Category Archives: Leadership

Summer Event Planning

Posted on May 14, 2012 | 1 Comment

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.

 

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 some blog posts to help you with your Summer Event Planning:

Summer Checklist for Children’s Ministry

Information on Kid’s Crusades and Children’s Revivals

Reasons to have a Kid’s Crusade Instead of a VBS

Block Parties

Park Ministry

Inexpensive Curriculum You Can Use for VBS

VBS Models

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

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Summer Checklist For Children’s Ministry

Posted on May 9, 2012 | 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.

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

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Resolution #8 – One On One Time With Students

Posted on January 20, 2012 | Leave a comment

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The old saying “people don’t care how much you know until they know how much your care” holds true in children’s ministry and in the church. If all we have is programs and we’re not touching our students’ lives, our programs are worthless.

Jesus taught the multitude, but He also spent one-on-one time with His disciples and with many of His other followers. He set the standard for ministry that we should emulate.

But, as with every other resolution I’ve covered, if we don’t have a plan, it will fall by the wayside as busyness takes over. Here’s a few ideas to plan one-on-one time with students.

Don’t try to do it by yourself. If you have a children’s ministry team, have them help you with building relationships with students. That will free you up to pour into student leaders.

Acknowledge birthdays. You may decide to send a card, make a phone call, or give a little gift in children’s church. But make sure you acknowledge birthdays in some way.

Go to extra-curricular activities. Let your students know that, if they inform you of sport’s events, dramas, and concerts, you will do your best to attend.

Visit the hospital. Any time a student of yours is having surgery or is in the hospital, it should become a priority for you to visit her.

Have a certain time each week where you make phone calls. Maybe schedule an hour each week, and go down the list of students. Don’t only call students who are absent, call the faithful as well. It will make that student’s day to get a call from his children’s pastor.

Visit each student in your children’s ministry once a year. If you have more than a hundred student, this will require help from your team, but it’s more effective in reaching out with compassion than any program you could come up with. One word of caution – always schedule an appointment with the parent before making a visit.

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Resolution #7 – Create a Child Abuse Policy

Posted on January 18, 2012 | Leave a comment

Every church needs a written child abuse policy. This isn’t just a good idea. It’s vital to protect your students, your workers, and your church. Here’s some things you’ll need to include.

Screening For Workers: Every worker in your church needs to be interviewed and asked hard questions. They also need to have a background check. Every worker – even Aunt Emma who has been at your church since she was a baby. There’s a reason for that. If your church is ever sued because a worker abuses a child, they’ll ask if all workers have been screened and had a background check. If they have, the suit probably won’t hold up in court.

Report Every Sign of Abuse: Stress this to your workers. It doesn’t matter if they think the child might be accusing someone to get attention or if they think they may be overreacting. That’s not the worker’s call. Child abuse agencies investigate every case and if there’s nothing to it, they don’t mind being put to the trouble. That’s what they’re there for.

Have a policy about how to report possible abuse. That means you either have the worker make the call and report to you what happened or you have the worker come to you and you make the call. Which ever you decide to do, make sure somebody calls the proper agency.

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Posted in Children's Ministry Policies, Leadership

Resolution #6 – Create a Policy Manual For Workers

Posted on January 16, 2012 | 1 Comment

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A policy manual is something every church should have, but few follow through on this. Here are some good reasons to have a policy manual.

Worker Qualifications:

If you settle for any warm body to work in your children’s ministry, it will cause you more problems than lack of workers. Set the bar higher for those who will minister to the children in your church, and you’ll attract quality people. This goes against the grain, but it works. If you don’t believe me, try it for one year. Let the congregation know only those who meet the qualifications need apply. Mention that you’re doing this because you want only the best working with the children, and see what happens.

One qualification should be that only those who are fully devoted Christ followers can work in children’s ministry. No matter what, don’t compromise on this. Someone who is a carnal Christian or who plays games with Christianity is not someone you want your students looking up to as role models.

Other qualifications can include church membership, water baptism, devotional life, screening, and mandatory teacher training.

Health:

It’s so much easier to tell a parent whose bringing a child with a 103° fever into your class that you can’t accept the child if you have a written church policy in place. Parents can handle you saying you have to follow the church policy rather than you don’t want their child there.

Safety:

Safety policies need to be in place. These include teacher/student ratios for each age group. If a teacher has too many student to handle, with a policy in place, she can alert an usher who knows what to do.

Another good policy that is needed is what to do with restroom breaks. No child should wander around the church hallways unsupervised. For nursery, you’ll want policies for how to change a diaper. Rubber gloves and a bleach spray bottle should be standard for every church nursery.

One of the most important policies to have in place is how we release children to adults. It used to be we could just let the children go when church was out. That’s no longer the case. With so many divorces and estranged parent, not to mention predators, we need to be careful how we do this.

Parents:

Attracting parents is a great reason to have a policy manual. Parents want to know you’re taking care of their children properly. They’re more likely to attend a church they trust with their children.

Church Growth:

You may think you don’t need those policies in place because you’re a small church. It’s easier to put policies in place and get church members use to them while your small. Then you’ll be ready for church growth.

If you don’t know where to start, Revival Fire For Kids has a complete Children’s Ministry Policy Manual available for download. This manual is available in MS Word and RTF formats so you can change it to fit your church’s needs. Click on the picture for more info.

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Posted in Children's Ministry Policies, Leadership