4 Questions to Find Your Perfect Curriculum
Photo by Adam Winger on Unsplash
One of the biggest questions I see in the Kidmin world is what curriculum do we use? Which one is better? 252Kids? High Voltage? Bible Engagement? Open Church? Write your own?
The curriculum options out there are endless, and you can spend a lot of time, energy, and money trying to find the right one for your ministry.
I’ve tested a lot of curriculums over the years and even tried to write my own. It’s a daunting task. I searched for over a year once, and all I really wanted was someone to tell me which one to do.
Fortunately, no one did, and I’m not going to tell you which one either. However, I will give you four questions to help narrow it down and pick a curriculum that works best for your church and ministry.
1. Does it agree with your doctrinal beliefs?
A lot of curriculums out there try to reach the broadest church audience. No matter what faith tradition you come from we can generally agree on the death and resurrection of Jesus, the supremacy of scripture, and salvation.
Most curriculums agree with these tenants, but to just make sure everything lines up, I strongly suggest you get their statement of beliefs. If you don’t agree with one of those statements, you’ll either need to find something else or tweak it to suit your needs.
Coming from a Pentecostal background, many curriculums don’t support the initial physical evidence of the baptism of the Holy Spirit or speaking in tongues. This isn’t a deal breaker for me, but when I did 252Kids for a few years I had to change the story of Pentecost to back up what we believe.
Thankfully, they made it easy to do so both practically and programmatically.
If the curriculum you’re looking to buy doesn’t have a statement of faith, you’ll need to read through the whole thing to see if it agrees. I’ve found this to be the case for curriculum series or one off lessons from places like Children’s Ministry Deals. However, most of the big ones that continually produce lessons do have this kind of statement.
2. Does it line up with the mission, vision of your church?
After you’ve decided it agrees with your faith tradition, you need to make sure it lines up with the mission, vision of your church. Some senior pastors want to have a say in what you’re teaching, while others don’t mind as long as it’s scripturally sound.
Either way, I suggest you have the conversation with your leader to make sure they’re on board. You don’t want to pick a curriculum and get everyone excited about it only to have your senior leadership shut it down.
I mentioned earlier that I used 252Kids for years. When I was in my year-long journey to find a curriculum, a major deciding factor was that the youth ministry was already doing their youth curriculum, XP3.
I found that if I adopted 252Kids then I we could have a cohesive strategy from birth to grade 12 to develop an authentic faith in Jesus Christ. My senior leadership loved this idea as did I. It was probably the biggest deciding factor, which brings me to the next question.
3. Does it fit your kids discipleship strategy?
When picking your curriculum, you need to find out what the end goal is for the curriculum. They all want to disciple kids, but all of them come at it from a different angle and have different emphases.
After doing 252Kids for years, I moved to a different church that didn’t have kids small groups. Since that curriculum is built around groups, I knew I couldn’t use it immediately. I needed to build small groups into the ministry first. As a result, I needed more flexibility than 252Kids offered. Thankfully High Voltage Kids Ministry (HVKM) gave me what I needed.
HVKM has small group lessons, but they’re not a core component to the lesson. It’s a great add-on, but the large group stands on its own. This worked well for me since I would have some services with groups and some with not.
Both gave me the tools to disciple my kids, but I had different strategies and needs at each church that influenced my decision.
Take some time to sit with your team to figure out what you want your strategy to be and then find a curriculum that fits it. Don’t let your curriculum dictate your strategy.
4. What does it cost?
If I had a nickel for every question I’ve seen on FB groups that prefaces with "I’m a small church with virtually no budget," I’d be a big church with a huge budget.
I’m joking of course. I've been there, and it's not fun.
When I first started out, I wrote my own curriculum for three reasons.
My budget was what I collected in kids offering every week, resulting in an overall budget of $75 for the year.
I thought that’s what you were supposed to do.
I thought I could do it.
I even went so far as to believe I could write my own 3 year repeatable curriculum. I had scope and cycle and everything! While the lessons were hyper-local, when I finished the cycle I found the lessons I wrote three years before lacked relevance. What’s more the production values weren’t that great.
A curriculum is more than just the lesson. It’s graphics, videos, training materials, music and more. If I continued to write my own, I would have spent all my time on that and not on all the other things kidmin leaders have to do. Yes, it would have been cheaper financially, but way more expensive in time and effort.
Budget concerns are a major factor in choosing your curriculum. The old saying you get what you pay for is true.
Years ago, there was a website that would sell you literally thousands of dollars of resources and curriculum for $144. Why only $144? Because their sales would last that long, and you had to act fast to get it.
Some of the stuff I got out of the deals was great and majorly impacted my ministry. However, most of it I couldn’t use because it didn’t fit my strategy or standard of excellence. I got what I paid for.
A major oversight when picking your curriculum is not just the upfront cost, but the ongoing cost to maintain it.
One time I bought a one off curriculum for $100. I thought it was a steal, then I discovered that to really get it to work I would need to spend $1000 for materials. I’d already announced and marketed the series, and it was way too late to change. My senior leadership was not happy.
Lesson learned.
Now when I pick a curriculum, I get samples and look at not just the content, but the materials to pull it off. Is the curriculum video heavy and your A/V equipment needs to be excellent? Does the curriculum do a lot of crafts and I need a lot of those supplies on hand? Does it require a lot of prep during the week or is it more plug and play?
No matter what curriculum you buy, feel free to change and edit it to best suit your needs. Curriculum companies and writers want to provide you with the best resources to disciple your kids, but they also don’t know your kids. You do.
Even if the edits don’t look as good or as professional, if it’s relevant to your ministry it won’t matter because it’ll make a bigger impact than a generic sermon.
Picking a curriculum can be scary and tough and expensive. Take the time to make an informed decision. Ask around, request samples and trials. Collaborate with your team and senior leadership to find out what’s going to work best for you and your context.
Hopefully if you get the answer to these questions I’ve listed you won’t have to go down this journey again any time soon.
What curriculum do you use? What led you to that decision?