Lead Well

Photo by Ben White on Unsplash It was a big Sunday. We’d had the biggest VBS of my career and we’d invited all the parents to attend a family service the following Sunday in kids church. Multiple parents came, including some that didn’t go to my church. Naturally, this day needed to go perfectly. I had put as much pressure on this day as I do for Easter. Then the unthinkable happened. Right in the middle of my worship set, my entire computer system crashed. I use video worship and teaching so having this crash was worst case scenario. I didn’t have a backup plan, and I was the only one who could fix it. Looking back now, I’m not entirely sure what we did to get through it, but we did. The Gospel was proclaimed, and we built relationships with the families that came. But that was just one service. I could fill this post with story after story of successes and failures on big days and small days, and I’m sure you could too. After that fateful day, I stumbled upon a paradox. A par

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

Easter Egg Hunts. Love them or hate them, it’s one of the most popular kidmin events leading into the Easter season. I know it’s only February, but if you want to have a successful outreach event, you need to start planning now. This is the second part of my two part series on How to have an Easter Egg Hunt. You can read part 1 here. In that post, I talked about the why, ordering supplies, service planning, and recruiting. In today’s post, we’ll dive deeper and talk about more preparation and what needs to happen on the day of. If you subscribe, I’ll share my to do list that will walk you through every step. How to have an Egg Hunt Part 2 1. Advertise Part of what gets a lot of people to the event is advertising. You can have the greatest event, but if nobody knows about it, you’ve just wasted your time and energy. You may or may not have the skills to create the graphics, ads, banners, and websites necessary to advertise, but either way, the earlier you start producing thes

Easter Egg Hunts. Love them or hate them, it’s one of the most popular Kidmin events leading into the Easter season. I know it’s only February, but if you want to have a successful outreach event, you need to start planning now. I’ve led over 10 Egg Hunts throughout my career and perfected my system to reach hundreds of kids and families at Easter. I know this system could work for you because of what happened last year. Last year, my previous church decided to do an Egg Drop. They wanted to fly in a helicopter and drop the eggs on a big field. Essentially it’s the same as an Egg Hunt except the egg distributors are 300 feet in the air. Since I left that church at the end of February, I did a lot of the groundwork to set them up for success. One of the last things I gave them was my to do list. By the time Easter weekend rolled around they had hundreds of families show up and the event was a huge success. I pray the same can be true for you. In this series of posts, I’m going

Being in ministry usually means you’re going to have to fundraise for something. After all, a church is technically a non-profit and generosity is a core tenet of our faith. Over the years, I’ve heard countless ideas for fundraisers for various reasons, but there’s one I’ve done year after year with great success. It’s called Silly String Sunday. Silly String Sunday is where leaders challenge kids to buy as many cans of silly string as possible at $5 per can. Then on the day, they get to spray those leaders with the silly string all for missions. It’s a mess and a ton of fun. Here’s how to do it. 1. Set your goal A lot of fundraisers need to hit a certain dollar amount in order to be successful, and I believe those have their place.  However for Silly String Sunday, I didn’t really care how much I raise. My goal was to see every kid buy at least one can. Just by making a small investment pushes past the awkwardness of never giving before and helps kids realize the joy of givi

Photo by Miikka Luotio on Unsplash I was stuck. We were finally coming back from COVID and starting Wednesday night services back up. We decided to rebrand the night for adults and focus on groups instead of the traditional Wednesday night service. This was great for adults, but what about kids? Will I have the same kids every week? How long will the groups meet? What should I do on First Wednesday, when I’ll have more kids? To make things harder, I wasn’t sure how many kids, if any would come back, and the time I had available to prep another service was very limited since I was doing Sunday online and in person. I’m in the Assemblies of God , so most our churches have Royal Rangers and Mpact Girls Clubs on Wednesday nights. However, I’m seeing more and more churches move away from these programs and others like it for various reasons. This post is not an advocation for or against them, but if you’ve already decided to not do them or exploring your options, I hope this can h

Photo by Ante Hamersmit on Unsplash It was the summer of 2014, and I’m trying to get as many kids as possible to go to camp. I advertised, secured scholarships, made phone calls and much more, but I’d hit a ceiling. Many kids couldn’t go because their parents had already scheduled something that week or they had already committed to attending one of other paid events throughout the summer and couldn’t afford it. Sound familiar? One dad told me he’d love to send his kids to camp, but he hadn’t budgeted for it. If I’d told him about all the things earlier, they may have been able to go. Thus, the parent meeting was born. Even though it started as an information meeting, 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. 5 Steps to a Successful Parent Information Meeting. 1. Plan the Year. You don’t have to have every event listed and don’t feel like you’re locked into everything you’ve li