Jeremy Sisk
Christian Ministry
Christian Ministry Definition
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DTS values ministry that equips others for effective service and emphasizes humility with sacrificial service.
Personal Goal:
I will grow in my relational connection to those who I am discipling by developing and leading biblical studies which aim to nurture and develop spiritual growth in all age groups while staying faithful to the proper context of scripture.
Strategies
• Seek God's will through prayer and fellowship before preparing lessons..
• Identify church leaders and teachers who are both humble and practical.
• Consistently be available for ministry needs or opportunities (to include youth rallies).
Resources
• Pastors with significant and wide-ranging experience in Christian ministry of all ages.
• Various books that can inform me how to teach and preach to different age groups.
• The Bible, Bible commentaries, and previous DTS coursework in Bible exposition.
• Teachers and those with pastoral experience in Family Life Education
Measurements
• Developed and taught a Multigenerational Sunday School Class
• Consistently Led and taught Homebuilders Sunday School Class on every Sunday.
• Taught in the Children’s Ministry and Youth Ministry on Wednesday nights.
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Article 1: Lesson plan from a Multigenerational Sunday School Class and photos.
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For my competence in Christian Ministry, I am submitting a lesson plan for a children's multigenerational ministry lesson which demonstrates my ability to teach multiple generations at the same time. This ministry's focus was on children ages 5 to 12, but it also included the children's parents, teaching them how to keep their children engaged when teaching them theological and biblical truth. This dynamic teaching equipped parents to effectively communicate with their children using the best-known Christian education practices. With a humble attitude, parents were able to adapt to their children's levels of comprehension and attention span and were given teaching tools that helped them meet their children's interests.
Article 2: Photos from Homebuilders Sunday School Class.
For my competence in Christian Ministry, I am submitting photos from the Homebuilders Sunday School Class, which demonstrates my ability to teach adult couples who may be younger or older than I am. The picture shows three couples who are not in the Homebuilders Class and were invited to join us at a marriage retreat held in Orlando, FL, every year. The student's ability to minister to others outside the class or even at the church demonstrates that they have been equipped to serve and are thinking of other married couples who would benefit from attending the marriage conference. The Homebuilders continue to serve effectively in ministering to others as they are nurtured and developed to grow spiritually with an attitude of humility and sacrificial service.
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For my competence in Christian Ministry, I am submitting class notes, student work, and photos from my teaching in both the Children’s Ministry and Youth Ministry, which demonstrate a faithful response to teaching varying ages within the proper context of scripture. One day, I was tasked with teaching both children and youth. The student artwork by children (5 to 12) and youth (13 to 18) provided feedback on their comprehension levels by gauging their artistic representations after being given clear scriptural references to what Revelation 21 describes Heaven as being like. The students were engaged throughout the art competition and the lesson was brought together to close as everyone's artwork was inspected to decide by vote who the best artist was.
Overall Reflection Statement
My most meaningful work was the multigenerational children’s lesson which was fun, dynamic and taught parents more than I thought it would. My most consistent ministry is with teaching adult married couples. Then this internship began and forced me to engage children and youth more deeply. Given the lessons I learned while teaching the children and youth I was surprised to see that it was a totally different dynamic but gave me insight to see how kids ticked. Though we all were kids at one time, we adults may have forgotten how carefree and less jaded life is since we saw everything with curiosity and not skepticism. Bringing the parents to enter the joy of the experience that their children were in was an eye opening and thrilling experience. It is rare when you get to see adults light up as they enter the world of a kid who just wants to play, explore, and discover things that strike their curiosity in an innocent way.
The lesson plan and slides of the children and parents ministry showed that adapting to a children's level of comprehension, and attention span gave parents the teaching tools to better communicate with their children. I found this to be the most meaningful of all the experiences in Christian Ministry.
Learning Reflection
As I developed and demonstrated Christian Ministry, I learned that I needed to focus on where my own children were at, meet them there, and after adapting to their interests, I could sense the deeper connection with my children. This is rewarding as it fosters deeper communication both ways and strengthens relationships between parents and our children. It may sound easy to want to clump in the children and youth in the same class but each group is far apart in development and maturity. The teens didn’t want to be with the younger children and the younger children struggled with understanding the exercises. Because they have different interests, abilities, comprehension levels and differing attention span lengths, I needed to find common ground in teaching both groups at the same time. The class notes demonstrate that children and youth do share a common interest, which is the desire to win. It was clear to see that both groups, though distinct, shared a deep desire to prove themselves better than their peers. Knowing this, I separated the children at their own table, let the middle schoolers have their own table and the high schoolers at their own table. I learned that one must be creative in finding ways to keep the students of vast age differences engaged with the lesson because if their attention has taken away it takes a long time to get it back.
Lifelong Development Statement
As a result of Christian Ministry and the work I've done, I was truly most impacted by the multigenerational ministry. I might attempt to try to host a multigenerational Sunday School again. It is a sad thing when parents miss their children's childhood and never learn skills that they can use to connect with their children. I will prayerfully commit to asking God about how He wants to use my life in this unique ministry and either way will press forward in following the commands of Jesus to "allow the little children to come to me "( Matthew 19:14, Mark 10:14, Luke 18:16) with the aim of giving tools to adult parents to allow their children to come to Jesus. Watching adults learn how to engage and interact with their children in ways I've never seen before was pleasantly surprising and will shape my ongoing ministry by allowing me to minister or counsel parents who have difficulty with communicating with their children or teaching them biblical truth. The lesson I would most teach often to adults is that 5 year olds have about a five minute attention span max so change activities before hitting that mark.