Posted on June 30, 2009 - by edoyle

Tuesday Talk: Gil Johnson

Tuesday Talk is a weekly feature on Ryan Frank’s blog. Each week, I interview one children’s ministry expert and ask for their answer to a question. Check back every Tuesday for a new interview.

This week on Tuesday Talk:
Gil Johnson answers the question, “How can children’s ministries use video to enhance their worship time?”

As we all know, the kids that we work with in our churches are living in a visual world. They see videos on television, computers, iPods, and even billboards as they move through their daily lives. While it’s always great to use video for funny intros, Bible teaching and game times, we should use the same attention grabbing technologies to help these kids engage in their most important task- worshiping God.

Children’s ministries can strategically use video in their worship time by first using video to set the mood as kids arrive. This will help get them prepared for worship by letting them hear worship and possibly even watch other kids worship.

Videos used during the music portion of the worship time will help kids by letting them see the words they are singing and some videos even have something going on in the background to add context to the message. On a practical level, using video can help hold kids’ attention and help them focus on worship instead of being distracted by the environment they are in or the other kids around them. All of these elements help make the worship time more relevant and meaningful to the kids.

Gil Johnson is the marketing manager for the Integrity Kids worship product line of Integrity Music and is also Children’s Pastor at West Mobile Baptist Church in Mobile, Alabama. He spends his free time with his beautiful wife Jennifer, their 12 year old daughter Hannah and 9 year old son Justin.