I received a Facebook message today from a children’s pastor with an interesting question. His church was encouraging him to pursue a seminary degree, but he wasn’t convinced it was necessary. As he looked over the landscape of ‘successful’ children’s ministry professionals, he saw many (including me) whom he didn’t think had seminary degrees, and that didn’t seem to hinder their success in ministry. I won’t list those he mentioned, because he was wrong in assuming that I don’t have a degree, and I wouldn’t want to make the same mistake by stating publicly that someone else doesn’t have a degree if indeed they do.
Me and My Degree (and the Dew that got me through!)
I actually have a Bachelor’s Degree in Bible Theology from Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, Illinois, and a Master’s Degree in Children’s Ministry from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois, but that isn’t the point.
The point is that this children’s pastor poses a great question. I wanted to share here some of what I shared with him, in case others are wrestling with that difficult decision.
Getting a degree is difficult when you are in full-time ministry! As one who has pursued my education while in ministry, I know it is very hard but also extremely valuable. I saw how disconnected the academic work could be from the practical side of ministry, and yet the biblical foundation was essential and critical. Too many pastors desperately need it. If a good school is not near your church, one good option is an online school such as Children’s Ministry University Online, www.cmuo.com, where I have served on the faculty. I only stepped down from my role there when my plate got too full.
As I said to this children’s pastor, yes, it is true that a lot of people you see with ‘success’ have done so without a degree. But if your church is encouraging you to pursue your degree (as did one of mine), and if they are willing to help FUND that pursuit (as did mine), I would take advantage of that! When I started my Master’s degree, I did not see the value of it as much as I do now. I was receiving invitations to speak places and starting to be a published author, and I thought, “Why do I need a degree?” (I was in my 20′s.) But by the time I had earned my degree, I was hearing more and more, “Why should we listen to this guy?” They started asking about my credentials, and the older I get the more they look at my degrees, especially when I am asked to speak on college campuses – suddenly a degree is very important!
Bottom line: Do you NEED a degree to succeed? No. You’ve seen that you need only to follow God’s calling. But if you have the opportunity for a degree, you should jump at it. It will be hard work, but it will enrich you. It will open more doors and gain more respect for you, as well as higher salaries in the long run and an edge over other candidates when applying for jobs, etc.
To have a church encouraging you to further your education is a blessing. I’d do it with gratitude, especially if they are willing to free up some time and provide some financial support to do it. What a great opportunity to invest in yourself as a person and as a minister. I say go for it! No one who got a higher education ever regretted it, and many who did not DID regret it.
What are your thoughts on the subject of ministry and education?
NOTE: Be sure to take the Education Poll related to this post in the Kidologist Forum on Kidology.org
I’m always bummed when CPC is over. I’ve lost track of how many IN A ROW I’ve been to – but it’s over 30! Since 1995 I’ve not missed a single CPC at any location! So that’s at least 30, but for awhile there, they had 3 a year so its well over 30! It doesn’t matter whether I’m speaking, exhibiting or “just” attending, I’m there. CPC is THE place to be.
Don’t get me wrong – there are a LOT of other great conferences. I’m not knocking any of them! Go to them if you can. Each had a unique focus and purpose and I like the intimacy of small conferences. Some I still want to get to and have been unable to. But I don’t skip CPC to go to them. I go to them only if I can go in addition to CPC. But I’ll leave it at that, if you want all the reasons I attend CPC, read this post.
It was a great conference, and I’ll be posting more pictures in the weeks ahead, but tonight I just want to post the funnest moment. (Yes, I know that ‘funnest’ isn’t a word, but my parents gave up on convincing me of that years ago!)
While I was at the D6 booth, I saw they had this giant pillar of box as part of their display – and since I’m speaking at the D6 Conference this fall, I thought it would be cool to get a promo picture of myself inside the pillar of boxes… but HOW to get inside the pillar of boxes?
JUMP! (of course!) Watch this video to see if I make it in a single bound or crash in a pile of limbs and boxes! (This was originally intended as a twitter stunt, as you’ll hear me say on the video)
They gave me a A- for touching the boxes so I did it again later without touching the boxes, but someone else filmed, (INCM staff) when I get that footage, I’ll post it to prove it! (I was given an A+ that time!) LOL
Here I am trying to be more serious. Come to D6 people! D6 is focused on helping the church connect with the home to bring back the Deuteronomy 6 model in this fast paced modern era where we have allowed the church to do the parents job of raising spiritually mature children. It’s for church leaders of any age group, pastors, teachers, parents and anyone who wants to engage in the challenge. I hope to see you there!
I can not even begin to tell you how EXCITED I am to announce that the Great Adventure Cards ARE BACK on Kidology.org!
