I am a 50-year-old mother of three boys,
a Christian with many passions.

When I was a new Christian in our lovely village Church of England Church, we would sing the beautiful hymn – “Here I am Lord”, I would literally sing the beautiful words but then shoot a prayer up directly after saying – “actually No, Not me Lord, I am here and I so want to stay here Lord, please don’t “send me” Lord. I knew I couldn’t build a new school for children, or help dig a well, I knew I couldn’t cope, so many others can.  What I have learnt years later is, He will only call you when you are ready and ask you to do something that He has equipped you for. You may not feel like you can answer His calling but have faith He Knows Best.

Many years later, one day when I was standing in church in Australia, from the front they started to talk about their bible college course that was due to start soon.  It included a “NAT Certificate IV in Ministry (Leadership)” through Alphacrucis College.  I felt the Holy Spirit tap me on the shoulder and my reaction was “ridiculous, not me, studying, no way, back in the classroom in my 50’s – forget it.” Change “classroom” for “dig a well” and there I was back 30 years!   Knowing that this is not how we speak to the Lord, I convinced myself that the start of the course coincided with a trip I was taking to the UK. Fantastic result.

Many months later, I am stood in the same church and once again they are advertising their college course, this time I didn’t even need the Holy Spirit to tap me on the shoulder, I sat there staring at the course dates, knowing I could easily attend.  Honestly, if there had been an alter call, I would have walked straight up to the front, instead after the service I went to the information table and signed up!

So, after volunteering and leading in Children’s Church for over 14 years I thought I was going back to the classroom to learn how to lead Adults instead of children. I finished the course and asked God “What is my next” - the answer came really quickly, the Pastor of the Church we were attending asked me to run/lead two rooms under a very junior Children’s Pastor. This was not a problem, although I had been a Children’s Pastor in a Church in New Zealand, I could easily eat plenty of portions of humble pie and work alongside him, who knows he might even be interested in learning something from me!

After working with him for almost three months I reached out and read the brilliant book - by Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic - “Why do so many incompetent men become leaders? and how to fix it! If you don’t have time to read the book, let me sum it up for you, usually the loudest, most confident person in the room becomes the leader, they get the title not by experience or talent but by confidence alone.

Well guess what, I’m not the shy type, and when discussing this subject with my eldest son, he said, “Mum why don’t you stop volunteering and start leading, you have a wealth of experience with Children and teaching them the Word of God”. He quickly showed me that God was guiding me to a place where I would recognise my “Here I am Lord” moment!

As I said earlier, God doesn’t call us to go boots in and dig a well if we would rather be sat on the floor reading a child a story about how great Jesus is. Ask the well digger if he wants to wipe a nose, or quickly dash a child to the toilet in the middle of finger painting and they will most likely grab their shovel and walk toward the hole they are digging.

So threetosix was created, a resource for Christians all around the globe to be encouraged in the teaching of children. Five years on, we are thriving, I keep sending up Jabez prayer and God answers miraculously. We have partnerships in Australia, in the Middle East and more recently in the USA. We are truly blessed.

I am encouraged now when churches ask me to help with their volunteer training, their team building and especially their Vision Statements. What an absolute privilege, when people ask me, “what church do you attend”, my reply is always the same, “I attend many” - I travel around to the churches that we partnership with and instead of greeting the same children every week as a volunteer, I get to visit so many children, so many classes and so many parents and leaders. The beauty is that sometimes the churches I partnership with that are local, call on me when they are a teacher short at the last moment - it is an absolute blessing to once again sit with the children and teach them. I recently was with some very little children and at the end they all asked for a photo of them and their work, I received lots of hugs and happy chuckles from them, how lucky am I to be still around Children but serving God in a bigger way with many churches. Blessed, blessed, blessed by our Great God.

What’s in a name

The name threetosix (our website name) came from my lovely son and I sitting down and working on the website. Ages three- to six-year-olds is what I had always taught, although I had experience with other ages, I always, years ago volunteered in churches to run this age room. Over time, of course I took classes that were older, especially middle classes aged seven to nine/ten-year-olds.

I think I was so enthusiastic about the “threetosix” name because you will see from this website that I am extremely passionate about the right ages being in the right room. You will see in articles on this website that churches that teach all ages in the same room, really are treating their twelve-year-olds like three year olds. Having the wrong age in the wrong room limits teaching, limits understanding and in short mixes us the messages we are trying to teach.

