Home Archive by category "Kidmin" (Page 38)

Category: Kidmin

STATE of the KIDMIN

So, did you watch the STATE of the UNION address by the President? Regardless of your political opinions, it is a good practice to stop once a year and consider the state of the union. How are we doing? What have we accomplished? What could we do better? Who can we honor? Have you ever considering addressing the STATE of the KIDMIN? Often we get stuck in a rut. We do the same things every year because… well, we did them last year. And the year before. And possibly, the year before that. Maybe you should consider doing your own “STATE of the KIDMIN” for your parents, leaders and volunteers. You could do a luncheon or simply a letter you send out. But similar to the President, share what has gone well, what could be done better, and honor some people who have served well. There is always cause for applause in the children’s ministry. And the good news is, there probably isn’t two parties in your kidmin you have to worry about “crossing the aisle” to appeal to! So what is the STATE of your KIDMIN? Is it time to do some evaluating in what YOUR KIDMIN should do…

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Why I Do What I Do

I just got an e-mail that MADE 2014. It defined why I do what I do. I share it with his permission: Subject: I’m Going to Be a Children’s Pastor! Hey Karl, This Sunday I am going to be appointed as the Assistant Pastor of Children’s Ministries at my church. I am so excited to finally get to be focused on Pastoral ministry to kids and their families. However, when I think back over the years, I know I need to thank you. You were a HUGE encouragement to me and one of the reasons I kept pressing forward in this call. At one point I was simply a 6th grader with a call from God, but you were one of the touch-points God used along the way in order to keep me focused on that call. I know I was not the best employee at times, but you still saw through my work and saw the call God had put on my heart. I wanted to thank you for supporting me through the years I was blogging and working for Kidology. Honestly, I’m not always sure why you were so willing to empower me, because I know I was…

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When Your Volcano Fizzles

What do you do when you put a lot of hard work into an event or idea in ministry… and the end result is disappointing? For Christmas Luke got a home made volcano. We  were pretty excited about it and spent several days building it and looking forward to the final moment on the eve of our trip home when we would erupt the volcano. The climax of the project, was, well, let’s just say it’s a good thing we all had a good sense of humor about it. Here is a video of the dramatic eruption! As we laughed about our volcano disaster, it occurred to me that the same thing has happened to me many times in ministry. I got a “great idea” – put a lot of work and energy and time and often resources into bringing the idea into reality, only the have the final result be… well, disappointing. What then? If it hasn’t happened to you yet, it will. You’ll have a great looking volcano that only fizzles. You can laugh about it, but more importantly, you can learn from it. What are some of the lessons we learn in leadership from our flops? Ask,…

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Blogging Tips for 2014

Start your New Year out with some blogging tips! In just a few months, I will have been blogging with this website for ten years. Kinda crazy! But that isn’t when I started blogging. I was blogging before there were blogs. I used to create webpages from scratch before any of the blogging platforms existed and would email friends a link to my post, like when I went to Alaska or flying with my dad. So when I started blogging, the Internet was a bit of a lonely place for blogs… but now there are well over 100 kidmin blogs worthy of reading! Over the years my blog has gone from in the Top 5 to now down in the mid-thirties on the “Top 100” list – and I celebrate this decline! It means that there are many people contributing weekly to what has always been my driving passion – to equip and encourage those in children’s ministry. While much of my kidmin writing ends up on Kidology.org instead of my blog, I have enjoyed seeing the amount of help for kids ministers growing steadily every year, even if that means my blogs “ranking” goes down some. It’s a team effort!…

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“Problem” Kids – Aren’t Really a Problem After All!

This is a guest post, re-posted from itsyourbooknow.blogspot.com with permission. This week I had a Sunday School training with Karl Bastian, the Kidologist. The topic was discipline, and I was eager to learn. That’s one of the hardest things for me as a Sunday School teacher. I walked out with a lot of great tips. Grace based tips. Which I love, because I’m a big fan of grace. All new ideas I’d never thought of, heard of, or tried before. I’m eager to try this out. But the thing that struck me the most wasn’t so much a tip as it was a perspective. Which was pretty much the perspective that framed all the tips. You know those “good” kids? You know, the ones who bring you Christmas gifts and say please and thank you and never disrupt class? You probably aren’t going to make a difference in their life. Why? Because their lives are already on a good trajectory. They usually come from good homes, homes where parents are doing a wonderful job teaching them about faith and how to live like Jesus. If you weren’t in their lives, they’d probably still turn out to be wonderful Christians. You…

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