Created by our own board member and children’s pastor Dan Huffman, these amazing Bible trading cards are a wonderful way to get kids to participate at church. They are more than just Bible cards, they are a complete FUN Bible trading game! There are 25 sets of 80 cards with a variety of series, each is a Bible story, and each is a different number of cards, depending on the story. The artwork is very cool. Each card has a question and a Bible reference. The questions were carefully written so that they are hard enough that most kids (and adults!) aren’t going to “just know the answer” but easy enough that by looking up the answer they can find it in that one verse. The kids collect the cards by coming to church, bringing their Bible, a friend, participating, answering questions, etc. and when they complete a series, AND can answer all the questions (from reading their Bibles and working on them with Mom and Dad at home!) they give the series to a leader who quizes them, and then they get a prize. A hole is punched in the corner of the card so that they can keep the cards, and they can’t be used again (or traded with others) to be used again for a prize. I can tell you as a children’s pastor who used these in ministry – it is VERY EFFECTIVE in engaging kids and getting them to work hard at learning and participating. They haven’t been on Kidology.org for several years and we have had requests regularly for them to be back in print – and we are so excited to be able to offer them once again through the birth of a brand new ministry called Tadpole Tales, view all their exciting new resources on Kidology!
The Kidology Gathering was a great time of fellowship! Thank you to everyone who dropped by! It is always nice to put faces with e-mails, see old friends and meeting new folks. It was also nice of the restaurant to unlock the doors for us, since starting this year they closed early!
Probably the greatest moment was when Barney Kinard got to meet the mother of a child he led to Christ over 16 years ago and she gave him a big hug and a thank you in the center of the circle! What a reminder that we never know when we will get to see or hear about the fruit of our efforts!
BACK TO ORIGINAL POST!
Well, I have arrived in Sunny Southern California! And am ready for CPC 2010 San Diego! After LIVE TWEETING from CPC Nashville, INCM has given me an All Access Pass here in San Diego so I can expand my coverage here in San Diego to include General Sessions, so if you were not able to come to CPC this year, be sure to follow me on Twitter so you can get even more inside access to the happenings here at CPC 2010!
HOW TO FOLLOW TWITTER: You do not need to sign up for Twitter to follow my updates! If you do, you can choose to turn on Mobile Updates* just for this week to get my tweets as texts just during CPC, but if you don’t want to do that, then just make http://www.twitter.com/kidologist your home page Sunday through Wednesday! (*Only do this if you have an unlimited text plan!)
IF YOU ARE AT CPC, BE SURE TO JOIN US MONDAY EVENING AFTER THE EXHIBIT HALL CLOSES FOR SOME FOOD AND FELLOWSHIP. ITS ALWAYS A GOOD TIME.
This is always a highlight of CPC for me. I get to meet some of you, hear about your ministry, and put some faces with e-mail addresses or forum IDs! There is no agenda other than some warm fellowship. It starts around 9:30 p.m. and just ends whenever it winds down. Come when you can, leave when you must. But I’ll probably be there until midnight, so if you are around anytime through then, drop on by!
I hope to meet several of you there!
MY WORKSHOPS:
Here are the workshops I’m doing as well as when and where. I also make my handouts available to Basic (free) members of Kidology.org for two weeks after CPC.
I’m doing the final editing for the next DiscipleTown unit, “How to Make Good Choices” due out March 15th. Hard to believe I’ve written six of these! (and that I have 18 more to go!) I always marvel how each and every unit convicts me and how each unit seems to be exactly what I needed to review in my own walk with God and how much I enjoy developing a four week spiritual journey for children to explore as so that they can grow closer to Jesus and become better disciples.
Let me share one of my favorite elements from lesson three, it is a routine I use with my puppet, Gus. Of course, in the curriculum Gus’ name gets dropped (Sorry Gus!) so that teacher’s can replace him with their own puppet, I remember this routine fondly for both the humor and yet the poignant impact this routine has made many times on children. It’s a description, not a script, but you’ll get the idea:
Puppet has a black eye, a broken arm, and bandages all over his body. Leader asks what is wrong and says, “I hope you didn’t try to fight sin to the death like you were talking about last week!” Puppet says, “Oh, no. I did this all by myself.” Leader looks shocked, “You did this yourself? Were you in some kind of terrible accident?” Puppet says, “Oh, no. It wasn’t an accident. I did it on purpose.” Leader is even more shocked, “On purpose!? You did this on purpose? But why on earth would you do this on purpose?” Puppet looks sad and solemn. “Because I’m such a bad puppet. I needed to be punished.” Leader looks very concerned, “Punished? Punished for what?” Puppet continues, “Oh, I’m too embarrassed to tell you. But you said last week to turn to God and I’d stop sinning. Well, it didn’t work. I sinned again. And since I know better than to try and fight sin, I decided to beat myself up instead. I wanted to teach myself a lesson. God can’t have bad people on His team, you know. I’ve got to knock some sense into myself—beat myself into submission, you know. I tried to knock myself into the middle of next week. What is today’s date, by the way?” Leader is shocked and sad. “Oh, Puppet, you don’t need to beat yourself up. God will forgive you.” Puppet looks up, “Oh, I know He did, but not again and again.” Leader says, “Yes, again and again, and then again and again and again and again.” Puppet asks, “And then … again and again?” Leader smiles, “And then again and again.” Puppet says, “And then again?” Leader says, “And then again.” Puppet asks, “How many agains?” Leader says, “Until you’ve lost track.” Puppet says, “I already have.” Leader: “Then you still have more agains left over.” Puppet, looking more cheerful: “That’s a lot of agains!” Leader smiles: “As many as you need—that’s how much He loves you.”
