Jennifer McWilliams

Pokemon Go has finally come to Canada! After a week and a half of it being the biggest craze to hit the USA in 2016, Canadians finally have a turn. This video shows how much of a hit it has been in NYC (from my favorite vlogger). What is it? Pokemon Go is an alternate-reality (AR) game where you walk around a cartoon-version of your GPS map looking for Pokemon (the map matches the street you are on!). When a Pokemon appears, your phone’s camera turns on, and the Pokemon shows up in your real-life surroundings. You throw a poke ball at it on the screen, (hopefully) catch it, and you win! You caught the Pokemon! The more Pokemon you catch, the higher your score/level. I am only a level 3, but once you get to level 5 you get to play at gyms (public places where people congregate to practice) and you get to pick what team you want to be on (each team has different strengths and weaknesses). There are also poke stops where people gather to buy items (and maybe trade? or find more pokem

Children’s ministry volunteers. We all need them, we never seem to have enough, and sometimes good ones we have leave. In follow up conversations I have discovered one of the reasons we’ve lost good volunteers is over discipline in the classroom. “The kids won’t listen.” “They’re out of control.” “There’s one that always distracts/picks on others and I don’t know what to do about it.” There’s no standard. There’s no line to draw. I think this is a huge oversight. Kids crave boundaries. They won’t behave within a boundary that they don’t know exists. Discipline is not a bad thing! The word comes from the word “disciple”, and it means training that molds character, behaviour, and values. Hebrews 12 outlines Christian discipline; verse 11 says that “no discipline seems pleasant at the time… Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.” So how do we do this well in ministry? A few years ago I had some school teachers help me