Lead Well

Photo by Dominic Hanson on Unsplash At my first church, I felt like I was alone. My senior pastor was sick, and the church was struggling. I had been in ministry for about a year and half and at first, I thought I was doing ok. But then when problems came, and I expressed them to my fellow staff members, it fell on deaf ears. I had a few friends in kidmin, but they lived in other states. Also, Facebook was in its infancy so finding others like me was difficult. Then at a sectional meeting with other church leaders in my area, I met a guy who told me about his kids’ pastor and how he had a podcast. Intrigued, I downloaded a few episodes and instantly felt at home. You know that feeling when you meet someone, and they just get it?  Since we were in the same town, I looked him up, and we went to lunch. It was the first of many connections and set me on a journey of seeking outside sources to make my ministry better. The thing is you were never meant to do ministry alone. We ne...

Photo by Bench Accounting on Unsplash The dirty secret of children’s ministry, specifically, and NextGen ministry in general is that very little of your time as a pastor is spent ministering to that age group. In reality, you will spend 1-3 hours a week actually leading them, while the other 40+ hours are spent doing other things. When I first started as a kids pastor, my father-in-law asked almost weekly, “So, what do you do the rest of the week?” Thankfully he’s figured it out, but he’s not alone. A lot of people don’t know what we do week in and week out. It’s easy to scoff at this question and what they don’t understand, but when you think deeply about it, what do you actually do the rest of the week ?  How do you know what you did this week actually helped you move the ball forward? How do you know you did everything you needed to do to be ready for what’s next? No matter where you serve in NextGen ministry, I believe there are four types of work that each minister needs...

Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash In a previous post , I said there are three groups every NextGen pastor leads. However, there is a fourth group you lead and interact with every day.  That’s the other people on the church staff. No matter where you serve, you are not a ministry unto yourself. Yes, you have your own worship, lessons, tech, volunteers, and everything else. Pastors in NextGen must do everything the adults do most of the time as a one-person team with volunteers to help. It’s daunting. However, with all these responsibilities it’s easy to start creating your own ministry silo. You have your own volunteers that are loyal to you, you have your own vision that may or may not be aligned with the church’s vision, you don’t work with other ministries and may even view them as an enemy for stealing resources and people. Doing any one of these are recipes for disaster. Maybe not today, but definitely in the long run. Rob Ketterling once said that a team can only move at...

Photo by Campaign Creators on Unsplash While at church number 2, we became a multisite church. As we were preparing for the launch, I started to think about kids check-in and the best way we can do it at two locations at the same time. Our current check-in system was part of a local network church management system (ChMS) and if you don’t know what that means, basically we could only use the system if you were on the church’s internet. So, I was left with three options. Come up an analog way to do check-in Set up a separate server with our check-in system at the other location Find another system. The analog system could have worked, but then the kids’ leaders would have to report back to me weekly attendance data, and then someone would have to hand key that info into our digital system. In addition, we wanted to have as close to the same experience at both locations, and the analog way would not have achieved this goal.  Not ideal; but workable. The separate server wasn’t real...

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash One of the hardest parts of serving in Children’s ministry is never getting to go to service. Some pastors require their kids’ leaders to attend the adult service, but those are rare. Other kidmin pastors have figured out how to attend somewhat regularly, but it's not the same as before they became a leader. Part of the problem comes from the complexity of kidmin. It’s more than just one service. For comparison, the adult service may have at least 2 paid staff members or more working that one 75 minute service providing worship, announcements, a message, guest relations, lights, sound and more. A children’s ministry service has all of those things as well, usually with one paid staff, sometimes all volunteers.  Granted it’s on smaller scale, but it still takes a lot of people, planning, and resources. In addition, the kids’ pastor frequently has more to worry about than just one room. It is not unusual for them to manage elementary, pres...

Photo by Lukas Blazek on Unsplash It’s summertime and for many in NextGen ministries this is not a time to kick back and relax, but the busiest time of the year.  You have more and bigger events over the three summer months than you have for the rest of the year. Add to that you have vacations, volunteer turnover, absences, and overall lower attendance, it can be exhausting and overwhelming. So, what do you do? How do you juggle all the things and still grow the ministry or at least survive the summer? I’ve been there. It’s tough.  One June I had something church related every day of the month except two. I was exhausted and needed a break. Thankfully, I’ve learned how to manage all of it and find a healthy pace. So, here’s 5 steps to managing your time this summer. 1. Balance is a myth. For years, I’ve heard people talk about work/life balance. They’re looking for some magical Zen moment when work/family/God is all in perfect equilibrium.  However, this is a ...