Jesus sure has given me a lot of “agains” and I know I have a tendency to beat myself up to. I recently was with a good friend and brought up a sin I had committed in the past and this godly leader cut me off, looked me in the eye and said, “Do you believe in the cross?” I said “Of course,” and this person said, “then don’t ever mention your sin to me again. Just keep moving forward and serving the Lord.” Wow. That’s far as the East is from the West! We need more Christians like that, don’t we? We teach this stuff to our children, but sometimes its so hard to live and believe it for ourselves!
What are you beating yourself up for? What do you keep reminding yourself of?
Jesus has as many “agains” as we have sins. Need another “again?” He’s got one for ya!
Be sure to add to your Blog Roll and RSS Reader a new blog in town: www.toddmckeever.com.
Todd McKeever isn’t a new blogger, he’s just started a new personal blog. He’s been bloggin’ insightful posts on leadership and children’s ministry for years on his church website, but has decided to split them out and make the church blog church stuff and make have his own separate blog at www.toddmckeever.com.
We are also excited to announce that Todd has been hired on staff at Kidology part time as our Executive Operations Coordinator to help to staff and project management, a much needed addition to our team. He’d been a volunteer member of our team for years, so it was about time we promoted him and tapped into his leadership gifts at a greater level. Hey, he even made the staff page on Kidology.org today!
I attended my first CPC back in the mid 1990′s and still have my logo-themed dress shirt “Reaching New Horizons” that I bought that year. I have not missed a single CPC since, even when they have had up to three conferences a year! I’ve now been to forty CPC in a row! Yes, I have done workshops, hosted round tables, church tours and exhibited, but even during seasons of life when I was taking a break from active ministry and wasn’t there to do anything, I still attended! Why? Because CPC is not only good for ministry, it is good for relationships and for the soul.
Just search my blog for “CPC” and you will find pages and pages of posts about CPC and discover why it is the “conference of conferences” that I believe should be the first choice of every serious children’s ministry leader. There are many good conferences out there, and you ought to visit many of them. But none come close to the networking power, breath of resources, quality of speakers, quantity of options, and level of excellence you find at a Children’s Pastors Conference. It is obvious they have been at this for years and know exactly what they are doing.
Here is why I never miss a CPC and why you should join me at the next Children’s Pastor’s Conference:
There is just something amazingly encouraging about worshiping God in a huge room filled with hundreds of people as crazy about God and kids as you are… and not having to put the chairs away when its all over.
It is so refreshing to get to worship with fellow children’s ministry leaders in a “Big Church” settings singing “Big Church” songs without wondering if the third grade class got the DVD player after the second grade class was done with it and if the nursery workers showed up and if Mrs. Blackburn remembered she was leading the worship during second service today.
It is fun to network and meet people from around the country who share your passion for kids and yet marvel at how, out of so many people, God sovereignly places people at your table who are either going through a similar situation or have a solution or idea to the very issue you are wrestling with, or how they know someone you know!
The caliber of the speakers is out-of-this-world challenging and the unique presentations always surprise and delight. Just when you think you know what is going to happen, something fresh and new has been planned.
The choices in the workshops is a little overwhelming, but that’s a good thing – and you can always get CDs or even MP3s to take home for yourself and your team. The number of workshops, the variety and the quality of the presenters is unparalleled.
Everywhere you go during your free time, you are meeting people who share your passion for ministry and making connections that end up becoming friendships last long after the conference is over. You marvel at how you managed to meet these people at such a large event.
THEN THERE IS THE RESOURCE CENTER! (My favorite!) No where else is there such a gathering of objective resources laid out aisle upon aisle of resource providers, both large established companies as well as small start up ministries with a home made banner and a big dream and a wonderful resource that worked in their church that they are eager to share with you. I can’t wait each year to find out what will be the newest resources in the Resource Center – that alone would be enough reason to go to CPC, everything else is like frosting on a delicious resource cake!
