Category Archives: Planning

This blog gets more hits on Saturday evenings than any other time of the week. I can’t say for sure I know why that is, but I do know that most of the posts looked at during that time are for object lessons and children’s sermons. It’s great this blog provides much needed resources, but the earlier you prepare, the easier it will flow on Sunday. Here’s a few steps to make sure you’re prepared early.

Decide how much time it takes to prepare for children’s church. Once you know how much time it takes, you can work it into your schedule.

Schedule a time to prepare your lesson. Some people like to prepare the whole thing at once. Others like to divide it into bite size pieces. Whatever works for you, make sure you’re finished by Friday. If Saturday’s the only day you have to prepare, get a week ahead on preparation.

The reason for this is because if you have a game plan already in place, you can spend time praying for the students and about the lesson. Also the creative side of your brain has room to mull over what you’re doing. If you come up with some fantastic object lesson, you’ll have time to get it together and make sure you have the supplies you need. If you wait until Saturday night, you’re limited in what you can do.

Pray before you plan and after you plan. By planning early, you’ll have time to seek God about your lesson. It may be the Holy Spirit will nudge you in a certain way. But if you wait until Saturday night, God won’t be able to speak as clearly through you planning frenzy. Prepare early and give God time to work.

Every year, Christians around the globe make New Year’s Resolutions to get closer to God, to pray more, to read their Bible more, and to do better. Those resolutions usually don’t make it past January 15.

Children’s Pastors are no exception when it comes to resolutions. They usually add goals like more children being saved, get ready for Sunday before Saturday night, and do more teacher training as well as some other things that end up undone when the next year comes along.

Unless your resolutions also have manageable steps behind them, they won’t get done, and you’ll end up making the same resolutions next year.

Here’s some worthy resolutions many children’s pastors make year after year:

Get Closer To God: This is the most important resolution you can make but it’s easily broken. This year you can take steps toward making this goal a reality.

Be prepared earlier for Sunday morning: That’s a lofty goal, but to achieve it, you have to plan when you’ll work on children’s ministry and schedule the times.

Have more children saved: We aren’t able to create results when it comes to children being saved. But there are steps we can take to allow the Holy Spirit to move in this direction.

Disciple Children: This is another wonderful goal, but it needs a plan to carry it out.

Attract More Children To Your Church: There are ways to do this, but you need an outreach plan.

Create a policy for workers: This is something every church needs, but few churches follow through.

Create a policy to prevent child abuse: This is another thing every church needs but few churches have.

Spend one on one time with students: Children’s pastors always intend to do this, but if you don’t have strategy in place, it just won’t happen.

One of the best ways to make resolutions is to set goals with manageable bites scheduled throughout the year. Throughout the month of January, I’ll write about each of these resolutions with some tips about how we can make them a reality.

Leave a comment with some of the New Year’s Resolutions you’ve made for your Children’s Ministry, and I’ll try to cover those areas too.