Category Archives: Children’s Events

Planning An Easter Party

Posted on February 25, 2011 | Leave a comment

Easter parties are great events to have for children in your ministry. Here some things to consider.

When will you have the party? Easter Sunday after church is not a practical time. But you could have the party during church on Easter. Or you could have the party after church on Palm Sunday. The Saturday before Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday are good times to have it as well.

What type of party will you have?

Easter Egg Hunts:  These are very popular, but they have drawbacks. You need to have church property large enough to hide the eggs to make if fun. If you don’t, look for a park or a parent’s yard where you can hide eggs. Don’t use real eggs. Buy the plastic eggs from the dollar store and stuff them with candy or toys you can buy in bulk. Or you can put tickets in the eggs the children can use to purchase prizes. That way, each child gets prizes. You’ll also want grand prizes you can give away to children who collect the most eggs. Easter baskets work good for this. In some areas of the country, snow and rain are problems at this time of year. If that’s the case, make sure to schedule a rain date.

Easter Carnival: A carnival can work well even indoors. Call your local carnival rental place and see if they’ll donate the games for the carnival. Some places will if the games aren’t being used. Also if you have a carpenter in your church, consider having him make some games you can use. You can give out tickets, candy, or prizes for each game won.

Fun Sunday: If you have the party during or after church on a Sunday, consider having pizza, pop, and treats for the children. You could also show an Easter movie in the sanctuary on the “big screen” like in a movie theater. You could have gospel illusions, games, crafts, and other activities.

How Will You Present The Message:  An Easter party is a prime opportunity to present the message of salvation to children. Think of a gospel illusion, story, or object lesson you can use for a short 5 minute message.

Get Donations:  Contact pizza places, bowling alleys, skating rinks, and fast food restaurants to see if they’d be willing to donate free gift certificates to their establishments that you can give as door prizes. Most businesses are willing to do this.

Plan Ahead:  Get the workers you need. Decide how you’ll spread the word. Find people to set up and do follow up. The better you plan ahead, the better this party will go.

Pray:  This is a great opportunity to reach unchurched children. Pray for God to move during this party.

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Posted in Children's Events, Easter, Holidays, Outreach

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Project Management For Children’s Pastors: Resources and Team Building

Posted on June 15, 2010 | Leave a comment

Two of the most important parts of project management for children’s pastors are determining your available resources and building your team.

Resources:

Money:

The first resource you’ll want to look at is how much money has been budgeted for your project. Usually the amount of money is beyond your control. Pastors and councils usually set up the budget. But it helps to work closely with your pastor and communicate how much you need to accomplish your project and which items can be taken off the wish list if need be. If you do that, your pastor will be more likely to work with you in establishing a great program.

Once you know how much the church will provide, look at your budget creatively. Are there items that can be donated by people or businesses? Do you want to fundraise to get extra money? Will you take an offering to defray expenses. Sometimes there are easy ways to cut expenses. For instance, to use the VBS example, you could buy craft materials at a discount craft store to make crafts rather than use the expensive kits most VBS’s provide. Or you could eliminate the student books and substitute activities.

Calendar:

Your church calendar is a resource you can’t afford to overlook. Don’t just find an empty date on the calendar. Check what’s going on with other ministries in the church. If you use teens for your event and the teens are going on a youth retreat, you might not want to schedule you event for the same week-end. If you do, you’ll find yourself scrambling for workers.

Workers:

Determine how many workers you’ll need and write short job descriptions for each role your workers will play. Also have a wish list of extra jobs in case you have more workers than you thought you would. You might also want to schedule different people for clean up and follow up after the event. Sometimes after an event, your workers will be tired and want to go home rather than tear down. If you have another crew ready to come in, it will make things that much easier.

Team Building:

Team building is an important part of project management. Assemble people who can help you plan and execute your event. Divide your event into compartments such as food, games, music, promotion, etc., then have one person who is in charge of each of these areas.

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Posted in Children's Events, Leadership, Planning, Project Management Series

Summer Checklist For Children’s Ministry

Posted on April 15, 2010 | 5 Comments

Summer is always a hectic time for Children’s Ministry. Here’s a checklist to do in May to help the summer go smoother. 

Camp Applications: If you have church camp for your children, make sure the information and applications have been sent to parents. 

Summer Teachers/Program: Summer is a time that wrecks havoc for Sunday School programs because of vacations and weekend trips. If you do something special for summer, make sure it’s in place and teachers are aware. If not, have a list of substitutes to teach when regular teachers are out of town. Remind regular teachers to give you a list of weeks they’ll be gone ASAP. 

Vacation Bible School: Do you have your workers in place for VBS? Have you ordered all the materials you’ll need? Plan a meeting for workers to pass out materials and answer their questions.  

Kid’s Crusades: Have you booked a date for your kid’s crusade with the children’s evangelist? Make sure you have talked to the evangelist about all the details of the crusade.

Plan Summer Children’s Church: During the summer, you’ll be busier than normal and will be tempted to skimp on Children’s Church planning. You can avoid this by planning the whole summer program ahead of time. 

Check Your Supplies: May is a good time to check and organize the supplies you’ll need for the summer.

 While nothing can keep the summer from overwhelming even the most organized Children’s Pastor, the more you pre-plan for the weeks ahead, the better prepared you’ll be.

