KIDS KINGDOM: The 2018 ICOCN National Kids Kingdom Coordinators Retreat

KIDS KINGDOM: The 2018 ICOCN National Kids Kingdom Coordinators Retreat

The 2018 International Church of Christ Nigeria National Kids Kingdom Coordinators Retreat for the year 2018 was a memorable and fantastic event which held at the Ostra Hotel and Hall at Jobi Fele way, in Ikeja Lagos on Friday, 28th and Saturday, 29th of September, 2018 respectively.

Kids Kingdom Coordinators in all the regions in Lagos were in attendance, so also were some of the preteens leaders, as well as kids kingdom coordinators in all our churches all over Nigeria and a representative from our church in Ghana.
The retreat started with a short devotional led by Reuben Mbaka. He encouraged everyone present to fix their eyes on Jesus as they help raise the next generation of leaders in our church.

The coordinators were excited to be at the retreat and looked forward to learning and having a great time of fellowship. Most especially the new coordinators that were attending for the first time. In the course of sharing, it was observed that the most prevalent challenges most of the churches and regions were facing are in the area of teachers selection, security, space for kids kingdom, children in the boarding school and lack of reproducible for classes.

It was observed that most disciples are no longer willing to serve in the children ministry and some that agree do come late to service and so do not attend the first service. Security is also one of the challenges we face due to the insecurity in the country we resolve to always have security every time we do orientation for teachers for a new quarter. Also, some churches do not have enough space for their kids to have classes, some have to merge some classes, while some demarcated their hall space so as to have classes for the children but with this the distraction of the main service is also prevalent.

For children in boarding schools, it was agreed that mentors should be selected for these children and they should endeavor to call them at every point in time most especially for the ones in Nigeria but for the ones in Ghana, where boarding school is mandatory, the mentors should visit with the parents on visiting days and for all mentors whether in Nigeria or Ghana to always make sure that they use the holidays to fortify the students before they go back to school.

For lack of reproducible due to faulty printers, it was agreed that they should make at least reproducible for at least a month for the teachers so in case the printer is faulty, it would have been repaired before the next reproducible is needed.
It was also decided that every year we will be having 6 weeks classes on topical issues from now on for all the classes in kids’ kingdom. For next year, we settled on honest, lies and deceit. Coordinators were grouped to prepared classes on the above and it was presented to all and will be refined and corrected and the final class will be sent to the Kids Kingdom coordinator to be printed and circulated accordingly.

Also, most of us agreed to try and start a library for the children in the kids’ kingdom, this was brought about by our church in Ibadan and most thought it was a good idea which we want to imbibe and to start in our regions and churches. Feedback  was gotten on our educational day, so many coordinators raised issues on the questions being set which they feel is high for some of the classes and we all agreed to make sure as regions to always provide food for the children that will be representing us for the educational day since its usually a whole day event.

We also had a class on ‘The Spiritual Parent’ taught by one of the elders in the Lagos church, Israel Ereola. It was a powerful class that itemized different kinds of parents we have and what there characteristics were and on how we need to see ourselves as a parent of all the children in our churches and regions and how we can be godly and effective in our roles as coordinators.

As coordinators, we all left the retreat fired up, charged up and encouraged to go back to our different churches and regions to put into practice all we have learnt. And we were all grateful to the church for the opportunities to be part of this year’s retreat and looking forward to more to come. Thanks also to all those who put this memorable retreat together, especially the ministry coordinator, Tunrayo Elugbadebo.