I feel bad adding the resort, but hey, we DO like to get away and it IS nice to be spoiled. Who doesn’t like a little late night room service, a dip in the hot tub or a trip to the swimming pool? I’ll confess to sneaking over to the Apple Store at the mall or even off site to a nice restaurant before or after the conference. I mean, come on, you can’t go to San Diego, without checking out Old Town San Diego and picking up some souvenirs!
But the BEST thing – as you can see from the image above, is the people you will meet and the friends you will make. You may think it is the “well known” people you will get to meet, and that is a treat, but what you will discover by getting to meet them, is that they are as down to earth and ordinary as you are. They just started serving the Lord like you, and as they did, God blessed it, people liked it, so they got a little notoriety, but they are truly as ordinary and as interesting as the person next to them, maybe less! You will discover that everyone you meet has ideas and input that will bless you whether or not you knew their name before you got there!
And the list could go on and on. The impact will be different and unique for everyone – but I can promise you, it will be positive. I hear over and over from folks, “Karl, it was at CPC 2004 that such and such radically changed for me” or “After I went to CPC 2006 my ministry turned around.”
I do hope to see you there. Be sure to let them know, Karl sent you!
I wish I was a morning person like some people I know who are up before God every day by the time I roll out of bed, they are six to seven hour into their day. But there is no secret about it, I’m a night owl. I work best at night when there is no one around to bother, er, (let me rephrase that) interrupt me – and I thrive under pressure. I rarely go to bed before midnight. I still get a full night of sleep, I just get up eight hours later. I’ve always joked that my life verse is Proverbs 6:9:
“Allow no sleep to your eyes, no slumber to your eyelids.”
However, as all adults discover, this gets harder as you get older, especially since I can no longer drink Mountain Dew. (Yeah, haven’t had a clean crisp ice cold can of Dew since shortly after my heart episode. My heart meds make all soda taste disgusting, Root Beer is all I can drink in the bubbly category. But hey, I’ve lost weight!)
But I degress…
The point is, I WISH I was a morning person, because I WAS once upon a time. In high school. I used to get up early, go for a walk, read, sneak out for walks, read, study, do homework, and feel like I was half way through my day by the time I got to school. College life turned it all around, and I never adjusted back. I think not having a kid for fifteen years is part of the reason.
IF I WAS A MORNING PERSON, here is what I would do every morning: (I do these at other times of the day now, or never get to them)
Read my Bible and Pray
Read Oswald Chambers My Utmost For My Highest
Journal (Offline, by hand)
Blog (Online, yeah, here for you to read, or other sites like YS, TBT)
I am personally convinced that one person can be a change catalyst, a “transformer” in any situation, any organization. Such an individual is yeast that can leaven an entire loaf. It requires vision, initiative, patience, respect, persistence, courage, and faith to be a transforming leader.
~ Stephen R. Covey
I hope to meet several of you there!
Puppet has a black eye, a broken arm, and bandages all over his body. Leader asks what is wrong and says, “I hope you didn’t try to fight sin to the death like you were talking about last week!” Puppet says, “Oh, no. I did this all by myself.” Leader looks shocked, “You did this yourself? Were you in some kind of terrible accident?” Puppet says, “Oh, no. It wasn’t an accident. I did it on purpose.” Leader is even more shocked, “On purpose!? You did this on purpose? But why on earth would you do this on purpose?” Puppet looks sad and solemn. “Because I’m such a bad puppet. I needed to be punished.” Leader looks very concerned, “Punished? Punished for what?” Puppet continues, “Oh, I’m too embarrassed to tell you. But you said last week to turn to God and I’d stop sinning. Well, it didn’t work. I sinned again. And since I know better than to try and fight sin, I decided to beat myself up instead. I wanted to teach myself a lesson. God can’t have bad people on His team, you know. I’ve got to knock some sense into myself—beat myself into submission, you know. I tried to knock myself into the middle of next week. What is today’s date, by the way?” Leader is shocked and sad. “Oh, Puppet, you don’t need to beat yourself up. God will forgive you.” Puppet looks up, “Oh, I know He did, but not again and again.” Leader says, “Yes, again and again, and then again and again and again and again.” Puppet asks, “And then … again and again?” Leader smiles, “And then again and again.” Puppet says, “And then again?” Leader says, “And then again.” Puppet asks, “How many agains?” Leader says, “Until you’ve lost track.” Puppet says, “I already have.” Leader: “Then you still have more agains left over.” Puppet, looking more cheerful: “That’s a lot of agains!” Leader smiles: “As many as you need—that’s how much He loves you.”
