At St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Beaufort, North Carolina, in the back of the church, you can find canvas bags filled with all sorts of things to keep our youngest worshipers …
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VBS and Summer Camp Curriculum Top Picks for 2024
Building Faith's 2024 Vacation Bible School and summer camp curriculum reviews are in! We have evaluated 10 new curricula for this year and found a variety of fun and fruitful …
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Away with the Mangers: A Direct Action Campaign to Transform People and Politics
What if Advent were less about which songs to sing which weeks and more about using our resources to ensure that all people are housed?In the dominant theological imagination, …
“Behold, I Am Doing a New Thing!”: The Radically Hybrid 2024 Forma Conference
Editor's Note: This article is in a forthcoming issue of VTS Magazine. Some of its content is also published on the Forma website. It is republished here with minor formatting and …
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A Healthy Edible Nativity to Tell the Christmas Story
In our church, we have noticed that our children and youth do not know the story about the birth of Jesus as well as they did ten years ago. Because of this, we have decided …
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Addressing Disability on Building Faith: A Note on Sitewide Changes
Over the last several years, many progressive faith-based organizations have undertaken major diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) projects. These include the Racial Justice …
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20 Children’s Book Suggestions for Beginning a Checkout Library
I’ve written about how to build a checkout library for children and households before in Creating a Children’s Lending Library for Your Church: Where To Start and Creating a …
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Prophets among Us: Offering Youth Space to Live into Prophetic Witness
Laying on your side. Waltzing around naked. “Belting your cloak” (hiking up your pants) and outrunning a horse and chariot. Eating scrolls. On the surface, biblical prophets are, …
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Evaluating a Program: One Church’s Process and Lessons Learned
About a year ago, our Children’s Formation Committee decided to make a big change to the children's formation program. Our church had used age grouping for its Sunday School …
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3 Planning Suggestions for Overwhelmed Formation Ministers
Recently I attended a conference on children and youth formation practices. It was a joy to meet with other formation ministers from around the country and to hear about all of the …
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