Archivo de la categoría: KIDMIN

KIDMIN

Keep the Creativity Coming

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Keep the Creativity Coming

By: Ron Brooks

According to dictionary.com, the definition of creativity is: the ability to transcend traditional ideas, rules, patterns, relationships, or the like, and tocreate meaningful new ideas, forms, methods, interpretations, etc.; originality, progressiveness, or imagination.

A second meaning is: characterized by originality of thought; having or showing imagination:

Some define creativity as thinking outside of the box. But what is the box? I find creativity comes by putting thought into my presentation. It is about taking the time to think through my objective.

One challenge is to keep the creativity coming. How do you stay creative week after week? It helps me to sit down and think/plan. When you need to be creative, just think OINK.

 

#1. Objective

This is the stage when you find out what you want to accomplish, not how you will do it. That will come later. When you have the end in sight, it is easier to plan the route to get there.

What do you want the kids to take away from the lesson? The series? The camp? From whatever you are doing?

 

#2. Ideas

Once I know where I want to end up, I can start planning how to get there. I actually write down everything I can think of. This is the stage that there really isn’t a bad idea. You are just brainstorming, you can narrow and filter later.

What passages will you use?

Puppets?

Characters?

Skits?

Object lessons?

A game?

 

#3 Narrow

In this stage you take a look at your ideas and start to pick through what you will use and not use. You will realize that some ideas really won’t work well with your overall focus. Other ideas will jump off the page as great to help you achieve your objective. I usually do this stage at a later time, even a different day.

 

#4 Kreate (had to fit in the acrostic)

Take the ideas that you think will work and begin to write and develop with your main objective in mind.

Maybe you will write a skit to make a point.

Maybe a costumed character will do an object lesson.

Maybe a puppet will answer questions about the lesson.

Maybe you find a video clip to illustrate a main point.

You get the idea.

 

While this is not the only way to help your creativity, it has helped me. It also helps to have another person or a team that you can bounce ideas off of. There is something very synergistic about creativity in a team setting. One idea leads to another to another, and before you know it you have a very awesome idea going, and the better thing is you have other people involved in the process who are more likely to take ownership.

 

Hopefully you have read something that has inspired your creative juices. I’d love to hear about some of the creative things you have done or plan to do. Post a comment and let me know.

Participate in the discussion about creativity in our forum.

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About the Author: Ron loves God, his wife and his daughter. He has over 13 years kids ministry experience including teaching, volunteering and full time children’s pastor. He has spent over 20 weeks in 5 different countries doing children’s ministry mission work. He enjoys coffee, white and dark chocolate, and often watches the Sci-Fi channel and I Love Lucy reruns.

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KIDMIN

Clarity = Simplicity

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Clarity = Simplicity

Through my God given privilege of serving as a Kidology Coach, I get the opportunity to help assist many children’s leaders to clear up and simplify things that have been slowing them down or hindering them from being everything they feel God has for them. Sometimes it is as basic as helping them to see how: “Clarity is the ability of the process to be communicated and understood by the people”. Bottom line on this is that the people and the leadership should know exactly how the ministry is structured to move people toward spiritual maturity.

Understanding always precedes commitment.

If people are to embrace and participate in their ministry process, they must be able to understand and internalize it. To internalize the process, they must first grasp it. Clarity is then absolutely essential!

A lack of clarity ultimately leads to confusion and complexity because there is no coherent direction. When there is no direction, people will assume a direction or invent one, which then causes ministries to move aimlessly off course.

Here are some starter questions I suggest the protégées to ask themselves and find their answers to:

 

1. Do you feel that people are creating their own directions?

2. Do you feel that you do not have the best support of the people in accomplishing what you feel God wants to do in your church?

3. Do you ever feel that people are not growing the way you feel they should, but you feel you are being faithful in teaching and preaching?

 

Depending on their answers we may look to see if they are having a clarity problem. Maybe you don’t have a well-defined process set up for moving people toward spiritual maturity? Maybe you do have a process but it is not really known by your people or the leaders in your church? Maybe it is too complex of a process? Maybe it is to busy of a process or it is to scattered?

Check your Clarity out with others in your church, not just with you and your spouse.

Look at everything you have in print and make sure it all says the same message, shows the same direction, and are very clean and simple. Set up times to speak with your workers and ask them if they are clear in why you do what you do and if they are clear in what you do and how you do it. Ask the kids in your ministry and ask them the same questions.

You may find that if left to yourself you can unknowingly make things very complex. You can allow everything from too many different ministries taking place, to the many different announcements you allow to be broadcast, and more, will make your process to complex and you will lose your clarity and simplicity.

