Building Foundations Curriculum: The Christmas Tree Advent

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Transcript:

Hi, this is Pastor Tamera Kraft for the next few weeks. I'm going to share excerpts of a podcast site interview I did with my publishing company about my curriculum, Building Pentecostal Foundations. Today's curriculum is The Christmas Tree Advent. If you would like to buy The Christmas Tree Advent, I'm going to give you a code to get 20% off until the end of November. The code is CHRISTMAS1 (all caps)

Michelle: This is Michelle Levigne,

Tamera: and this is Tamera Lynn Kraft.

Michelle: This week, and for the next several episodes of Books on the Ridge, I'm going to be flying solo because our special guest to be interviewed is none other than our beloved Tamera Kraft, fellow guilty party at Mount Zion Ridge Press. We're going to be talking to Tamera from the other side of the desk as an author of children curriculum. Welcome, Tamera.

Tamera: I'm so excited to be on this podcast. It's just a dream come true.

Michelle: OK, let's get started. Tamera’s biography: Pastor Tamera Kraft has been a children's pastor for over 30 years. She's the director of a ministry called Revival Fire for Kids where she mentors other children leaders, teaches workshops, and is a children's ministry consultant, and children revivalist. She's a recipient of the 2007 National Children’s Leaders Association Shephard’s Cup for Lifetime Achievement in Children's Ministry. Tamera hosts a children's ministry podcast called ignite Kidman available on most podcast providers and provides coaching and resources for ignite Kidman patron subscribers. Find out more about this at http://revivalfire4kids.net/ignite.

In this first episode, we're going to be talking about Tamera's newest curriculum, The Christmas Tree Advent. Maybe we should back up a little bit. Tell us a little bit about Building Foundations Curriculum. Why did you decide we needed another children's church curriculum, and how has Building Foundations different from the others.

Tamera: Most curriculum nowadays is either behavior modification or let's go to Disneyland in children's church because it's more one-size-fits-all. It fits whatever denomination, whatever belief, whatever doctrine you have so, basically, what they do is they water things down and teach kids how to be good. They don't really teach kids how to have a relationship with Jesus Christ. My building foundations curriculum was written because I don't adhere to that, and I never have. We teach discipleship and doctrinal foundations, and because I am Pentecostal, I also emphasize the presence of God and the relationship with God, not head knowledge. I create the curriculum to fit Pentecostal services which sometimes are longer than the average evangelical church service.

Michelle: You mentioned not being Disney. What exactly do you mean by Disney. I can imagine considering how Disney is changing things like the Marvel Universe, but what do you what do you mean by not Disney.

Tamera: Sam Luce who is a children's ministry Blogger summed it up really well. Basically, the mentality of church nowadays is we have to bring kids in, and we have to make sure they have fun so they want to come back. So we do things big and over the top like Disney does. That's what I mean by Disney, not the bad stuff even about Disney, but the over the top stuff. We want to make things over the top so kids will have fun, and basically, the only thing they learn by the time they're 12 and get out of church is God loves them. Truthfully, they should know God loves them when they get out of the preschool department. Children Church as a time to learn doctrinal truths that go deeper in their faith. What they're doing is creating an illiterate group of children. When they graduate from children church, all they know is a few Bible stories like Noah's ark and Jonah and the Whale, and maybe David and Goliath.

Michelle: Absolutely, they need to be able to apply the things that they're going to need. When you and I were in high school. we learned things like that, and we should have been prepared for when we went to college because we're goin