Lead Well

Photo by Element5 Digital on Unsplash A little talked about, but vital document in your ministry is a policy and procedure manual. The manual answers a lot of questions for volunteers and clearly defines your thinking on multiple situations. While your church may have its own policy manual that addresses your ministry specifically, many times these are incomplete when it comes to NextGen. In my experience, they’ll address room ratios and background checks, but not other problems such as fire drills, dress codes, meeting attendance and more. This is why I suggest every NextGen ministry have its own policy and procedure manual. It needs to agree with the main church manual, but it can be more specifically tailored to your ministry. However, just having the manual and sticking it in a drawer is not enough. You need to keep it top of mind for yourself and your volunteers. My first volunteer training and orientation for new volunteers uses the manual as a guide. This gets everyone

Photo by Adam Winger on Unsplash One of the biggest questions I see in the Kidmin world is what curriculum do we use? Which one is better? 252Kids ? High Voltage ? Bible Engagement ? Open Church ? Write your own? The curriculum options out there are endless, and you can spend a lot of time, energy, and money trying to find the right one for your ministry. I’ve tested a lot of curriculums over the years and even tried to write my own. It’s a daunting task. I searched for over a year once, and all I really wanted was someone to tell me which one to do. Fortunately, no one did, and I’m not going to tell you which one either. However, I will give you four questions to help narrow it down and pick a curriculum that works best for your church and ministry.

I didn't really like the prompt for today, but since this is a 30 day writing challenge I figured I should write something, so here goes. Do you ever get the feeling that there should be something more?  something greater?  A higher calling?  Or, on a similar note, that people are involved in something and because of your circumstances you are left behind?  Sometimes I find myself with these feelings.  Yesterday I posted about opportunities covered by the mundane.  It is so easy to be caught up in the quagmire of everyday life that we forget to look around us.  Forget about the people who care for us.  The mission, job, project, task that God has given us.  Our culture screams if you want it bad enough you can have it.  While I agree with this to an extent, we can forget what is right in front of us.  As the wise old Yoda told us about young Anakin Skywalker (Star Wars reference) "He was too focused on the future, not on the present and not on what he was doing."