Ephesians 4:12   Their responsibility is to equip God’s people to do his work and build up the church, the body of Christ.

Mentor: a trusted counselor or guide, a coach

Effective children’s pastors are mentors. Another word for mentor is guide or coach. They take time to equip children, workers, and parents under their care. But you can’t mentor everyone. Jesus had many followers but only 12 disciples. He spent most of His time pouring into 3 of those 12 – John, Peter, and James. We can teach and pastor a great number of children and workers. But we need to limit who we mentor or coach. We need to pray and ask God who we should pour ourselves into, who we should mentor.

Children:

A children’s pastor is an evangelist, shepherd, and teacher to all children in his or her ministry. But a children’s pastor should also choose a few who love the Lord and show spiritual growth to become a mentor to. This should be your ministry team. Teach these children to minister in your children’s service. Teach them to be prayer warriors and altar workers. Give them responsibilities for ministry. Pour yourself into them. Spend time with them. Have a time you meet with them regularly and train them. This link talks more about how to do that.

Workers:

Depending on how large your worker force is will determine how you go about this. If you have 20 or 30 workers or more under you, you’ll want a ministry team or no more than 10 that you mentor. That team will in turn mentor 5 to 10 people under them. If you have a small children’s ministry, you can mentor all of your workers. To mentor, you don’t only want to do teacher training. Mentoring involves developing relationships and having meetings where those you coach have a safe place to voice their concerns and contribute with ideas and planning.

Parents:

You may have the opportunity to mentor a few parents on how to parent and incorporate spirituality into their childrens’ lives. Have resources available, but again, the most important aspect of mentoring is developing a relationship with parents.