Clubs Blog

October 2006 - Posts

• New! Graphic Files available.

  Many have requested Kids 4 Truth graphics for promoting their club.  Kids 4 Truth provides pre-designed posters, postcards, and flyers; but many have asked for graphics for powerpoint presentations and to design or add the logo to other flyers or items they distribute.  Therefore, we are now offering a graphics file at: http://store.kids4truth.com/detail.aspx?ID=304 for $7.95.  This packet contains graphics for use in promoting your clubs, as well as powerpoint templates, etc. Kids 4 Truth logos, level specific logos, templates, and much more! Be sure to read the included ReadMe.pdf file, for usage information. NOTE: this file is 16 MB. Posted Oct 31 2006, 09:32 AM by marrena with no comments

• Please Consider Writing A Devotional About God For Children

  From the Director of Kids 4 Truth, Bob Roberts Friends, Please allow me to make you aware of a great opportunity for authors and/or potential authors. We are looking for a few dedicated people that will commit to writing between 1-4 children's devotionals every month. Any submitted devotionals may be edited and posted to our "It's All About God" Devotional site. http://devos.kids4truth.com Every week, several thousand visitors read the devotional page of our website. Your writings and biblical thoughts about our wonderful Lord have the potential to encourage and edify several thousand people all over the world. Although these devotionals are designed primarily for children, we often hear back from mom and dads (and even grandparents sometimes) about how grateful they are to have this valuable resource as a part of their day. Praise God! Would you like to have a part in this? Are you looking for an outlet to write more about God and less about issues? Would you like to write something with lasting value (as in, eternal) instead of leaving comments on someone's blog about the latest "issue?" We think the best Subject in the entire universe to write about is God. Fundamental Christians write much nowadays, but the vast volume of their writings is sadly about peripheral issues. Maybe we should be called "peripheral" Christians instead of "fundamental" Christians. For quite a while, our devotional system was sailing pretty smoothly. We had several volunteer authors and editors that did a terrific job keeping all the gears turning. But life happens to all of us! Many of our former volunteers have either had to scale back or drop out completely because of other ministry/family demands. That's okay! We understand (mostly :-) ). Be that as it may, we have a need for more writers -- right now! So, write now! :-) We are humbly asking you to do one of four things to help us--today: Pray that God would provide all that we need in the area of devotional authors/editors. Download the Devotional Guide and commit to writing between 1-4 devotional a month Pass along this information to any friends/relatives/associates you think may be interested Contact me with the names/email addresses of people you think would love to do this but would like a personal contact. If you are interested in finding out more, please download the Kids 4 Truth Devotional Guide: http://www.karagraphy.com/files/K4Tdevoguides_Oct06.pdf  Joy McCarnan, our Executive Editor has also written about our need to secure more devotional authors too. I invite you to read her article here: http://karagraphy.com/2006/10/12/write-for-kids-4-truth-you-know-you-want-to/  Please contact either Joy or me post-haste if you would like to move forward with writing some devotionals for Kids 4 Truth! Bob = bob@kids4truth.com Joy = joy@kids4truth.com We would truly love to hear back from you. With Gratitude, Bob Roberts P.S. In the near future, we hope to podcast all these devotionals as well as publishing a hard-copy 365 day devotional book for children. Posted Oct 30 2006, 05:12 PM by BobRoberts with no comments Filed under: devotionals

• Tech Updates

  I wanted to write a quick post to let those of you using the Kids 4 Truth Clubs materials that we appreciate the feedback we have received. We currently have a handful of projects going on behind-the-scenes a bit to try to make your experience using the clubs materials and resources all that much easier. This site - for those of you who have been with us for awhile, you will (hopefully) appreciate the new EquipU site. From the feedback we've recevied so far, the improvements we are seeing are also being seen by the general users. The membership in the site has grown substantially  (up roughly 130 members since we transistioned the core platform). "Live Support" - we've added Live Support to this site (button in the top-center of the header). This allows you direct access to our support staff to assist you with any questions you might have as well as if you simply find yourself "stuck" and unable to locate something. If we are "offline", the image will change and you still have the option to leave us a message. This Blog - we are making a concerted effort to publish information more frequently to the community and this blog is one of our prime mechanisms for doing so. We also plan on using this blog as a means of letting you know of features and tools that we are working on (sometimes long before they are available) just so you have an idea of the direction we are heading and can plan accordingly Online Store - we've received a number of comments (both positive and negative) about the online store. We are aware of some of the usability issues and are currently working on a a series of updates to the store that will hopefully ease the process of placing your orders. We don't have an exact date for the launch of these updates, but we're hoping to have something interesting by the end of the calendar year. Main Website - I know its been a rumor for awhile, but we have a project underway to revamp/re-launch the entire Kids 4 Truth web platform - as you can imagine, this is no small task and is therefore schedule a ways out... look for something in the springtime (altough we may offer sneak-peeks prior to that point). We've got more to share, but don't want to let all of the cats out of the bag quite yet... As always, we'd really appreciate your feedback and any suggestions you might have for tools and technologies that you'd like to see implemented and available for use in your club. Please feel free to add suggestions either as comments to this post or to the improvments section of the forums (http://equipu.kids4truth.com/forums/62/ShowForum.aspx)   Posted Oct 30 2006, 10:44 AM by rgillen with no comments Filed under: Store, Future Plans, Technology

