Home - Plugging In - News - Respect, Honour, and Honesty - Children's Ministry Newsletter If you were to sit down and write down the top three character traits you want your child to possess, what would they be? Are there some character traits that hinge on others? One author has suggested that respect, honour and honesty are the three we should do our best to instill in our kids. But as I mulled these over in my mind, I realized there is one more trait that is foundational to these three. Any guesses? Obedience. For a child, respect put into practice is obedience. When a child does what you tell them to, when you tell them, without complaining and without arguing, they are showing they respect your position of authority as a parent and as an adult. “Children, obey your parents.” is not just a nice suggestion. It is something God has given to parents to help them raise children to be adults who will obey God. Respect, honour and honesty should be what is seen in the mature adult, whereas obedience will be how it got there.

Our job as parents is to make these concepts that we don’t quite understand ourselves and to make them clear and concrete to our children. To help you with this let me provide for you a few definitions. Respect is to show esteem or worth for a person because of their position. So for example, respect is to show esteem or worth for a person in authority because they have the position of authority, not necessarily because they are upright. Respect for a friend, neigbour or person standing beside us is to show esteem or worth for them because of their position in God; they are created in His image. To honour means to show respect for a person in authority out of the way they conduct their life and often done, in our part, out of love. To respect and honour an adult is to live honestly before him. As we move through the day, there are plenty of examples we see in life that show respect versus showing honour. We need to point these out to our kids to help them form the most complete sense of these virtues and help them live it out in their lives.

During our worship time in the Higher Ground Children's ministry , the pictures and letters that the children from Kathmandu, Nepal have sent back to our kids will be shown. Our kids have really been excited to give their money to help the kids in Nepal have a chance to go to school. As we continue to raise funds for this project, the Nepal teacher asks that we pray for the children because so many kids are work very hard.

We are close to the end of another school year. Summer plans are being made for fun and vacations are ahead. In order to help the children with the transition of a class, we move the children up to their next classes in June rather than the fall. In fact, June 12th will be when we move children from 4 year olds to Grade 4 up to their next class. Grade 5 students moving into Grade 6 for the fall will be allowed to stay in class during the summer until they get used to being in adult service. If they would like to serve in Children’s instead, we would love to have them.

Penny Laird