Lead Well

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...

I recently saw a post asking what children’s pastors do to get kids to their VBS. COVID has changed a lot of things, and this summer will be telling if these strategies will still have as much effectiveness, but I know pre-COVID, my VBS continued to grow, and I saw more and different kids every year. If you want to reach more kids with the Gospel, you need to tell people what you're doing regardless of whether your VBS in-person, online, in the neighborhood, or something else.   With that said,  Here are my 7 steps to market VBS. 1. Build a contact list Whether you’ve done VBS in the past or this is your church’s first time, you have to have a contact list to begin. The contact information should include the kids’ names and ages, their email, their physical address, and their phone number. If this is your first VBS, your church database should have all this information of the kids in your ministry. Every year, I add to my contact list the new kids who are current...

Easter is the Super Bowl of Christendom. More people come to church on Easter than any other Sunday of the year. I know last year’s Easter was different than any in recent memory, but now with churches opening up again, and others, like mine in Florida have been open for a while, we’re looking to see the people to come back maybe for the first time in over a year. Looking at 2019’s stats, my ministry doubled in size for that one Sunday. But with all these new people how do we get them to come back? How do we connect them to our church? COVID accelerated a lot of things and one thing I believe it really sped up was the need for community. People are longing for human connection more than a fancy service, great music, or a remarkable guest experience. Don’t get me wrong, we still need those things, but we have to connect them to a community. It’s the people that will get them to come back. I am a children’s pastor, so this follow up plan will have elements specific to that ministry...

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.