I have had many a frank conversation with a leader running children’s church that I was volunteering at that it was very wrong to be putting a five or six year old in with a twelve year old. They just couldn’t understand but I was passionate about my mission, and that mission is that I truly believe that if you have the right ages in the right room together, they will thrive, and learn about a loving God. If you also have a mix of the wrong ages, the younger ones will be trying to keep up with the cool kids and the lesson is dumbed down for the younger ones and in that environment, no one seems to get any teaching.

So, threetosix is to drive home that message - RIGHT AGE IN THE RIGHT ROOM

However, the saying - it does what it says on the tin, in this case is not quite correct, as we offer lessons and great games and craft for ages from three to twelve!

Helping teams

Creating a relationship with the parents of small children is fundamental because you are looking after their children, they need to trust you.

With that trust, you need to build on your relationship with the child each week. Show them they have a place there on a Sunday morning and that its a structured, positive environment. I loved building these relationships and watching the littlies grow, but how did I know I could do it? 

Well, I have been in the Sales and Marketing industry all of my working life, after starting as a sales secretary in the Holiday Inn sales office, I soon realised how much fun it was to show prospective customers around the opulent, gleaming hotel.  Soon after I was promoted to Sales Executive and found myself not only selling inside the hotel to people that inquired about weddings, conferences and business meetings but going out into the community to sell the hotel and bring business in. This took creating relationships to a whole new level.

I love being around the customers, I loved creating business and I learnt very quickly how to build lasting relationships.

After working in the hotel industry, I moved to a Marketing Consultancy where I was an Account Executive, after two years there I was offered the position of Sales Manager of a local Leisure Centre which boasted the largest fun pools in the South of England alongside a banqueting hall that had the capacity of over 1000 people.

I stayed there until clients started to ask me to come and run their sales and marketing from small restaurants asking my advice to National Unions asking me to run, promote and place their conferences all over the UK.  I started my own business as a consultant and having met my husband at the Leisure Centre we went onto have three gorgeous sons alongside running the business. 

My husband, Jonathan was also working hard in a Christian organisation and one December night as we walked through the bright Christmas lights decorating the streets of London he asked me if I would be open to starting again and bringing the boys up in New Zealand.  Of course, I said yes!

In this new Country my consultancy career took a back seat and I was able to concentrate on my three gorgeous boys with my youngest only being 15 months old. Here on started a new chapter of my life where I worked voluntarily. First, I started at the boys’ school where I homed in on my hockey days and started coaching the children’s hockey team, which led to me coaching the Regions representative team. At the same time, I volunteered at the church we attended and there grew my passion for teaching little minds and gorgeous children the Word of God.

Bringing the Gospels alive to children between the ages of three to six is such a privilege, the Bible tells us in Matthew 18.3, “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” Why, because Children do not question God’s love, God’s forgiveness, or God’s teaching.  I have always been able to go to the words of the Bible for my encouragement in what I did with the children over so many years, NIV Matthew 19.14, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.” Jesus was instructing others to “Let the children come to me”, gosh aren’t you glad that you are part of that, part of leading children into Jesus’ love that will be the cornerstone of their little lives as they grow, what an amazing privilege. 

After 14 years of teaching the little ones on a Sunday and also progressing to teaching Bible in Schools to an older age group, we left New Zealand and moved to Australia, a little (only a little) less flight time to our home in the UK and an opportunity to be able to move freely between Australia and the UK for lovely sun filled living.  Our sons now grown up and living in different places I found myself with time and passion to start up a business, “threetosix” that would be for His Kingdom and I’m so glad that there may be the opportunity that you may be part of that.

Throwing myself into this study was challenging, taking the exams was hard, being in line with God’s word, reading the bible, writing about the bible and walking with the Holy Spirit each day was amazing.   The course included

| Effectively communicating the principles of the Old Testament |
| Effectively communicating the principles of the New Testament |
| Develop spiritual disciplines for Christian living |
| Investigate and apply Christian theology |

So now I’ve combined three of my passions into one project. Teaching littlies that God loves them, my Certificate of Ministry and a proud family history of writing, in this, my next adventure.