Lead Well

Photo by Miikka Luotio on Unsplash I was stuck. We were finally coming back from COVID and starting Wednesday night services back up. We decided to rebrand the night for adults and focus on groups instead of the traditional Wednesday night service. This was great for adults, but what about kids? Will I have the same kids every week? How long will the groups meet? What should I do on First Wednesday, when I’ll have more kids? To make things harder, I wasn’t sure how many kids, if any would come back, and the time I had available to prep another service was very limited since I was doing Sunday online and in person. I’m in the Assemblies of God , so most our churches have Royal Rangers and Mpact Girls Clubs on Wednesday nights. However, I’m seeing more and more churches move away from these programs and others like it for various reasons. This post is not an advocation for or against them, but if you’ve already decided to not do them or exploring your options, I hope this can h

Photo by Ante Hamersmit on Unsplash It was the summer of 2014, and I’m trying to get as many kids as possible to go to camp. I advertised, secured scholarships, made phone calls and much more, but I’d hit a ceiling. Many kids couldn’t go because their parents had already scheduled something that week or they had already committed to attending one of other paid events throughout the summer and couldn’t afford it. Sound familiar? One dad told me he’d love to send his kids to camp, but he hadn’t budgeted for it. If I’d told him about all the things earlier, they may have been able to go. Thus, the parent meeting was born. Even though it started as an information meeting, over the years, the meeting has morphed into a vision casting and connection point for parents. It’s one of the most valuable events I do all year. 5 Steps to a Successful Parent Information Meeting. 1. Plan the Year. You don’t have to have every event listed and don’t feel like you’re locked into everything you’ve li

Photo by Christin Hume on Unsplash It’s been said that a new guest makes their decision to return to your church in the first 15 minutes of their visit. That’s a small window, especially when you consider most of that 15 minutes happens before service begins. From a children’s ministry perspective, a guest family will need to find a place to park, unload all the kids (which may include strollers, diaper bags, cups, toys, and anything else) The family is already unsure if this is going to work, and the kids may even be more unsure of what is to come. Once the family is ready to enter the building there are multiple questions they have before they leave the safety of their car. What door do we enter? Where do we go from there? Where is the bathroom? Is the preaching good? Is this a safe place to bring my kids? Will they have fun? Will they make friends? Since we’re talking about kids, we’ll look at the last three questions. 3 Questions Every Guest Asks 1. Do they feel safe? Safety is a

Photo by Edu Lauton on Unsplash It's January and that means it's time to start working on VBS. I know it’s 6-7 months out, but there are a few high-level decisions you need to make now to set you up for success in the coming months. One of the first questions that is asked is, "What VBS curriculum should my church use? The truth is there are a lot of great curriculums out there, and while I have my preferences, I won’t advocate for any of them in this post. When picking out a VBS curriculum there are so many things to consider. Theme Cost Content Structure Strategy Music Volunteer needs So much more While you will need to answer all those questions, I think there are three main questions you need to answer before any others. Three Questions to Ask Before Picking a VBS 1. Strategy (Why are you doing this?) For me this is the most essential question to answer.  If you don't take the time to think through your strategy, you're just throwing a dart at the wall

Photo by Ben White on Unsplash John Maxwell famously said that leaders are readers. I’ve taken that to heart and become a voracious reader.  Every year I set a goal to read a certain number of books. I’ve gone all the way to 36 but have settled between 20 to 24. This year, instead of focusing on quantity, I focused on subjects that interested me and read a few pages every day. Somehow, I still got 20 books in. For this post, I broke the books into categories. Each book has an affiliate link to Amazon so you can easily make your list for next year. Thanks for your support! What I read in 2022

Photo by Chad Madden on Unsplash Come Christmas time a question I see asked over and over is, “What is a good Christmas movie to show at my church?” Whether it’s for simple service for the Sunday after Christmas, a part of your midweek service, or a family movie night outreach, trying to find the right movie for your audience can be tough. We have to consider language, content, message, and several other factors not to mention complying with copyright laws. I’m not going to cover the legality of showing movies in your church, but you should check with your media/ worship pastor at minimum or a lawyer to make sure it’s ok to show. You don’t want Disney coming after you because you decided to show “The Santa Clause” and broke their copyright. With all these factors in mind, here are five movies you can safely show in your church. I’ve vetted all of them and shown most of them in my own ministry. 5 Movies to Show in Church this Christmas

