 Sunday schoolShirley's start
Shirley writes: My ONLY childhood experience of Sunday School was rather negative, to put it mildly! My family were not churchgoers, but when I was about 8 years old, a friend invited me to her Sunday School class in a little Methodist Hall nearby. When I arrived at the little classroom, the teacher invited me to sit in the front row and then asked me to stand up and tell the class my name. Now, I’ve ALWAYS had a problem remembering names, and although not so now, I used to be terribly shy. I felt very embarrassed at having to stand up in front of so many strange people, and when the teacher kindly repeated her request of course the inevitable happened!! Yes, I FORGOT MY OWN NAME!! Needless to say, I was so embarrassed and immediately ran all the way home! THAT was my first and only Sunday School experience, before I became a Christian and moved to Texas at the age of 27. Soon after my arrival in Texas, I started to attend a small non-denominational church that taught the Word of God in a simple, down-to-earth way, and I quickly began to grow in my Christian walk as I eagerly attended every meeting. I particularly enjoyed the Ladies’ Sunday School class, but after about six months (as sometimes happens!) there was a split in the church and half the people left, but I remained blissfully ignorant and continued to grow in the Lord.
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I remember one Sunday morning the pastor announced that as there was no-one now to teach the children, one of us ladies would have to do it. No one volunteered! I looked around the group and thought, “Well, Mrs. A’s husband barely lets her come to church; the pastor’s mother has too many other responsibilities; Mrs. B has a small baby and several other children; Mrs. C is way too old - that only leaves ME, but I don’t know anything and am finally starting to learn in THIS class!” We all sat there, saying nothing, but it was obvious the pastor was not going to leave until someone offered to take the position. I really didn’t WANT to do it, but I couldn’t bare the thought of the children having no one willing to teach them, so I reluctantly offered to take the class. Not surprisingly, no one objected and so I was put in charge of about 8-10 children ranging in age from 3-18 years!! It may seem hard to believe, but it never occurred to me that there may be lessons or books already written to help me, and no one made any suggestions or offered any help at all! I simply went to the Lord and said, “Well, I have my Bible, have Jesus in my heart and the Holy Spirit as my guide, so I’d better start preparing a lesson!” That was the beginning of my children’s ministry – it just shows how God can start with NOTHING but a committed believer who is willing to be led by the Lord!
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 first VBSFirst Vacation Bible School
After we married and Shirley became instant mother to our four small children, we soon saw the need for something separate from the traditional Sunday School classes. The pastor of our local church agreed for us to develop a "children's church", and soon after, we planned our first VBS (Vacation Bible School) as a major outreach event. Shirley writes: "Coming from the UK I had no idea what VBS was, but after it was explained to me, I saw the wonderful opportunity to reach children OUTSIDE the church with the Gospel. Over the next two months, I prayed and wrote all the week’s lessons for VBS, for three different age groups, and we went about town putting up posters and distributing flyers. The first day of VBS arrived and we signed up 27 children – all from our own church. I was VERY disappointed although the other teachers said that 9 children per class was a good number for teaching. But I was adamant! The whole purpose, to me, was to reach OUTSIDE the church to children who didn’t know about Jesus. I felt we had failed completely! I prayed and by the end of the morning, I knew what to do! I asked the teachers and all the children to climb onto the big, white church bus, so that we could all have a true evangelistic experience – go around handing out VBS invitations for the next day! We drove to a nearby mobile home park, but would you believe it? There wasn’t ONE child there!! We learned that another church had THEIR VBS that same week and had already picked up all the children!! The other two teachers told me, “It’s OK – God understands. We’ve done our best, let’s go home.” But I could NOT accept that!
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I prayed again (James 1:5) and immediately I knew what to do – we all got back into the bus and I directed us down the road and into an area known as “The Projects" - a poor housing area, where most of the people were unemployed and black, and many were drug addicts. As our large WHITE bus pulled into the middle of the street, it attracted a lot of attention, especially when out of it slowly came two middle-aged WHITE ladies and 27 WHITE children all led by a tall, red-headed WHITE English woman!! My knees were knocking – not from fear but simply because I had NEVER done anything like this before and it was all MY idea!! (Actually it was God’s!!) We began to tell the children playing in the dirt about the VBS, and then asked their parents for permission, promising to pick them up in the bus. The next day, as we drove into The Projects, my heart was thumping as I really had no idea what to expect. We were met by a large crowd of people and several dozen children (even some teenagers!) wanted to attend our VBS! We had some interesting experiences that week and on the Friday there were 82 children at the VBS!! All the new ones were from The Projects and of those, 20 accepted Jesus Christ!! After the VBS we continued to visit The Projects each week and started bringing the children to our children’s church."
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 roadshowKing's Kids Roadshow
As the next couple of years passed, we developed the "King's Kids Road Show" to reach those who did not come to church. Shirley continues: "After that VBS, my husband and I picked up children from the Projects each week in the church bus, so they could attend our children’s church. Sometimes we brought as many as 25 – all black, some with dirty faces (which we could wash) and some with torn clothes and no shoes. We were aware of their difficult home situations and wanted to show them God's love, but we were also aware of the unwelcoming attitudes of some of the regular church members!! After our 2nd VBS, when we transported some 80 children from the Projects each day, the pastor quietly told us that we should no longer bring those children to church! We felt very unhappy about this decision, but we knew we should be submitted to our pastor and obey him. Then the Lord showed us that we could continue to minister to the children in the Projects, in our OWN time – on Saturday afternoons! Thus was born the “King’s Kids Road Show”!! Every Saturday I would dress up as a clown and we would take our own five children, along with puppets and coloring pages, and park our van in the middle of the street there to teach the children’s church lesson that we would repeat the following day in church. This continued for another year.
