Law and Order Part 1

Law and Order
Part 1

I've seen "barely controlled chaos" and it was not good. Picture any number of elementary age children during a large group teaching time all doing one of the following; getting up and walking around, pinching each other or pulling the hair of someone near them, playing with toys they've brought or worse, playing their handheld video games, leaning backwards in their metal chairs with their feet on the kid in front of them, sitting with their backs to the presenter, and the nonstop talking to their neighbors in front, besides and behind them. And the poor presenter trying their very best to speak truth into these kids lives, extremely frustrated or at the opposite end, aloof and apathetic.

You know you've been there! Either you've seen this or you've experienced it yourself as a lead teacher. And it's such a downer, it's so draining to present in front of a group of children and have to "fight" with them to just have them barely pay attention. If you're in children's ministry, you're going to constantly be in situations where you need law and order, boundaries, or limits so that your presentation is effective, engaging and helpful. Children need boundaries, without them chaos reigns supreme. The next few paragraphs will help you to have a safe, more calm yet interactive and fun environment whatever your group setting.

Four Rules and Four Consequences
My wife and I started our children's ministry lives in the inner-city of Minneapolis. Lots of chaos. We had children attending our large and small group settings who had few or no boundaries in their home life. We were pulling our hair out when we hit on an idea that with some tweaking over the years we continue to use to this day. Are you ready? Here comes the $1,000,000 secret. Drum roll please.
Four easy to understand and "positive" rules and four consequences.

Here are the four magic rules:
Be Attentive, Be Where You Should Be, Be a Good Neighbor, and Be Respectful

Let's put some meat on these bones here. Why "positive" rules? Especially in the inner-city, the kids were constantly being told NOT to do this or that. And if fact we started out with rules that were "NOT" rules, like "Do Not Talk." It didn't make a lot of sense to say that a child could not talk or they could not move from their seat, when there were times when we wanted to them to talk, or move from their seats. Also, we realized our goal was not to have complete silence during a presentation. We wanted interaction, just controlled interaction. And we wanted children to learn to take responsibility for their own actions, so we gave them positive rules they could understand and work at. We were creating an atmosphere of what they could do not what they couldn't do. We have the same goal today.

What do the four rules mean?
Be Attentive. I explain it by saying, "We want you to pay attention to what's going on. Whether you're in large or small group, you need to pay to attention to know when it's time to laugh, be silent, talk with your neighbor, act out a request, etc... If you're not paying attention, you may miss out on something important."
Be Where You Should Be. This one is easily explained, "Wherever you're supposed be, that's where you need to be." So if a child is supposed to be in their seat at the moment, that's where they need to be. If they are supposed to be using the restroom, that does not mean they should be wandering the halls.
Be A Good Neighbor. "Your neighbor may really need to hear what's being said today, so what can you do to help them?" I usually review a couple of real and silly things that can bother a neighbor, like putting your feet on their chair, poking them, sticking your elbow in their ear, etc...
Be Respectful. "We always respect, God (point up), whomever is talking (point to the front of the teaching area) and each other (point to all the students), we never make fun of anyone."

I was joking about these rules being magic. What we've always liked was that there were only four rules, we never wanted to have a long list for either the kids or our leaders to have to remember. Also, the "positive" aspect of the rules was always appealing to us. We wanted the kids to do something positive rather than not do something negative. And we've been able to use the rules in almost any situation; large group, small group, off campus outings, on campus field trips, even in our home with our own boys. With slight changes in the wording, they can be applied to just about any situation.

In Law and Order Part 2, we'll discuss the equally important Consequences and the guarantee I give to all leaders. Be sure to bookmark and add this site to your RSS feed reader so you'll be up to date on new posts.

Wayne