Home BlogPage 57

Making Meetings Matter

As Benjamin Franklin once said, “Two things in life are certain, death and taxes…” perhaps he should have added “meetings.” We went into children’s ministry because we love ministry to kids… and yet, we find ourselves in a LOT of meetings! I am amazed at the number of meetings children’s ministry leaders have to attend. I’ve had friends share with me how overwhelmed they are by meetings. A few have told me they have over twenty meetings a week. One said, “I’m being meetinged to death!” So when I started my new children’s pastorate one of my first orders of business was to make sure I got control of meetings. Not only did I not want to attend more than necessary, but I didn’t want to meet my own leaders and volunteers to death. So I asked a few of my friends for their tips on meetings, and developed a set of rules that would guide the meetings that I called. At my first team meeting, I established the following guidelines. Perhaps you may find them helpful. You are welcome to use and modify as you need for your own ministry: Team Commitments and Roles When there is not a…

Continue reading

SHAKE TO ASSEMBLE?

This morning at camp I showed the campers a really cool blue Lego Race Car Kit that I bought. I told them that my plan is to assemble it by shaking it in the box and demonstrated several shaking techniques. I even passed it through the audience letting the kids help me assemble it through shaking. I’m hoping by the end of the day it will be fully assembled inside the box so that I can just take it out and show the kids the completed car. But some think I’m crazy. They are telling me that the car had an inventor who first envisioned the car – then designed it – and that the box contains detailed instructions on how to put it together. Sounds superstitious to me! I let them know that sounds great, but I heard that our world came together randomly and by chance. It couldn’t be that Someone invented it, designed it, assembled it and made instructions on how we should then live! It just took millions of years of randomness for all this order to finally appear. So, by the same logic, if I just shake the Lego box enough times it should assemble…

Continue reading

How I Write Entire Teaching Series at Once

I wanted to take you behind the curtain a bit, and share a little about how I create complete curriculum units in a short amount of time—as I’m often asked for “my secret” or for help when friends find they need to crank out an entire series in a short amount of time! I’m heading to another week of camp speaking, and I’m excited about the theme: What a FUN theme for a week of helping kids to “BUILD” their lives on the Word of God! So many applicable verses come to mind, like: You also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. I Peter 2:5 I’ve done a Kid’s Church unit in the past where we looked at our “Connections” to God, Family, Church, Friends, Neighbors and the World. But I had 8 chapels to write and that series was only 6 lessons—and while I could do an intro and a review—the creative in me said, “Time to do something new and fresh!” rather than rehash something old. I did look through them for “lego ideas” that would be transferable. Then the…

Continue reading

Principles for Powerful Programming

I recently had a vision casting meeting with our elementary volunteers. Currently, my church runs a good program. The kids are dropped off in various rooms. Then they travel to a large room for some corporate worship before traveling back to their separate rooms for a lesson. There is a lot of loose time and transition time. My goal was to pitch that we have very little time with these kids to make an eternal impact—so we need to make every minute count. So I presented some goals we will aim for this fall: Goals for this Fall: We want every child who comes to Kids Rock to feel noticed, loved and welcome! We want to make Sunday the highlight of their week! We want guests to come back because they had a great time and made a connection. We want kids to leave having learned something NEW and life-changing. These are goals everyone could agree with, easily. But how do you make them a reality? You have to create a program that has some pop and power and that pulls the kids along. It can’t drag and it needs to have clear direction, purpose and it be intentional. There…

Continue reading

Back in the Saddle

Yeeeeee-HAW! Well, it’s been about a month that I’ve been “back in the saddle” as a full time children’s pastor and what a ride it’s been! I suppose I should get back to blogging and letting y’all know how it’s been going! I’m having a blast and it’s going great so far. I’m not changing too much too fast – mostly getting to know people – learning how things are done here, and evaluating. I’m impressed with the number of volunteers, the commitment of the staff and with so much of what is already in place. We have some excitement in the air because of a new building that will be breaking ground soon and so the opportunity is ahead of us for growth as we will be moving in to a new building (Lord willing) in the fall of 2016. That’s going to mean preparing to raise the bar in how we do thing to prepare for anticipated growth over the next year. I’m also busy looking at how we are organized, how we process things, and how we recruit, schedule, do check in, retain volunteers and visitors and theming both here and when we move into the new…

Continue reading