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By the time I was preparing for our 3rd VBS, we realized that the church was resisting more and more our desire for outreach to children, regardless of color or background. Although it was the mid-1980s there was still a lot of prejudice and we were told NOT to bring any more children from the Projects to this VBS either!! Again we prayed as we disagreed with this, and again, the Lord showed me that I could teach the church VBS each day in the morning, and then go to the Projects in the afternoon and teach the same lesson to the children there, in the middle of the street. I don't know how I was able to do so much, in the hot, humid summer weather (temperatures in the upper 90’s F) and with our own 5 children also (Gerald had to work during the week, so I had to do it alone). But God gives us strength to accomplish His will. Not long after that, the Lord led us to move out of town to a little farm, and we started to attend a little country church instead, just down the road (since we could not afford the gas to drive to town for church!) It wasn’t long of course, before we started a children’s ministry there – after all, with six children we had a good start!!"
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 kids clubKing's Kids Club
Soon we started a Saturday club as an outreach to teach children (whether or not they attended church) about Jesus and the Bible, and help them put their faith into ACTION. We called it the King's Kids Club, and started to develop more activities and dynamic teaching methods as ways to help the children memorize and become more familiar with the Bible. Although we only had a small group of children (usually around 15-20), a lot more than that actually attended the club for several years and we started visiting local nursing homes each month for the children to share the gospel through skits, songs and other activities with the elderly. We also taught the children about some missionaries we were in touch with, and collected up small items for months beforehand to send special Christmas "care packages" to encourage the missionary families overseas.
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We developed exciting ways to put the Bible teaching into action. One summer we taught on the "Parable of the Talents" and loaned each child $5 to be invested in supplies to work and produce something to sell for missions. Each child came up with his/her own idea, and did all the work - we just advised and encouraged. After 2 months we had a big sale of the products attended by parents and neighbors. Each child had to pay back the original $5, and the surplus was given as a special offering to missionaries. We rewarded all the children with a special party. The relationships that developed with those children were very special and lasted for years afterwards, even though many came from troubled homes. During this period we had to leave the little country church (because we were told to stop reaching out to children of other cultures and colors!), and so we started a home fellowship group and took the name of International Missionary Outreach Fellowship. At the time it was a ministry with a big name and even bigger vision, that was understood by almost no-one other than ourselves, but as we continued to "do what WE could do" God began to open new doors!
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 Metro children's ministryChildren's pastors
We continued to develop our home fellowship for 2-3 years, along with the kids club, until we were invited to take over as children's pastors at a small, but fast-growing local non-denominational church. By then we had also become more involved in missions by making short-term mission trips 2-3 times a year across the border into Mexico. We took over as children's pastors in the summer of 1993, after returning from our first short term mission trip deep into Mexico, where we spent over a month in Veracruz. We became determined to help children in the USA to become aware of their many blessings and start helping those in other countries who have so little. We developed our puppet ministry using different scenery in the children's church room (we only had three muppet puppets, so had to add wigs and change the clothes for the many different characters!) We continued with sending care packages to missionaries - filled with lightweight treats like stickers, packages of powdered drink mix, chapstick, toy cars, hair decorations, balloons and so on. We also had a special "mission trip" every month or so, when the children had to show their specially made "passports" and pass through a "Customs" check before they could enter the room. Once inside, the music, decorations, skits, stories and games all taught on a certain country, and at the end, they could sample a small selection of food items typically eaten in that country.
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Instead of the regular VBS, we planned a weekly day camp throughout the summer as an outreach. We averaged about 25 children, and each week we prepared a special theme with all the bible stories, skits, activities, testimonies and games linked to that theme. We deliberately chose themes rarely addressed in church, yet of great interest to children - such as sea monsters, fairy tales, and UFO's! We searched out what the Bible says about such things and allowed plenty of time for discussion - needless to say, we had some memorable times! We also held a big outreach event with stalls and games which were all based on bible stories. We had all kinds of races (such as carrying ladles of water across a field to fill up a glass jar which had powdered red drink mix in the bottom - the "Water to Wine Race") and every event was preceded by sharing the appropriate bible story. The day ended with an awesome production of a Christian adaptation of the famous Mary Poppins story, that the Lord had given Shirley a few months earlier, which she entitled "Carey Hoppins". God even gave her Christian words for all the songs and turned the whole thing into an evangelistic program!! Our busy time as children's pastors only lasted two years however, as the Lord clearly called us to full time ministry on the mission field, and so we left in June 1995 to attend Language School as preparation, although our children's ministry did not even stop for that!
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 border children's ministryBorder ministry
In the summer of 1995, we moved with our two youngest children, Mark and Anna, to McAllen, on the Texas/Mexico border, to attend language school and receive missionary training for 9 months. That was a tough time in many ways, living in a small 28ft travel trailer with an income of only about $400 per month, but we learned many valuable lessons through it all. The need for dynamic children's ministry was so obvious in many of the churches we visited, we couldn't help but volunteer to help out in the little local church the Lord led us to attend, even though our Spanish was so poor!
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It was there, one Sunday, that the Lord spoke to Shirley very clearly about the need to start teaching and training other children's ministers. As a result, she started sharing teaching ideas in local churches on both sides of the border, and also wrote a children's ministry manual in Spanish to share some of the many dynamic teaching methods we had developed through the years. The Lord enabled us to get this printed just before we left language school and moved to the mission field in Mexico. Back to top
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