Lead Well

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 the end because

When the pandemic started, like many of you, I panicked. I had 3 days to figure out how to take my children’s ministry completely online with no equipment, no training, and very little help. That first service was a train wreck that started 10 minutes late with low quality and a replica of what we’d been doing in person for years. Fast forward months later, and now I’m older and wiser. It seems like five years since March 15 because of everything that has changed, and all my plans have flown out the window. I’m frequently reminded of Jesus’ words in Matthew 6:34: “Therefore, do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” I’ve tried a lot of different things over the last few months. Some have worked, some have been dismal failures. But that’s how innovation works. You never get it right the first time or even the tenth. That said here are three things I’ve started since COVID that are working.

Small Group time at my church Churches all over are trying to figure out how to reopen and relaunch their services and specifically their children’s ministry. I’m no different. I’m eternally grateful to the leaders I’ve talked to over the last few months who have successfully (whatever that means these days) opened their children’s ministries. I’m in Florida, so I know that I’m a little bit ahead of the curve. We opened in-person meetings in May and relaunched kids (elementary only) on July 26. I don’t have all the answers, but this is what I’ve learned so far about launching kids ministry in a pandemic filled world.

I haven’t written in a while. This pandemic has done a number on me. My family and I have been healthy, but if you’re in ministry, you know the crunch we’ve been in for the last few months. Every new month feels like the next level of Jumanji. (What happened to the murder hornets?!) A big part of most kidmin’s summer is VBS. I’ve led 12 of these as a kid’s pastor and been a part of one for as long as I can remember. However, it goes without saying, this year is different. First some context. I’m in Florida and we entered Phase 1 in May and Phase 2 in June. Our church has re-opened to family services, but there are no in-person next gen ministries currently. Kids and families are coming back, but only a fraction of them are involved in person or online. For months the question has loomed, what are we going to do for VBS? I was already months behind on planning and marketing, coronavirus news continues to look bad, and with online numbers dwindling since Easter, who’s going to co

Recently I had the privilege of leading an a workshop at the AGKidmin Conference. I spoke about building your ministry for the eventual time that you leave your position. One thing I was taught early in my ministry career is that you are always replaceable. You are not going to be where you are forever. Most likely there was someone before and there will be someone after you. You are just the steward of the ministry and it is up to you as to what condition it’s going to be in when you leave . I'll be posting a series over the next few weeks breaking down the main ideas, but if you'd like a shortcut, you can download my teaching notes below. Download Teaching Notes.

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.

Events and ministry go hand in hand. It comes from when the church was the center of town. Everyone’s social calendar was filled with church activities because the church was the community. Now things have drastically changed, but we still do events. Now you may be in one of those churches that have fully embraced the Attractional Model and all you have to worry about is the weekend. As my southern friends say, “Bless your heart”. For the rest of us, it’s a juggling act. The pressure of Sunday is always coming, but you also have movie nights, pajama parties, picnics in the park, VBS, kids camp, back to school outreaches, Holy Ghost Weeny Roasts, the list goes on and on. I could talk about why you’re doing all these things and even question if doing all of them is even the right thing to do, but that’s a different post . The question I want to ask today is “Does the event work?” Many churches simply do things out of habit. “This is what we did last year, so we’re go