• K4T Update Letter

  Dear Friend, “Mr. Bob, I got saved by God today.” These were the words seven-year-old Anna Carter said to me recently. Anna’s father, Mike, told me that he and Anna were looking through the Kids 4 Truth website when Anna started asking questions about God and eternity. Mike said that he was able to use the website as a teaching tool to help her “connect the dots” and understand important eternal truths. He had the opportunity to lead his daughter to the Lord. Praise God for His marvelous truth! Praise God that He saw fit to use our ministry to help Anna understand her need for the Savior. There are millions of children all over the world who need the truth, just like Anna. This is what Kids 4 Truth is all about. We want to inspire and equip God’s people to teach boys and girls the most important truths about God. And by God’s grace, we’ve made some pretty big strides toward that goal over the last year. Please allow me to update you. The number of churches either using or Kids 4 Truth Clubs or shortly planning to begin using them has increased significantly this year.  We have over 100 churches using our clubs this fall.  Praise the Lord! Over the past few months, we’ve been updating and upgrading our entire curriculum. As God allows and provides, we will begin to translate this complete and polished English translation into several different languages. Spanish, Portuguese, and French are languages at the top of our list. Please pray as we look into specifics regarding translation work. Our website has continued to enjoy high numbers of visitors. About 10,000 people come to our website every day to read devotionals, download resources, view our award-winning Dynamations, and discover concise, child-friendly answers to some of life’s toughest questions. If you have not visited  www.kids4truth.com recently, please do come see all that is available. On August 1, we released The Watchmaker Dynamation.  This Dynamation fostered a surge of new visitors of both those who agree and those who disagree with us. With the increase of visitors came an increase in e-mail questions, downloads, and interest in the clubs.  We praise the Lord for how He has used this Dynamation to bring Glory to Himself. We praise the Lord for the launch of a new EquipU site.  This site allows us to serve our churches better with online support, more downloadable files, and a new staff blog page to keep our churches in the “know” of what is happening at Kids 4 Truth.  Soon we will launch a completely redesigned Kids 4 Truth website which will prove to be our most interactive site yet.  We also plan to release a new on line store that will feature new customer-friendly features. We have moved! Since our early days as an incorporated entity, our humble ministry has leased office space from Tri-City Ministries. Over this past year, we realized an increasing urgency to move into a place of our own. We needed to relocate for 3 key reasons: 1– identity, 2– accessibility, and 3– and (most importantly) space! Thankfully, God has provided a solution. Our new offices are wonderful! The building is on the sidewalk level in a fairly high-profile area of Lee's Summit, a nice suburb in the greater Kansas City area. There are two large windows in front, and I have become reacquainted with sunlight. We are renting from likeminded landlords who have been very gracious to us. Over the past few months, we have been remodeling and preparing the offices. Thanks to the help of many Christ-like servants, the interior work is done. We have successfully moved our “stuff” about 15 miles across town to the new offices.  It has been an exciting adventure.  People have donated time, talent, and resources.  Professional dry-wallers, painters, electricians, etc. gave so much to help complete the project.  Our landlords have paid for most of the material cost of renovation, and have now begun renovating the front of the building to make it more “Kids 4 Truth specific.” We are very thankful to God for His enabling grace. We acknowledge that if anything good has happened through us in the last year; it is because of God’s goodness. Philippians 2:13  –  For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure. Thank you for all that you have done to stand with Kids 4 Truth. You are a tremendous blessing to us. We hope that this update will be an encouragement to you. Please let us know if there is anything we can do to serve you. Sincerely, Bob Roberts and the Kids 4 Truth Executive Team  ***check out Bob's Blog at: www.kids4truth.com/bobsblog for photos of our new offices. Posted Oct 23 2006, 04:16 PM by marrena with no comments Filed under: information, communication, special, prayer, update

• Starting Soon? Have a special event planned? Please let us know.

  The Kids 4 Truth Team members would like to know when your club is starting a curriculum year or when you have a special event planned so that we can pray specifically for your ministry for that week.  Please e-mail: marrena@kids4truth.com information about your special event so that we can be praying.  Posted Oct 10 2006, 09:47 AM by marrena with no comments Filed under: events, special, prayer, starting

• New Fall Training Sessions

  The following Kids 4 Truth Training Events have been scheduled.  Please contact our office if you would like more information about one of these events. October 11, 6:30-8:30 pm     Liberty Hills Baptist Church - Liberty, MO October 14                          Faith Baptist Church - Flosom, CA October 21, 8:30-11:30 am   Holmes Baptist Church - Clarion, IA October 28                          Grace Baptist Church - Dacula, GA November 7                         Calvary Baptist Church - Freemont, NE You may schedule one of the Kids 4 Truth Staff members to do training at your church.  While we do not charge for this service, we ask that you cover travel and living expenses while we are in your area.  Many churches who choose to have training at their church open the training up for other churches to attend - we call this Regional Training.  While we do not charge people to attend these events, we do allow host churches to charge attendies to help cover expenses. Posted Oct 05 2006, 10:57 AM by marrena with 1 comment(s) Filed under: service, information, calendar, regional, training, events

• New Communication Cards help both workers and parents!

  Getting your parents on board to help their children learn the curriculum is a great benefit to your club.  We find that it is often difficult for the younger children to communicate to their parents or K4T worker what they have learned, need to recite, or where they are in the book.  New weekly cards (http://equipu.kids4truth.com/files/folders/communication_cards/default.aspx) are available to encourage  communication between the worker and parents.  We want your feedback and ideas on these cards!  Are they helpful? Do you want items like this for the older levels? Do they contain too little or much information?  Be sure to list your ideas in our forum on the communication cards at: http://equipu.kids4truth.com/forums/378/ShowThread.aspx#378. Posted Oct 02 2006, 03:16 PM by marrena with 1 comment(s) Filed under: information, discoverers, parents, level 1, communication