In preparing this year’s curriculum for God is Big, Wayne stumbled upon Eric Clapton’s song “See What Love Can Do” … this simple phrase (as well as the whole song) plays in and outside the space of Kids Club, as we allow the rhythms and traditions of Kids Club to remind us of “what God’s love can do”. 

Months of preparations for this year were filled with loving attention.  There are intricate crafts designed around each day’s story, map covered journals remind the children that God is everywhere, sand painted door hangers with the child’s name remind them that God knows everything, even my name.

Fourteen van routes and four bus routes, plus miscellaneous cars go out each day to pick up specific kids, lovingly communicating by their careful attention that each child is wanted and looked for and important.  We celebrated a first ever – 500 children were in attendance on the first day of Kids Club. We plan for 500, and that many will cycle through each year, but to have 500 on the first day, with many more still to come, makes this the biggest Kids Club ever.  “See what love can do!”

So, each day, whether in morning worship, packed wall to wall with kids clubbers and their leaders singing songs about how BIG our God is … to class time, overflowing tables with kids and leaders in every classroom, fun trips large and small, swimming almost everyday for everybody, activities that expand their lives (like producing a tile mural for the center), cooking, Kids Club Idol … we are experiencing “what love can do”.

Our big God is using us, His fragile instruments to teach and to model for the children that He is big.  One child said to his precious leader, “Fonzie, is God really big?”  He was learning the new song we introduced this kids club called “My Glorious”, by Chris Tomlin.   As he sang the lyrics  -- God is bigger than the air I breathe, the world we’ll leave, God will save the day and all we’ll say, My Glorious … Fonzie leaned over to his kid and said “Yes, He’s really that Big!”  And little Jorge, with all sorts of trouble in his life, bigger than life kinds of trouble, believed him, for the love.  

Lake Day was beautiful, earlier than normal because this coming Friday is the fourth of July, had the traditional unexpected baptisms.  The rhythms of Kids Club give people permission to think about being baptized at the Lake when they are ready.  For a few who were baptized this summer, they had been thinking about this for a few years.