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash Budgets, love them or hate them, you need to have one to effectively manage the resources God has given you and your ministry. The churches I’ve served in have been on both ends of the spectrum when it comes to budget planning. One of them didn’t give me a budget at all. If I needed something, I had to ask my lead pastor. Most of the time this worked because he would say yes.  However, while I served there, the global recession hit, and we entered a spending freeze for 2 years. I didn’t have a budget and the answer for buying literally anything was almost certainly going to be no. It became impossible to plan and very difficult to minister. On the other side of the spectrum, one church required me to put almost every purchase into its own category. I had income and expense line items for over 20 categories. Many of which were legacy categories my predecessors used that I had no plans for. In addition, I had to painstakingly plan out each categ

Photo by Ben White on Unsplash Family services. Love them or hate them, they have their place. I'm an advocate for family services because I believe children’s ministry needs to be more than a ministry held in another room never to be seen or heard from. These services can be a great tool for emphasizing ministry to the next generation, highlight the great things that are happening, and give your volunteers a much needed week off. Some churches do them great and others never have them. The churches that I’ve served in have been on both sides of the spectrum and somewhere in between. Here are 6 Steps to a Great Family Service.

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash It’s Fall, and that means it’s time for your fall festival, trunk or treat, Holy Ghost Weeny Roast or whatever you call the event you do this time of year. This is a unique event because a lot of people who may not come to your church may come to your campus for the very first time. Unlike events like VBS or Egg Hunt, fall festivals offer a specific registration challenge. Because the nature of the event is come and go, trying to collect people’s contact information can be really challenging and cause a lot of friction between your volunteers and the people attending the event. Over the years, I’ve seen and tried a lot of different methods for getting this valuable information, and I finally landed on one that works. Here are 4 ways to not do registration and one that works.

Maybe you’ve seen this. You have a fifth or sixth grader completely checked out. They may have been engaged a few years before, but it’s getting close to their time to move on, and they have senioritis all of sudden. You thought it was only for 12th graders, but now you see it in 12-year-olds. But what do you do? Do you encourage them to engage? Talk to their parents? Let them move on to youth? In my first ministry, this problem was rampant. I was the fourth kids pastor for those sixth graders, and they were over it. They didn’t care and a few of them did whatever the wanted causing major distractions. Putting a discipline plan in place helped a little, but it didn’t solve the problem. That’s when I decided to begin a kids leadership team. We still had Sunday School, so for the ones who came, I’d teach a little about the Bible, and then train them how to run sound, lead worship, and do puppets. They helped me make videos to remind kids of the rules and to go to the bathroom

Photo by Miguel A Amutio on Unsplash It’s so exciting when you first start in ministry. There’s so much passion and energy, and you just can’t wait to get in with the kids or youth and change lives. But if you’ve been in ministry for more than a year, you have to know that not everything moves as fast as you thought they would. There’s a famous quote that says, “We overestimate what we can do in a year and underestimate what we can do in a decade.” Ministry is a marathon, not a sprint.

Photo by Jesus Loves Austin on Unsplash If you’ve been doing small groups in your kids service for any length of time, you may be asking what is the best way to split the kids up? Do we do it by grade? Gender? Favorite candy? Random? The truth is there is no perfect answer and depending on the size of your ministry and how many kids show up per service the answer will be different. I’ve studied churches like Northpoint Community Church and Church of the Highlands and asked them what they do. In addition, I've spoken with several Orange Specialists on what are the best practices for small groups. Here’s what I’ve found.

Working in Kidmin, I’ve had the unique opportunity to plan not just what we’re teaching, but what we’re singing as well. I’m a church kid, so I’ve heard a lot of church music and my children’s ministry was pretty progressive, so we were singing worship choruses long before other churches were. Some of the hits were, I’ve Got a River of Life, Lord You Are, and I am a CHRISTIAN. One of the most popular kids songs I remember wasn’t even played at church but at camp. I don’t remember the name, but it was set to the tune Barbara Ann. The lyrics went: Pick, pick, pick Pick, pick your nose Pick, pick, pick, Pick, pick your nose Pick, pick, pick, Pick, pick your nose Pick your nose ‘til the mucus flows!! They only played it once, but we sang it all week, and somehow, I still remember it. Ahh… good times. But when you’re in charge and thinking about the songs you’re going to sing in kids church, you can’t make the mistake of just playing the fun and fast stuff. Our worship has to have a me