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KIDMIN

Inexpensive Ways to Improve Your Kids Area

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Inexpensive Ways to Improve Your Kids Area

By: Anthony D. Coppedge

Church children’s staff and leaders put untold hours into preparing for each child that will come to a church service or special event. When a little bit of effort goes into making the children’s area fun and bright, churches make the kids’ experience more engaging and enjoyable. This experience is not lost on visitors, who are typically hesitant about leaving their children with people they don’t know. However, their hesitation is instantly alleviated when they see when a church makes a statement with their facilities about how important those kids are.

Fun Colors!

While theming out a space is ideal, a little color goes a long way towards creating a bright and inviting place that belongs to kids. Brightly colored walls not only liven up a hallway or kids’ room, marketing psychologists advise that a lasting color impression is made within 90 seconds and accounts for 60 percent of the acceptance or rejection of an object, place, individual or circumstance.

Bold colors such as red and orange should be used as accents, as too much typically overwhelms children. Also, brown, black and gray are seldom chosen by children, except to create an outline.

High-quality signage – and lots of it!

It seems so simple, but churches don’t often put a lot of thought into the design, size, location and quantity of signs. These are critical for making it easy for new comers to find their way, allow kids to identify which area is “theirs” and provides a sense of belonging and ownership to kids. Small tips include making the fonts big and non-serifed and making sure that arrows point to the next direction step. Use as many signs as is necessary for waypoint finding. Simple and obvious is the key.

A great idea is to use double-sided, perpendicular signs for rooms, making it easy to see from both directions.

Make check-in fun & efficient

Kids check-in may be the most important part of your first impression for guests and visitors. Use lights, colors and signage to make check-in both obvious and fun! If you have the space, make a separate first-time check-in area that’s bright and inviting, staffed with super volunteers wearing T-shirts just for Children’s ministry!

When it comes to check-in, there’s just no two ways about it: electronic check-in makes all the difference in both security and efficiency. There are plenty of church management tools, such as Fellowship One and Church Community Builder, which offer robust check-in solutions, even for very small churches. In fact, systems like these include self check-in, which is about 500% faster than assisted check-in.

One easy tip here: use stanchions to create line queues, so that people never get into the “slow line”. With a queue, the next person in line gets the next open check-in station, eliminating being in the “wrong line”.

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Anthony D. Coppedge is the Director of Sales and Marketing for Worlds of Wow, Inc. Worlds of Wow specializes in creating themed environment for children’s areas.

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KIDMIN

Out of the Box and Up a Tree

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Out of the Box and Up a Tree

 

By: Kathy Kovalchuk

Everyone in children’s ministry has heard the words, “Let’s think outside the box,” but rarely are we comfortable doing that, instead we stick with what’s worked in the past or what’s been done before. Is it really okay to, or even possible to, think outside the box? Absolutely!

Think about this, children constantly think and act outside of the box. It’s the way God wired them! How else do you explain the fact that children will climb as high as they can up a tree without a second thought (and sometimes without a plan on how to get down)?

The difficulty for adults to think outside of the box can be the result of many things- preconceived notions/ideas, past successes and/or failures, cultural norms, and sometimes the desire to be accepted by others. Children don’t think, “It would be great to climb that tree, but….” Instead they think, “Let’s climb up that tree, and go higher than last time.” If we are trying to reach children, we need to think like children.

Here’s one way to start thinking outside of the box: Let’s say you are planning an event. List out your four major limiting factors. In other words, what are the the sides of your box made up of? For example, maybe your box has sides labeled: budget, staffing, resources, and spacing. Now that we know the four major factors that have us bound, get rid of them. Take that box and recycle it, break it down, reuse it to identify the four most important factors or goals for the event. Start imagining how high up the tree you are going to climb. Throw every idea regarding the event out on the table, no matter how crazy or unrealistic it may sound. Write it down, and remember no limitations and definitely no objections allowed…just ideas. Next pick which tree you are going to climb, which idea(s) are you going to focus on. Start climbing and don’t look down, focus your eyes on those four goals or factors you identified in the beginning. As you begin to plan your ascent up that tree, the box you took a part will start to resurface, but that’s okay. Once you are up and in that tree you start to realize that there are other ways, other branches, you can use to move around and through the limiting factors that once held your feet on the ground.

Remember the story of Zacchaeus, he thought outside of the box and climbed up a tree so that he could better see Jesus (now that song will be stuck in your head all day, sorry). In the end, Zacchaeus was rewarded. The Lord called him out of the tree and went to Zacchaeus’ house and fellowshipped with him. Go ahead my friends, break up the box, climb the tree, so that you and the children you serve can better see Jesus.

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About the Author: Kathy Kovalchuk is passionately in love with Jesus Christ. Her wonderful husband and best friend, Moses, have been married for 16 years. They are blessed to have three beautiful children; Hannah, Nathan, and Samuel. She has the amazing privilege and joy of serving and teaching the students in grades 1-6 of our local church.

