releasing her TWEEN Advent lessons. I believe they post in about a week. It is not often we get some great material for 5th and 6th grade. Keep checking CPT site.
Advent in a Box from Ferncliff and Tanako!
(This is also a fundraiser to help the camps during such lean income opportunity,
because of Covid19)

Get ready for Christmas with Advent-In-A-Box! Prepare for Christ’s coming with a month of activities that are fun and meaningful! Two Arkansas Camps have partnered to present Advent-In-A-Box for both families and older adults. Advent-In-A-Box will provide tons of Advent activities in a time when our holiday traditions have to look a bit different. Advent-In-A-Box will hold 4 sections of activities, one for each week of Advent. These advent activities will be low stress for busy folks, encourage family and community connection, and help you prepare for Christmas! 

The activities in Advent-In-A-Box are meant to be done flexibly over the course of the week, some individually and some with others. In addition, there will be a surprise gift to help you celebrate Christ’s birth on Christmas! We are offering a voluntary three-tier fee program. All Advent-In-A-Box kits will include the same content no matter what tier you choose.


*Order by October 12th to ensure availability* All boxes will be shipped before November 20th.
Dates to remember:
  • Beyond 2021 Jan.22 & 21
  • Quest September 25,2021