Lead Well

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 jules a. on Unsplash I worked at Sam’s Club for a year and half while I was at my first church. Now when I go into any Sam’s and I need help, I can start dropping some jargon like it’s "in steel," or "it’s in that mixed pallet," or "it’s on the end cap or pod." Usually when I use their insider language, their eyes light up, and they're far more motivated to help me because we have something in common. No matter what job you do there are certain phrases and words that are specific to your culture. Most of these words and phrases develop naturally over time as a result of events, ministries, or your denomination. For example, I’m in the Assemblies of God. Here are just a few of the acronyms that any minister in the AG (see what I did there) will know. BGMC STL LFTL ACMR GC JBQ AGWM If you’re not in the AG, I’m sure you can come up with your own list of acronyms that mean something to you, but outsiders will have a no clue. But that’s just...

My first VBS was a fiasco. I don’t use that word lightly. It was.  We had 8 weeks to pull off the biggest event of the year for 100 kids and 30 volunteers. To make it even more complicated this was the first VBS the church hosted in years, I started the position in mid-May with the VBS to be held the last week of July, and I got married the week following. It was one of the hardest few months of my ministry career and by the grace of God we pulled it off. Kids accepted Jesus, learned about the Bible, and the church was encouraged. I learned so much that first year and have built upon that experience ever since. One of my biggest mistakes was trying to do it all. I’m a high-capacity person and sometimes (frequently in my younger days) over-confident. VBS has a way of humbling you. I learned quickly I need to give responsibilities away. Many of the curriculums I’ve used over the years give you an idea of how many volunteers you need and where they should serve. However, if y...

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 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 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 Towfiqu barbhuiya on Unsplash One of the best ways to retain your volunteers for years to come is to show them appreciation. So many jobs they do go unnoticed. What’s more, if you work in NextGen, your volunteers may never hear from those they serve that they’re doing a good job.  How many two-year-olds do you know tell you how great of a job you're doing? They can barely speak English! That’s why it’s important for you as the leader to express your appreciation for their tireless efforts. Even if they serve once a month. With Christmas right around the corner, you may be thinking this is a good time to get them a gift or something special, but you're at a loss for what to do.  With this in mind, here are 4 simple, yet effective ways to show your appreciation.

Photo by JESHOOTS.COM on Unsplash It’s the most wonderful time of the year!  No, I’m not talking about Christmas or Thanksgiving (I’m a no Christmas until after Thanksgiving person).  I’m talking about planning for the next year. I know I’m weird like that, but I look forward to the meetings, vision casting, and planning of the next year with great anticipation. Whether you’re weird like me or hate having look at dates and times until you go cross-eyed, I thought I’d help by giving  6 steps to make next year’s ministry calendar.

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...

Let's do T-shirts! That’s a question that somehow got skipped in seminary. Nowhere in all my studies did anyone tell me how to design, order, and then sell/give-away t-shirts and somehow in my ministry experience I find myself having to do it at least once a year. Over the years, I’ve developed some strategies to help me be successful and get the kind of shirts everyone loves. This is the first of a three part series on ordering t-shirts.  Designing your shirts Ordering the right amount Distribution As Julie Andrews taught me in the Sound of Music , let’s start at the very beginning.

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...

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.

You can’t be in ministry for long without having to host a volunteer meeting. A lot of time these meetings can drag on without any clear focus and not get anything done. When you first start in ministry, people show up because they want to hear what you have to say, but if you’re meeting is boring you may have a hard time getting them to come back. After a few years of leading awful meetings and attending a few as well, I developed three elements that almost every successful volunteer meeting needs to have, regardless of the meeting’s content or intent.

When I first started out in ministry, I was naïve to think that everyone would get along. We all love Jesus, and we’re all in this together, we should be one big happy family, right? Unfortunately, church can be like angry Twitter. No matter who you are or where you go there will always be conflict. You’re going to want to do something and someone else is going to have a different opinion. It’s called being human. Your skill as a leader is shown by your ability to work with others and get things done. It’s far too easy to make that other person your enemy but doing so will not help you reach your goals or theirs. Let me tell you a story.

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...

When Junior Bible Quiz (JBQ) season ended earlier this year at my church, I wasn't sure if it would be able to continue. With only one confirmed member returning, starting the new season in August seemed near impossible. But with God all things are possible. The ministry coordinators and I started to pray for God to send 3 new families into the ministry so we could continue this important ministry where kids learn God's Word like nowhere else. When August rolled around, God came through. Fast forward to this weekend and we have a bigger team than we've had in years, and to top it all off we went undefeated in our division.  Something we also haven't done in years. Thank you to the families and volunteers who dedicate their time to teaching these kids about God and the Bible. It's all working toward training our kids in the way they should go so that when they grow old they will not turn from it. This is just one example of God coming through and answ...

Recently we held an all church volunteer training meeting at my home church.  It was a great morning full of fun, learning, and food.  The following is a my main talk about Owners Vs. Renters and the coinciding notes. Session Notes Student Notes Teacher Notes What trainings have you done with those you lead?

Vacation Bible School is this week, so I am going to blog every night about the night's experiences. Day 3 is over.  We had another great night.  Our volunteers continue to deliver from the oldest to the youngest, they are doing an incredible job night after night.   Tonight we got to help some ladies from another church learn some things about how to run a VBS.  They were amazed with the organization, the production, and most of all the excitement surrounding each event.  I had a blast walking around with them sharing some of the knowledge I learned through the school of hard knocks.   There is no way we could do this without all of our volunteers.  Your hard work and feedback is part of what makes this VBS so great.  Thank you so much for giving of your time this week. Don't forget to check out the pictures and videos on the Kidtricity Facebook page: http://facebook.com/kidtricity If your kids love their crew lea...

In a few weeks, I'm going to do one of the scariest things I've ever done with volunteers.  I'm going to give them the opportunity to quit. In many ministries, we recruit volunteers or volunteer ourselves with no end in sight.  We very infrequently recruit for a specific time.  After studying the recruiting strategies of several different large churches that have hundreds of volunteers and lots of prayer, I decided that I needed to trust my volunteers. So every six months the volunteers in all of Kidtricity will be given the opportunity to quit.  Of course I don't frame it this way.  I ask our volunteers to re-enroll in their ministries.  This gives them the opportunity to change their Sunday, their service, or even their department. After all of this moving around is done, I may have some vacancies, but I think it is worth it. My hope is that new people will take this opportunity to step into a new adventure in children's ministry.  Th...