Lead Well

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 Cláudio Luiz Castro on Unsplash Since this is coming out on Black Friday, I thought it would be appropriate to talk about one of my passions. Video Games. I’ve been playing since I was a little kid and still play regularly. Also working in NextGen, I’ve seen a lot of kids exposed to games and media way before they’re ready because of their parents' ignorance. It doesn’t have to be this way though. Every game has a rating ranging from E for Everyone to M to Mature. (There is a higher Adult Only rating, but those games are few and far between.) As a parent or pastor knowing what games are going to be fun and appropriate for your kids is important. For this post, I’ll pick three games from each system that are family-friendly and can be played easily with multiple people. I won't make recommendations on consoles, but you can see my buying guide here.   In addition, many of these games are on sale for Black Friday. If you’re looking for Christmas or update the games ...

Baptism in water is an essential part of a Christian’s faith, and one of my favorite things to do. Working in Kidmin though, there are a lot of questions about kids being baptized. Can they be baptized? When are they old enough? How do you know if they’re ready? How do we partner with parents through this process? When I first started in Kidmin, I’d take any kid who raised their hand and said they wanted to be baptized. I would like to take the time to get to know them, but usually my evaluation was based on how long they’ve been coming to church. At my second church, we started spontaneous baptisms. This meant anyone who wanted to get baptized, could if they came to Welcome Booth during service. A person, usually a pastor, would talk with them for a few minutes to make sure they knew what they were doing, then get them all set up for baptism at the end of that morning's service. This is all well and good for adults, but one Sunday, I had a mom bring her three kids, ages 12, 8...

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...

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  Kelly Sikkema  on  Unsplash It’s been 3 years since I wrote one of these, but with the new generation of consoles coming out this year, I figured it was time for an update. If you’ve been looking to buy your family a new video game console, the choices can seem endless and confusing. The web is full of unboxing videos, reviews, and tech specs, but unless you’re into computers and gaming many of those are irrelevant at best or nonsensical at worst. (I’m not entirely certain what a teraflop is anyway). The big question I get from parents is, “Which is best for my family? Especially if I want to keep my kids safe from all the garbage online and negative content in games.” The biggest change this time around is the end of the “console wars.” If you even casually gamed as a kid you know there was always a competition to who had the best system, be it Nintendo, Xbox, PlayStation, or Sega. This battle has been raging for almost 25 years, but I think we’re coming to t...

For a few years now, I’ve been holding a parent information meeting at the beginning of the year. I originally started the meeting to help boost camp attendance. The cost of camp is sometimes prohibitive, and by the time I was getting the information out to parents to sign up, they had already made their summer plans. 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. Before I share 5 things to make your own meeting great, you can watch the last meeting I streamed live here , and you can download the calendar I gave to every parent here . Without further ado, here are 5 things I do to make the Parent Information Meeting great.

A few months ago, I was challenged by the folks at Orange to do a parent survey to find out how the children's ministry is connecting and partnering with parents.  Through their product Weekly , they made it super simple by giving all the necessary templates to create my survey in Survey Monkey and launch it out to my parents. I got about 24% of all parents from birth to 5th grade to answer this survey by emailing about once a week to ask them to take the survey. It gave me a lot of great insight and a snapshot of how the ministry is doing. Since I asked parents outside of normal weekly email to them, I was able to use Mailchimp's powerful list tools to remove the people who either didn't open my email or didn't click the survey link.  This allowed me not to spam my parents who are engaged and minimized people taking the survey more than once. A  big boost to participation for this survey is I made it worth their while by promising to put them in a drawing ...

This year I set out to read only 10 books.  I guess I went a little overboard and read 18 instead.  I became a parent in early 2015 and started leading a parent lifegroup in 2016, so I spent a lot more time reading parenting books than I ever have before. I've also gone all in on the Rethink Group's ministry philosophy of Orange, so I read a lot of those books as well.  Here's the list with links. Talk Now and Later by Brian Dollar  The Circle Maker by Mark Batterson It's Just a Phase by Reggie Joiner and Kristin Ivy The Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey Creating A Lead Small Culture by Reggie Joiner, Kristin Ivy, and Elle Campbell Children's Ministry Leadership by Jim Wideman  Good or God by John Bevere Strengths Finder 2.0 by Tom Rath One and Two by Reggie Joiner and Kristin Ivy Connect with Kids by Jim Wideman  Don't Miss It by Reggie Joiner and Kristin Ivy Parent Chat by Matt McKee The 3 Big Questions for a Frantic Fami...