I was looking for some very short videos I could send out to my volunteers to encourage them in the work they do, and to help them pick up skills to improve their knowledge and to help them grown in confidence when they served on my teams. I couldn't find what I wanted, so I took up the challenge myself and started a video series to do exactly that. The videos cover a variety of topics from the importance of registration all the way through to planning your own Sunday morning schedule. There is information about managing challenging behaviour and the importance of taking your role as a leader seriously.

God's Animal Kingdom is a 6 week teaching series I wrote, learning Biblical principles from the Animal Kingdom. Each week you learn five fun facts about the animal in question and then see how the key fact relates to the memory verse for the day. For example week 1 feature the Flamingo, which is naturally white, but because of what it eats is transformed into a striking pink. This reminds us of Romans 12:2 which tells us to not be conformed to this world, but to be transformed by changing the way we think. For a free sample email [email protected]

Week 1: Flamingo

Week 2: Tiger

Week 3: Geese

Week 4: Panda

Week 5: Parrot

Week 6: Squirrel 

I first got into puppetry in the 1990s because of the children's work at our church which my parents were running at the time. What I didn't know back then was after spending 15 years as a full time youth worker I would return to children's work. Now I spend much of my time writing teaching material for children's work in a multi-site church. I oversee the youth work as well and coordinate the teaching themes between the two. Children's work is a very different skill to learn and at times feels like a far more delicate balance than youth work - but that may just be because I am more experienced doing youth work. Having been regularly writing children's teaching material for over a year now, I am just starting to work on making the teaching available. If you are interested in taking a look at a beta-test session please let me know, I'm keen to gather more feedback before launching into any product launches. The first teaching mini-series I am working on packaging up is called 'God's Animal Kingdom'.