 I’ve been talking a lot later about summer programs. Many times we get our best inspiration from others. So this week, I would like the readers of this blog to give that inspiration. What are you doing in your children’s ministry this summer? What innovative ideas do you have for VBS or other summer outreaches? Also please participate in our summer event poll.

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Posted in Children's Events, Kids Crusades, Leadership, Planning, Summer Events, VBS

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Summer Event Planning

Posted on April 14, 2010 | Leave a comment
Originally posted 3/23/09
 

If you’re not all ready planning your summer programs, you should be. Summer is a great time for evangelism programs. Children are out of school, and parents love to bring children to events that will curb the summer boredom.

 

Vacation Bible School, Kid’s Crusades, Carnivals, Sports Events, and Camps are some wonderful ways to minister to children. But there are lots of other ways to minister to children over the summer. In the next few weeks, I’ll mention a few of them.

 

Here’s some tips for planning your summer program:

 

Pray, Pray, Pray! In case I didn’t get my point across, you need to pray before planning any events. The most effective ministries are not the ones you ask God to bless, but the ones God directs you to have. Be in His will, and He will bless your efforts.

 

Don’t overload the calendar. Many times, children’s pastors want so much to use the time available to plan as much for the children as possible. If you do this, parents will soon tire of the endless calendar of events and stop bringing the children. Remember, sometimes less is more.

 

Think outside the box. Just because you’ve always had Vacation Bible School, doesn’t mean you always have to have Vacation Bible School. You might want to have VBS, but do it in an entirely different way. Or you might want a different event altogether. Don’t always do the same thing. Plan out of the box. Look at what is no longer effective, and change it.

 

Remember not to be a one man show. Develop a team and release some of the responsibility to them. You can only do so much. A team can do so much more.

 

Here’s some links to ideas for Summer Events:

 

Block Parties

 

Park Ministry

 

VBS Models

 

Reasons to Have a Kid’s Crusade

 

Revival Fire For Kid’s Fired Up Kid’s Crusades

 

Tomorrow’s blog is a checklist for your summer events.

 

 

 

 

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Posted in Children's Events, Leadership, Planning, Summer Events

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Reasons To Have A Kid’s Crusade Instead of VBS

Posted on February 2, 2010 | 4 Comments

Here are some reasons to have a Children’s Revival or Kid’s Crusade instead of VBS this year.

A children’s evangelist or revivalist is different from a children’s pastor. Just as senior pastors call on evangelists or revivalists to preach revival services, children’s pastors should also use revivalists. The calling of a revivalist or evangelist is different than the calling of a pastor. A pastor cares for the flock day in and day out. A revivalist (who many times has the calling of an evangelist, prophet, or apostle) prays for a word from the Lord to deliverer. Once a revivalist has that word, he or she will preach everywhere God leads. This is why, when you have a kid’s crusade, you should hire a revivalist or evangelist, not a children’s pastor from another church. This is the same for adult ministry, youth ministry, and children’s ministry.

Inviting new people energizes children’s ministry. Children’s pastors are some of the greatest preachers on Earth. But change brings excitement. If you give children something or someone different occasionally, it will energize their faith in God and bring new life into your children’s ministry.

You don’t have to get together props. One of the biggest expenses of VBS is the extra materials needed to go with the theme. Crafts, activities, Bible stories props, and music all have to be added as well as supplies to go with the VBS. Children’s revivalists have all the props needed to go with their theme.

You don’t have to decorate. Decorations for VBS take a great amount of time, energy, and expense for one week’s work. Revivalists bring decorations to go with their theme and set them up.

It takes less volunteers to run. Instead of teachers and helpers for every age group, activity directors, craft directors, and snack directors  you need for VBS, all you need for a kid’s crusade is one adult or teen helper for every fifteen to twenty children. Because these helpers don’t have to prepare anything, only be available to monitor children, they are easier to recruit.

There’s very little preparation. No teacher or student booklets to pass out, no craft materials to get together, no props to get a hold of; these are some of the advantages of having a kid’s crusade. All you have to do is advertise, recruit a few people to monitor the children, and pray. The children’s revivalist does all the work. It couldn’t be easier.

It costs less. VBS is more expensive than a children’s revival or Kid’s Crusade. When you look at the cost of hiring a children’s revivalist, you might be skeptical. But consider the cost of VBS. The teaching materials for the average VBS costs around $500.00 dollars. The craft materials can be as much as another $200.00 or more. Add $100.00 for decorations, another $100.00 for prizes, and another $100.00 for miscellaneous expense. This doesn’t include snack, or advertising. It’s also a very conservative estimate totaling almost $1000.00. Many churches spend more than that. When you consider the additional cost of your time that could be spent visiting children, discipling children, training and recruiting volunteers, and preparing lessons for Children’s Church, you’ll see that most children’s revivalists are a bargain.

Children are more likely to come if there’s something different. The definition of insanity is doing things the same way and expecting different results. Do something different. Let children experience God in a new way by having a kid’s crusade. Let God out of your VBS box.

For information on how you can book Revival Fire For Kids for a kid’s crusade, download a children’s ministry event handbook at this link  or contact revivalfire4kids@att.net.

Revival Fire For Kids is still booking spots for 2010 and 2011!

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Posted in Children's Events, Kids Crusades, Summer Events, VBS

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