Photo by Headway on Unsplash When you’re first starting out in ministry is so easy to go it alone. You have all the passion and energy and you’re ready to storm the gates of hell. However, if you’ve been in ministry longer than 3 months, you’ve probably realized you can’t do this alone. Moses tried until his father-in-law told him he was crazy and to develop leaders. David had his mighty men. Jesus had the 12 around him. Peter and the other disciples found 7 leaders to oversee food distribution. Paul had Barnabas and Silas. When I came to church number 2, I knew I needed to get help. The church was around 400, and we had about 80 kids. For those 80 kids we had all the Sunday morning age groups, plus Royal Rangers, Mpact Girls Clubs, Junior Bible Quiz, and a Café. It was a lot to manage and since I realized quickly I couldn’t be in 2 places at once (I tried 3 places one time. It also went poorly), I knew I needed help. Thankfully, my predecessor had already identified and placed...

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 Elissa Garcia on Unsplash Let’s imagine that through very little work of your own you had 30 new volunteers show up in your ministry on the same day. Do you know where you’d put them? Do you know what job you’d give them to do? How would you onboard them to make sure they understand the mission and vision of your ministry? Asking these kinds of questions helps you see the holes in your ministry. And what you need to work on to get to that next level. In a previous post, I talked about building your ministry for growth you can read that here . In that post, I talked about creating a flowchart to see where your volunteer holes are and where to fill them. But when you put new volunteers in their positions, the next question they’re going to ask is, “What am I supposed to do?” This is where job descriptions come in. If you’ve ever worked in the corporate world (in my case, retail) you’ve seen these before. Hopefully, you were given one when you were hired because they help...

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...

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.

Recently I had the privilege of leading an a workshop at the AGKidmin Conference. I spoke about building your ministry for the eventual time that you leave your position. One thing I was taught early in my ministry career is that you are always replaceable. You are not going to be where you are forever. Most likely there was someone before and there will be someone after you. You are just the steward of the ministry and it is up to you as to what condition it’s going to be in when you leave . I'll be posting a series over the next few weeks breaking down the main ideas, but if you'd like a shortcut, you can download my teaching notes below. Download Teaching Notes.

About a year ago, I made a huge change in my career and left my church of 7 years in Montgomery, Alabama and moved to Sarasota, Florida for a new church and new children's ministry.  Next week, I will post about how I tried to start there well, but today I want to talk about how to leave well. When I first felt the release from my assignment in Montgomery, I wasn’t sure if it was the pizza I had the night before, the frustration I was feeling in my current position, or if it was God nudging me in a new direction. This had happened to me before, so I decided to wait and pray. I didn’t tell anyone, not even my wife for the first several weeks, while I sought the Lord. After a few weeks, I realized that this may be the direction I should go, so I asked my wife to pray as well, and I reached out to a couple of my mentors to help me think and pray. Jim Wideman’s Stay or Go resource was invaluable at the time. His best quote was, “If it’s time for you to leave, it has to be...

This year, was a much different list of books than I've read before.  I've learned that reading all non-fiction all the time can get boring and tedious.  So, I read more fiction than I've read since probably High School. It's a nice mini-vacation. In addition, I started writing book reviews for the AG Kidmin blog, which means I read a lot more children's ministry and spirituality books than I normally would have.  Here's my list: Smart Money Smart Kids by Rachel Cruze  Growing young by Kara Powell  The Circle Maker by Mark Batterson  Asohka by E. K. Johnston  The Daniel plan by Rick Warren  Framework Leadership by Kent Ingle  Well Versed by James Garlow  Do Over by Jon Acuff  Spreading the Fire by Scott Wilson  5 Levels of Leadership by John Maxwell  Foundations of Children's Evangelism by Dick Gruber  Clear the Stage by Scott Wilson  Rebel Rising by Beth Revis  Finish by Jon Acuff...

When I first started working in children’s ministry as a part-time bi-vocational pastor, I was so excited to finally work with kids every week. I looked forward to the fun we would have and the lessons we would learn as we explored the Bible together. Alas, I learned quickly that this is not always the case. If you’ve been full time, part time, or even a volunteer leader in children’s ministry, you know exactly what I’m talking about. A typical week is spent planning, recruiting, organizing, scheduling, and juggling more balls than we care to count. It’s a tough job, and no one should do it alone. What you need is a team and a plan. Our kids are our future, and we can’t take that lightly by using a few puppets and adding baking soda to vinegar (again) to make our point. The problem is that many children’s workers I’ve met don’t know how to lead an organization. This was my challenge, and I’m sure many of you lack these skills as well. Framework Leadership by Kent Ingle gives...