Ministry is a Marathon
It’s so exciting when you first start in ministry. There’s so much passion and energy, and you just can’t wait to get in with the kids or youth and change lives.
But if you’ve been in ministry for more than a year, you have to know that not everything moves as fast as you thought they would.
5 Steps to Building Your Volunteer Structure for Growth
I recently saw a post on a Facebook group asking how many volunteers they need for 30-40 kids. It was really a question about ratios, which are very important, but having the correct room ratio may not be enough when thinking about the right number of volunteers.
I’ve written about this before, but when I first started in kidmin, you could have called my Sunday morning service the David Reneau show.
How to Divide Your Small Groups
If you’ve been doing small groups in your kids service for any length of time, you may be asking what is the best way to split the kids up? Do we do it by grade? Gender? Favorite candy? Random?
The truth is there is no perfect answer and depending on the size of your ministry and how many kids show up per service the answer will be different.
4 Milestones for Every Believer
Milestones are a marker for how far we’ve gone and how much further we need to go. You can call them goals, or behaviors, or events, but they’re things that we celebrate as the people we minister to develop an authentic faith that lasts a lifetime.
5 Numbers You Should Track in Your Ministry and Why
I’ve heard business entrepreneurs say that you have to know your numbers. The same is true with your ministry. How many attended this week? Last week? How many volunteers? First time guests? Baptisms? Small Groups?
If you don’t track it, and by tracking, I mean write it down in a spreadsheet, you’re losing out on valuable information that can help you keep your ministry healthy and growing.
How to Create Your Best Event
Whether we want to admit it or not, a lot of ministry is events. Yes, we want people to know about Jesus and grow in their love for them, but how do we do that? Do we hold a class? Do we host a service? Do we put on a VBS or camp?
If you think about it, all of these things are events.
How to Order T-shirts: Part 3
The day is finally here. Your event is coming up and you now have several boxes full of your brand-spanking-new shirts. But how do you get them out to your people? How do you make sure they get the right sizes? What happens if they ordered the wrong size?
If you’re going to sell them, how much should you charge? Do you have to keep inventory?
It’s a lot to think about. There are no perfect systems out there, but these are some things I do to get them out to the right people at the right time, even if I’m selling them.
How to Order T-shirts: Part 2
In this post I’ll answer the question how many shirts should I buy?
In a perfect world, you’d have every participant’s shirt size weeks in advance of your event so you can order the exact right amount and eliminate waste or worse, run out of a particular size. But because of Adam and Eve’s failure we don’t live a perfect world, and now we have to guess.
Thanks a lot guys.
How to Order T-Shirts: Part 1
Let's do T-shirts!
That’s a question that somehow got skipped in seminary. Nowhere in all my studies did anyone tell me how to design, order, and then sell/give-away t-shirts and somehow in my ministry experience I find myself having to do it at least once a year.
Over the years, I’ve developed some strategies to help me be successful and get the kind of shirts everyone loves.
4 Pools to Recruit Volunteers
Recently, I found myself with only one volunteer on a particular Wednesday night with less than two days to find new volunteers. Closing the ministry for the night was not an option, but it was looking like it may happen. It’s not a fun place to be. As I thought about who I can recruit, I found that there are four pools of people I can ask to serve.
A Follow-up Plan for Easter
Easter is the Super Bowl of Christendom. More people come to church on Easter than any other Sunday of the year. I know last year’s Easter was different than any in recent memory, but now with churches opening up again, and others, like mine in Florida have been open for a while, we’re looking to see the people to come back maybe for the first time in over a year. Looking at 2019’s stats, my ministry doubled in size for that one Sunday. But with all these new people how do we get them to come back? How do we connect them to our church?
The 3 Groups Every Next Gen Leader Leads
Recently, I was having a conversation with a new pastor and he was excitedly talking about all things he was planning to do with his kids. I asked him how he was planning to let parents know, and he said he was trusting the kids.
Rookie mistake.
Building Your Ministry for When You're Gone (Workshop Notes)
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.
How to have a Parent Information Meeting
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.
5 Questions to Evaluate Your Events
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.
3 Principles of a Great Volunteer Meeting
You can’t be in ministry for long without having to host a volunteer meeting. A lot of time these meetings can drag on without any clear focus and not get anything done. When you first start in ministry, people show up because they want to hear what you have to say, but if you’re meeting is boring you may have a hard time getting them to come back.
The ____ Department is Not Your Enemy
When I first started out in ministry, I was naïve to think that everyone would get along. We all love Jesus, and we’re all in this together, we should be one big happy family, right? Unfortunately, church can be like angry Twitter.
No matter who you are or where you go there will always be conflict.
Starting Well
A few months ago, I wrote a post about leaving well. The inevitable happens when you leave something. You start something new.
But leaving something and starting something are two different things. They both have their hurts and their joys, but you have to approach them differently. Now that I’ve been in the new ministry for almost a year, I can look back at that first month or two and realize what helped and what didn’t.
Leaving Well
About a year ago, I made a huge change in my career and left my church of 7 years in Montgomery, Alabama and moved to Sarasota, Florida for a new church and new children's ministry. Next week, I will post about how I tried to start there well, but today I want to talk about how to leave well.
Must Have Leadership Building Blocks: A Framework Leadership Book Review
When I first started working in children’s ministry as a part-time bi-vocational pastor, I was so excited to finally work with kids every week. I looked forward to the fun we would have and the lessons we would learn as we explored the Bible together. Alas, I learned quickly that this is not always the case.
These schedule templates will help you plan your VBS with multiple stations and different times.