4 Steps to Get to Know New Volunteers
I’ve talked about onboarding volunteers before. It’s one of my most popular posts. And while getting your new volunteers the tools and resources they need are essential, there are some questions you need to answer before you plug them in.
Developing a Ministry Lead Team
One simple truth about leading in church is that you’re not going to be there forever. It may be hard to think about the day you will leave, but it is a simple reality. You will leave. Either you feel the Lord calling you somewhere else, you will retire, or you will die. There will come a time when you’re no longer the leader of your ministry.
The best thing you can do for your church and your current leaders is to prepare them for this eventuality. But how do you do that?
5 Essential Components to a Ministry Resume
How did you get your ministry job? Were you a faithful volunteer that worked your way into a job? Were you an outside hire that found your way through relationship? Or did you find a lead on a job board somewhere and landed where God wanted you to be?
In any case, there is one document that you need to at least get your foot in the door.
Your Resume.
How to Deal with Difficult Kidmin Parent Requests
Picture this. It’s time for move up and a homeschool mom comes to you with a special request. Her just turned 6-year-old is starting third grade. She thinks because her child is doing third grade schoolwork, they should be placed with all the other third graders. What do you do?
How to Involve Elementary Kids in Ministry
In many church models, from birth to young adults, we ask kids to sit and consume. We mean well. We want them to learn about Jesus and follow Him. However, in practice, many times this means coming to a service, joining a small group, and watching what happens.
These are all good things, but they are also passive. In a service, we sit to be fed. In small group, we sit to be fed.
But this is not what Jesus modeled for us.
Finding the Help You Need with Next Level Kidmin
When I first started out in kidmin, I felt like I was alone. I’d served two internships in children’s ministry. And I still had a good relationship with the kid’s pastor who guided me on my last one. However, I didn’t know what I didn’t know.
Fast-forward a year in and I was drowning. I thought I had it all under control, but elementary was the David Reneau show. Wednesday night was holding together with a hope and a prayer, and don't’ even get me started on Nursery.
I needed help, but I didn’t know where to look
When God Changes Your Calling
It was the week between Christmas and New Years of 2020. It had been a hard year, and I was on the edge of burn out. As I was taking stock of the year and planning for what’s next, I realized I was missing something.
As I planned out my kidmin calendar for 2021, it looked remarkably like the 2020 plan before COVID. I didn’t have any new ideas or initiatives. Nothing was waking me up early excited about what to do next. Children’s ministry just didn’t motivate me as much as before.
Your Complete Egg Hunt Service Schedule
Egg Hunts can be so much more than just grab some eggs and go home. In fact, if that is all your event is, you’re missing out on a great opportunity to reach your community. I’ve run egg hunts for years. In They became family traditions for the whole neighborhood.
4 Effective Altar Calls for Your Ministry
There is an age-old tradition in our evangelical services. Altar time. That point at the end of the service when the congregation responds to what they’ve just heard. Usually by coming to the front of the room for prayer.
4 Summer Outreaches that Aren’t VBS
With the end of the summer, we start to look at all the things we did and ask if they were effective. One of the biggest questions I see this time of year is “What are churches doing other than VBS?”
5 Hacks for Streamlining Church Event Childcare
Being in kidmin, it’s natural for people to ask you to also provide childcare for events. It can be frustrating because that’s not what you signed up for. You are the kid’s pastor, spiritual leader, and discipler, not their babysitter. And yet, the requests still come, and the expectations are still made. Children’s ministry is not childcare, it’s discipleship.
How to Deploy Planning Center Check-ins in Your Kidmin
I don’t work for Planning Center nor is this a sponsored post. However, I am a huge fan of the product and have implemented the program at three different churches. You may have someone at your church that knows how to use all of its modules, but many times check-ins falls on the kids pastor.
5 Tips to Include Kids with Special Needs in Your Kidmin
A growing epidemic throughout our society are children with special needs. The latest statics show the number of kids with Autism or other disability are staggering. According to Maternal and Child Health Bureau's National Survey of Children's Health, 19% of children in the United States had special health care needs in 2019–2020.
What I Read in 2023
I’ve been a reader for as long as I can remember. I read John Maxwell’s book 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership for the first time when I was 16. It’s become a habit to read multiple pages a day, which turns into multiple books a year.
How to Turn Service Fails to Success
The big weekend is finally here. You’ve been working for months getting all the people, supplies, and logistics together. You’ve invited tons of people, prayed for God’s favor, crossed that t and dotted that i. You’re ready for the big day. Or you think you are. Sometime during the event something goes wrong. Something always does.
4 Principles to Get Guests to Come Back
You’ve had the big outreach event and now you have a huge stack of cards with contact information and you’re not sure what to do with it. Should you email them? Send a postcard? Call? Which way will be most effective? What’s going to give you the best return on your investment?
3 Questions to Guide Your Discipline Conversations
I’ve written about my discipline plan before. And today I want to go further and talk about what happens when the consequences go into effect. As pastors, it’s our job to help them through it, to love and care for them as much as the kid who never causes problems.
4 Simple Ways to Improve Kids Check-in
When guests first come to your church, they are going to make the decision of whether or not they’re going to come back in the first 15 minutes of being on your campus. Since those first few minutes are so crucial, you need to be more intentional with those first few minutes than any other.
How to Motivate Kids in NextGen Without Leaving Anyone Behind
These two stories and several more helped me develop my philosophy on motivating kids in ministry. The way I see it, there are three ways to encourage them to bring their friends, offering, Bibles, memorize scripture, or whatever.
3 Must Haves for Your Kidmin Area
Picture this, you’re given free reign to create your perfect Kidmin space. Whatever theme for décor? You get to do it. However many classrooms? You can have them. Whatever kind of seating? Here you go.
Sounds like a dream, doesn’t it?
You've moved beyond the basics. Now, it's time to build a truly thriving and impactful Kidmin!
Get a signed copy of Next Level Kidmin.