Lead Well

Tomorrow is the big day.  All the hard work, stress, lack of sleep, advertising, and recruiting is over.  The materials are purchased and the rooms are decorated.  As I walk through the hallways, I am overwhelmed by God's faithfulness and blessings to my church and me. A year ago, I decided to answer God's call to leave First Assembly of God, not knowing where He would take me.  Here I am at an incredible church with amazing people and an opportunity to minister to more children at one time than ever before.  I cannot move forward with giving God thanks for all He has done. I am reminded of one of the songs from this year's VBS.  "I'm feeling kind of sad and afraid and kind of angry too...God give me strength and help me find my way."  It's chorus says that no matter how I feel right now I will trust in [God].  So here I am trusting in God.  I am believing that God will do incredible things next week and lives will be changed forever. No deep thought

Last weekend, the Royal Rangers went on a special campout hosted by the Frontiersman Camping Fellowship (FCF).  This is an elite group of Rangers and only sixth grade and up are allowed to join after they learn essential skills, such as starting fires with one match or flint and steel, tying several types of knots, and proper shelter building.  This is all fun for the boys, but the underlying reason for FCF is what makes it so great. FCF’s mission is to keep boys for Christ.  Unlike other Ranger outings, this group is focused on the discipleship of young men and provides a rite of passage that is so desperately needed in our culture.  We had 8 boys and 2 dads go through step one of their “initiation” last weekend.  It was fun and the boys had a great time, but I saw something special. On the first night, I saw one dad playing with his son.  Many times we get so caught up in life, work, family, church that we forget why we are doing all of these things.  We forget the litt

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.  Think about it.

This Wednesday, I had the great opportunity to work in the nursery and watch 7 babies.  While I have a hard time holding a conversation with a 9 month old, (I’m sure you moms are old pros) I did enjoy my time there.  While in the nursery, I found the scariest baby doll. One of our toddlers asked, “what is wrong with this baby?”  Our nursery worker said she didn’t know but we should pray for it, and they did. While we know God is not going to fix the freaky eyes of this baby doll, our volunteer took a seemingly insignificant moment and turned it into a teachable one.  Many people think that nursery is just babysitting someone else’s kids, but it is so much more.  Our nursery workers have the unique opportunity to lay the very beginning foundations for faith, love, and community.  Everyone one of you serve a vital role in the children’s ministry.  Not everyone can do what I do, and I can’t do what all of you do.  As Paul said in 1 Corinthians, we are all part of one bo

Last week I attended the Orange Conference .  It was a great week of equipping and refocus for me and my wife Liz.  In our last break-out session the leader, Joy Bowen , made us promise not to "puke vision" when we come back home. I though that was funny and a good reminder to leaders.  How many times do we go away to a conference, meeting, or trip to just come back and tell our team all the things we are going to do.  Sadly in our excitement we don't allow for essential buy-in or to even think through our ideas.  We end up scaring our team as well as hurting our integrity, because we end up doing only half (if we're lucky) of what we said we were going to do. So as I check myself, I beg you don't puke vision.  Take the time to think through your ideas, make a plan, organize resources, build buy-in, then roll out the ideas when the time is right.  Maxwell says that the right idea at the wrong time is still the wrong idea.  Let's commit today to do the nece

What’s a “gentile”?  That’s the question that I was asked over and over the other day.  I was trying to explain that the Apostle Paul had been called to minister to all gentiles, and I thought I had explained it well enough by saying “if you are not a Jew, then you are a gentile.”  Fairly straightforward, right?  I was wrong.  One girl just kept asking what is a gentile?  I was forced to come up with another ethnic label that she was familiar with to explain what a gentile is.  I hope she got it.   This encounter reminded me of five important lessons I have learned throughout the years. Assume they don't know:   Don’t take for granted that your kids know what you are talking about.  Just because you covered it before doesn't mean they know or even remember you said it.  There are a lot of big words in the Bible, and we just assume that everyone knows what we saying.  In reality we have no idea who may be sitting in the audience or what they know.   Break it down: 

I have a confession to make: I used to hate Christmas music.  Shocking, maybe even sacrilegious, I know, but I did.  My wife would try to play the stuff before Thanksgiving and I'd shut that down faster than... well you get the idea.  Once the Christmas season started I would avoid those all Christmas music all the time radio stations like they're the plague. I started thinking about why I hate the music so much, and I came to some realizations. All my Christmas music and most of what I was listening to has been the same music since Home Alone 1.   I thought all Christmas albums were unimaginative covers of Christmas songs that were written last century.   Everything sounded the same after a while. This year, I decided to branch out, thanks mostly to Relevant Magazine , who continues to introduce me to new music.  All of sudden, I started to hear songs and remixes of songs I'd never heard before.  I started looking forward to Christmas music. So what have I do