Photo by Jeff Dunham on Unsplash Volunteer recruitment is hard. One question asked most often is, “How do you get volunteers?” There are a whole lot of different strategies, but I'll cover those in a different post. Since the Pandemic , I’ve had the responsibility of finding volunteers for our Wednesday Preschool ministry. We changed our strategy for Wednesday nights to groups instead of an adult service, and I can tell you it has not been easy. I love the model and our people are growing but finding adults who are willing to leave their group to serve is a tough ask. Recently, I found myself with only one volunteer on a particular Wednesday night with less than two days to find new volunteers. Closing the ministry for the night was not an option, but it was looking like it may happen. It’s not a fun place to be. As I thought about who I can recruit, I found that there are four pools of people I can ask to serve. 1. Parents I looked for parents first. But as I went ove

I’ve been posting and leading the social media for the churches I’ve worked for almost as long as I’ve been a kid’s pastor. For the past 13 years, I’ve moved with the changes to Facebook and Instagram. Established Twitter accounts and even explored Snap Chat and Marco Polo. Creating daily or even weekly content for all of these platforms can be exhausting and many of these platforms change everything seemingly on a whim. It can be tough to keep up. In addition, the fallacy of social media is thinking that just posting to one platform one time is enough. It’s not. You have to be consistent and repeat yourself over and over. There is no one silver bullet to church communication. I outline 3 of the methods of communication I use here. Over the last few months, I think I’ve finally settled on a system for consistent content creation for all the platforms I’m on that keep parents connected and informed. I use a seven-day plan that is abstract enough to use on almost any platform bu

When I first became a children’s pastor on my first Sunday, I sat and observed how the volunteers were managing their service. These were college students with little to no training, just a heart for kids and doing the best they could. Their stories and games were good. Their energy was excellent during worship, but they had one glaring problem. Discipline. The kids did whatever they wanted; whenever they wanted. I asked the leaders what their discipline plan was, and it was a convoluted three strikes and you’re out system, but the only consequence for any infraction was less candy. Essentially, a kid could misbehave all service and instead of getting three pieces of candy, they’d only get one. It didn’t take much for some of the kids to figure it out and exploit it. Rules and consequences were the first thing I changed when I took over, and the leaders were thankful. I was a certified teacher and spent many, many hours studying classroom management. I knew their system was neve

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash Recently, I was having a conversation with a new pastor and he was excitedly talking about all things he was planning to do with his kids. I asked him how he was planning to let parents know, and he said he was trusting the kids. Rookie mistake. If you work in nextgen/family ministry, understand that you lead more than just your kids and students. It’s easy to fall into this trap because for most of us that’s why we got into this gig in the first place. However, being pastor is far more complex than leading a service on a Sunday morning or Wednesday night. Now with COVID it’s 10x worse, but that’s another post. Whether you’re leading online, in-person, or some combination in between you have to balance leading 3 different groups of people.

Photo by Ahmad Ossayli on Unsplash This year has been crazy to say the least. As much as I love to read leadership and ministry books, I read less this year because of all the stress. I needed an escape. Since I’m a huge Star Wars fan, and we’re in the golden age of Star Wars there are a lot of great books continuing the story. I used to have this rule that fiction doesn’t count, then I read Jon Acuff’s book Finish, and he pointed out an interesting fact. Why doesn’t it count? I’m not turning this in for a grade. There is no standard that says Fiction doesn’t count. So, I started counting it and reading became a joy again. This year was unique for my Non-Fiction books. I joined a group called Hydrate from the Assemblies of God Children’s Ministry department. Along with training in ministry they required a book a month. Many of these I would never have picked up, but I’m glad they did. The ideas expanded my world view and challenged me to think differently about my ministry. H

When the pandemic started, like many of you, I panicked. I had 3 days to figure out how to take my children’s ministry completely online with no equipment, no training, and very little help. That first service was a train wreck that started 10 minutes late with low quality and a replica of what we’d been doing in person for years. Fast forward months later, and now I’m older and wiser. It seems like five years since March 15 because of everything that has changed, and all my plans have flown out the window. I’m frequently reminded of Jesus’ words in Matthew 6:34: “Therefore, do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” I’ve tried a lot of different things over the last few months. Some have worked, some have been dismal failures. But that’s how innovation works. You never get it right the first time or even the tenth. That said here are three things I’ve started since COVID that are working.

Small Group time at my church Churches all over are trying to figure out how to reopen and relaunch their services and specifically their children’s ministry. I’m no different. I’m eternally grateful to the leaders I’ve talked to over the last few months who have successfully (whatever that means these days) opened their children’s ministries. I’m in Florida, so I know that I’m a little bit ahead of the curve. We opened in-person meetings in May and relaunched kids (elementary only) on July 26. I don’t have all the answers, but this is what I’ve learned so far about launching kids ministry in a pandemic filled world.