Who's Next? Inspiring The Future Of Kingdom Journey

As Rand Eberhard and I were in the middle of our second Kingdom Journey at Northside, Rand asked a great question: How can we best instill younger kids to look forward to their own Kingdom Journey opportunity?

A well-established NUMC Student Ministry program is the IBAC (I Believe in the Apostles’ Creed) Confirmation class. Every year, dedicated Northside adults led 70+ seventh graders through a powerful experience. As a marketing guy, I saw the IBAC classes as an outstanding target audience. Rand had the inspiration that brought it to life.

When our second Kingdom Journey crew came back from the Holy Land, two of our kids - cool 11th graders in the eyes of the IBAC 7th graders - shared the story of their Holy Land pilgrimage during an early IBAC class. Their storytelling included photos of some of the sites we saw, with blue IBAC bracelets in each of them. Seeing the blue bracelets was a big deal with the IBAC kids. They were excited to see the bracelets (or was it the free donuts at 8AM Sunday?), and knew they got theirs later that morning. Getting them was a bit of a ceremony, and the kids took them off for nothing during the coming year of confirmation.

Back to Rand’s genius: At the end of their story, the Kingdom Journey kids pulled out a backpack full of IBAC bracelets and told the IBAC kids that they’d carried it, and the bracelets it held, all over the Holy Land, and then passed the bracelets out. The 7th graders were blown away by how their IBAC bracelets had been to the Holy Land, walking ahead of them in their faith journey. 

Every time Northside sends a Kingdom Journey class to the Holy Land, they carry the next IBAC classes’ bracelets with them.

How can you inspire your next generation of Kingdom Journey crew?

IBAC bracelets walk the steps of the Church of the Beatitudes, on the north shore of the Sea of Galilee.