Reinventing Yourself

At CPC last month, I did a workshop titled “10 Steps to a Ministry Reboot.” You can listen to it and get my notes for a limited time here: www.kidology.org/cpc12 In short, it was 10 basic areas of ministry / tips you need to address in order to both keep your sanity and have a well functioning ministry. Some of the tips are a little shocking to newer administrators. Like “Don’t Recruit” and “Stop Leading.” In other words, you should only recruit a leadership team, and they should do the rest of the recruiting (under your guidance), and don’t lead any ministries yourself. Equip leaders who lead under your leadership. It’s a workshop that often saves the sanity and ministry of those who hear it. In response, I got the following e-mail today: Hi Karl, ….Last week I had the opportunity to attend CPC in San Diego.  I attended your breakout:  “Ten Steps to a CM Reboot…”  I appreciated the things you shared.  I am currently on a sabbatical that my church has blessed me with and this is exactly where I am at right now… I am at a point in my life where I need to re-invent myself…

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How to Search on Kidology.org

How to Search on Kidology.org I’m often asked by our members and visitors, “How do you find things on Kidology.org?” Like Emily just did at CPC this past week, “I know you have vast resources, but sometimes I struggle to find things because there is just so much.” It’s a GREAT question! Part of the issue is knowing what you are looking for, and the other part is knowing where to look on the site. Because we have literally tens of thousands of zone posts, forum posts, and other types of content that have been growing daily for nearly twenty years, simply starting at the search engine at the top of the site is only scratching the surface. That is why we divide the content up into category Zones and various topical Discussion Forums to attempt to guide you to where you can find the specific help you are looking for. However, let me give you a few tips on using our search engine. If you start at the top of the site and enter a phrase such as “love and faith” it will look like this: The results will look something like this: However, if you scroll down, you…

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My CPC’s Are Catching Up To My Age!

UPDATE: INCM informed me there were 3 CPC’s from 2001-2006, so I now know that CPC San Diego was my 40th CPC! I’m enjoying my 38th or 39th consecutive CPC. I’m trying to figure out how many I’ve been to, but in order to get the exact number, I need to know how many years they hosted three! But for the past 17 years I have not missed a single Children’s Pastor’s Conference at any location. Every time people say, “were you at the one where….” I smile, because I have been at all of them since 1995. It hit me this year that soon my age will be the same as the number of Children’s Pastor’s Conferences I have attended. I have been here as an attendee, as a speaker, as a performer, as an exhibitor…but mostly I am just here to walk around and talk to my friends who love kids ministry as much as I do. I love meeting new people. I love seeing old friends. I love encouraging folks going through tough times. I love giving a word of advice or counsel to those just starting out in ministry or business. I love just being here…

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Sumu Kids!

Here’s a “Blast from the Past!” I recently had thousands of pictures scanned by ScanMyPhotos.com and am discovering some fun pictures from over twenty years of ministry as a children’s pastor (as well as lots of fun family pics). Several of these kids I still know and some I am friends with now on Facebook, even though this was 1993 at the Village Church of Lincolshire, IL. (Pictured here are David and Hannah Shaw, Tina Myers, Athena (Rebecca) Stephens, Tyler and Kelsey Hagen, Matt, Sam and Gab Fuqua, Jennelle, Jenene and Jenna Stanonik, Gina Geavaras, Amy Lane, and others I only remember first names. I am getting old!) Here is a fun game event I did in my Rookie Year as a full time children’s pastor that I called Sumu Kids: First, the TEAM PHOTOS: We did this at a “Sack Lunch Sunday.” Every first Sunday of the month, I let all the grade school kids stay at church for a themed afternoon of fun and games. Its purpose was simply to deepen my relationship with the kids as well as to give parents a nice Sunday afternoon off. (Parent Points!) There was always some spiritual teaching, yes, but that…

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We LOVE Our Members Month!

We LOVE Our Members Month! It’s the month of LOVE… and to show our appreciation and deep felt LOVE for our Premium Members who support our ministry, Kidology will be rolling out a super-duper special deal each and every week of February. You’ll need to be a Premium Member on Kidology.org to benefit from these incredible deals, so if you are still hesitating on upgrading to Premium… now is the time to avail yourself of ALL the incredible resources on this vast website because we will be spreading the love around this month with some incredible deals for premium members only! JOIN or UPGRADE HERE! DISCOVER THE DEALS HERE! Pastor Karl Bastian, the Kidologist Founder of Kidology.org

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