Lead Well

Photo by Headway on Unsplash When you’re first starting out in ministry is so easy to go it alone. You have all the passion and energy and you’re ready to storm the gates of hell. However, if you’ve been in ministry longer than 3 months, you’ve probably realized you can’t do this alone. Moses tried until his father-in-law told him he was crazy and to develop leaders. David had his mighty men. Jesus had the 12 around him. Peter and the other disciples found 7 leaders to oversee food distribution. Paul had Barnabas and Silas. When I came to church number 2, I knew I needed to get help. The church was around 400, and we had about 80 kids. For those 80 kids we had all the Sunday morning age groups, plus Royal Rangers, Mpact Girls Clubs, Junior Bible Quiz, and a Café. It was a lot to manage and since I realized quickly I couldn’t be in 2 places at once (I tried 3 places one time. It also went poorly), I knew I needed help. Thankfully, my predecessor had already identified and placed

Photo by JESHOOTS.COM on Unsplash With Easter in just a few weeks, you’re probably deep into prep for the big weekend. Whether you’re doing an egg hunt , planning your worship set , or just getting your volunteers ready , there’s a lot of focus put on this weekend. Not to pile on, but there’s one more thing to consider for Easter. What are you doing this summer? In the past, in the weeks leading up to Easter, I put my VBS and other summer activity planning on hold. However, I realized that this was a mistake. On Easter weekend, you will have more people come to your church than on almost any other day of the year. Whether they’re guests, CEO (Christmas and Easter Only), or all your regulars, almost everyone goes to church that day. Which means that it is a great opportunity to tell them about what’s coming and how they can continue to engage with your church community. Even though many parents aren’t thinking about the summer, yet, in a few weeks they will be. You can get in on th

Photo by Lavi Perchik on Unsplash Maybe this has happened to you. You had a huge event where hundreds of people came. People were saved. Lives were changed. You get ready to make an announcement in the service or post on social what God has done. But you’re stuck. You can tell them what happened, but only verbally. The pictures and video are terrible or non-existent. A picture is worth a thousand words. Getting that magic shot can tell the whole story of what happened at your event. Or better, get more people to join the event next time. I’m not a photographer, but taking pictures is one of those things that I wish I’d learned in ministry school . It’s something that I’ve had to learn the hard way, and I’ve relied heavily on others who are far more skilled. When I first started, the iPhone was just released and the best phone pics I could take were so blurry, they were unusable. Thankfully, mobile phone cameras have come a long way over the last 15 years, but having a great cam

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