Lead Well

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...

Whether we want to admit it or not, a lot of ministry is events. Yes, we want people to know about Jesus and grow in their love for them, but how do we do that? Do we hold a class? Do we host a service? Do we put on a VBS or camp? If you think about it, all of these things are events. Oxford language dictionary defines events as “a planned public or social occasion.” This means just about everything we do in ministry is an event. Over my years in ministry, I’ve held literally hundreds of not thousands of events. The following are some things I do every time to make sure they are the best events possible.

In my last two posts I've talked about designing your shirts and ordering the right amount.  You can read those posts here: Designing your shirts Ordering the right amount Distribution The day is finally here. Your event is coming up and you now have several boxes full of your brand-spanking-new shirts. But how do you get them out to your people? How do you make sure they get the right sizes? What happens if they ordered the wrong size? If you’re going to sell them, how much should you charge? Do you have to keep inventory? It’s a lot to think about. There are no perfect systems out there, but these are some things I do to get them out to the right people at the right time, even if I’m selling them.

This is the second of a three-part series.  You can read the other posts in this series here: Designing your shirts Ordering the right amount Distribution   In this post I’ll answer the question how many shirts should I buy? In a perfect world, you’d have every participant’s shirt size weeks in advance of your event so you can order the exact right amount and eliminate waste or worse, run out of a particular size. But because of Adam and Eve’s failure we don’t live a perfect world, and now we have to guess. Thanks a lot guys. My degree is in math education and we’re going to do a little statistics to answer this question, but if you’re the kind of person that freaks out at the sight of letters in an equation, don’t worry. I'll help you get through this. I’ve included an excel spreadsheet at the end of this post where all you have to do is change a few numbers, and the math is done for you automatically.

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.

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...