Category Archives: Planning

Resolution #2 – Be Prepared Earlier For Sunday Morning

Posted on January 4, 2012 | 1 Comment

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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.

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Posted in Leadership, Planning

Children’s Pastors’ New Years Resolutions You Can Keep

Posted on December 26, 2011 | Leave a comment

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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.

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Posted in Leadership, Planning

Project Management For Children’s Pastors: Work Your Plan

Posted on June 17, 2010 | Leave a comment

Now that you have your project plan in place, it’s time to work the plan. Here’s a few things to remember.

Meet With Your Team Often: Follow up on your team members’ progress. Make sure they haven’t run into any difficulties. Communication is the key to teamwork. Remember we live in the computer age. Meeting with your team doesn’t always mean a meeting at church or in person. Use email, Facebook, and video conferencing to save time.

Tweak The Plan: You may need to find replacements for your team members, change the timeline, or find additional resources. These problems will crop up. Expect them and be ready to tweak your plan.

Time For God & Yourself: Remember your priorities. Don’t get so bogged down in the project that you neglect time with God and your family. Also take an occasional afternoon off to regroup.

Document Everything: Write down everything you do and keep great records. This will help you not have to reinvent the wheel every year when a project comes up again. Documentation will save you time in the long run.

Have Fun: Don’t forget to have fun. This is children’s ministry.

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Posted in Leadership, Planning, Project Management Series

Project Management For Children’s Pastors: List Your Steps

Posted on June 16, 2010 | 1 Comment

Once you’ve defined the objective of your project, examined your resources, and built a project team, the next step is to list the step you need to complete your project on time.

List the Big Steps First: What are the major components of the project? Make a to do list with those components. It’s good to list these in chronological order, but it’s not necessary. You can always change the order later.

List the Smaller Steps: Make a to do list under each of the Big Steps. These are the things you need to do to make a big step happen. I’ll give an example. A big step for VBS would be to recruit workers. Smaller steps might include what workers you need and how you intend to recruit them.

Develope A Timeline:  Once you have your to do lists ready, make a timeline of when each large step should be done. Then add the smaller steps to the timeline. A wall calendar is a good way to make your preliminary timeline. After the timeline is complete, move each date back two weeks. No matter how great our planning, life interrupts our schedule. Unforseen events can wreck havoc on deadlines if we don’t allow enough time for interruptions.

Revise Timeline: You and your project team should revise the timeline often to make sure you’re on track and to revise or tweek anything that might need more time.

  1. Develop a Preliminary Plan
    Assemble all your steps into a plan. What happens first? What is the next step? Which steps can go on at the same time with different resources? Who is going to do each step? How long will it take? There are many excellent software packages available that can automate a lot of this detail for you. Ask others in similar positions what they use.

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Posted in Leadership, Planning, Project Management Series

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