Visitas: 15

KIDMIN

KIDMIN Minute To Win It Games

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 KIDMIN Minute To Win It Games

We started doing minute to win it games as a way to transition to different parts of our service and build excitement at the same time. We do three rounds of boys vs. girls whichever team wins gets 100 bonus point to our Uptown Store. The kids love it! It adds a great level of predictable unpredictableness.

Bobble head

1) After the headband/pedometor is on the head, the device is set to zero in steps mode.
2) When the clock starts, , player may begin head and body motion without touching the pedometer to register “steps.”
3) If the pedometer/headband moves, the player may stop motion to prevent it from falling off, re-adjust the headband, then continue.
4) To complete the game, player must record 125 “steps” within the 60-second time limit.

KIDMIN tweak- Instead of kids banging their heads we have the put the pedometer on their pocket and jump up and down.

Loner

1) Set up the pencil on it’s unsharpened end 15′ away from the foul line.
2) Player begins game lying down on their stomach behind the foul line.
3) When the clock starts, player may begin rolling marbles 1 at a time with 1 hand towards the pencil.
4) Player must release the marble behind the line. If a marble released across the line knocks over the pencil, the game is over.
5) To complete the game, player must knock down the pencil with a marble that’s released within the 60-second time limit.

KIDMIN tweak– We use a marker and a pingpong ball not a marble and a pencil

Keep it up

1) When the clock starts, player may release two feathers and begin to blow on them to keep them in the air.
2) If the feather touches any part of the player’s body, or touches the floor, the game is over. Incidental contact on the face is allowed.
3) To complete the game, player must use only his or her breath to keep both feathers from touching the ground for the 60-second time limit.

KIDMIN tweak- We use three balloons instead

Bite me

1) Set up the game by cutting each grocery bag to a different height (10″, 8″, 6″, 4″, and 2″) on the floor, right side up.
2) When the clock starts, player may attempt to pick up the tallest bag and may only touch the floor with his or her feet.
3) If player touches the ground with some body part other than the feet while attempting to grab a bag, he or she must reset by standing up before making another attempt.
4) To complete the game, player must have all 5 bags concurrently on the table within the 60-second time limit.

KIDMIN tweak– We make the heights of the bag higher than they do on Minute to win it.

You can find a great free Minute to Win It timer to use here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vz5zzVCtaUw

Author

Sam Luce
Sam Luce

Sam Luce is the children’s pastor at Redeemer Church in Utica, NY and is a contributing author to K! Magazine. He also speaks at children’s ministry conferences. Apart from kid’s ministry he enjoys reading, racquetball, writing, photography, and watching movies with the family. You can visit his blog at www.samluce.com.

 

 

 

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KIDMIN

JESUS ON LEADERSHIP

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Joshua 1:8 says, “Study this Book of Instruction continually. Meditate on it day and night so you will be sure to obey everything written in it. Only then will you prosper and succeed in all you do.”

The most important thing that you can do for your ministry staff and volunteers is to go through a Bible Study together. And in particular I highly recommend this if you are a preparing to launch a new ministry. Allow God to knit your hearts together before you strike out on the road to serve.

The study I most highly recommend is “Jesus on Leadership.” First of all, it challenged me as a leader to do some real self-evaluation and to make some needed adjustments to my leadership style. Second, it provided an opportunity for our team to be transparent with each other, to get to know each other on a deep spiritual level, and to truly develop a unified vision for moving ministry forward. Third, it provided a safe environment for people personally to deal with issues in their lives that they had not confronted and which were holding them back in their personal lives and in ministry.

So you may be asking, if we want to approach leadership like Jesus did, what does that look like? Pick up a copy of the book by C. Gene Wilkes. But I will give you a brief summary.

First the book is only seven chapters with an intro, but it slams you in the face from the get go with the admonition “Down from the Head Table.” If you ever thought you ministry was about you, let me clarify for you. It’s NOT! Never has been, never will be. And if we are sitting around waiting to be congratulated and recognized for what we do, forget about it. Jesus clearly came to serve and not be served. So if you are into titles and office space and all of that, take a look at the Master, who said himself, “For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.” (Luke 14:8-11) That’s some heavy stuff, but it will give your team time to address this if it is a perceived or real issue for your ministry or your church.

The author talks about being humble, spiritually multiplying yourself, equipping those you serve, and taking risks. This is not some pie in the sky fluffiness. It will break you spiritually and give God the broken vessel which He can use to an even greater degree.

The most life transforming aspect of “Jesus on Leadership” is the spiritual markers and the spiritual gifts assessment. The markers had my whole team in tears at one time or another, men and women. It made us take off the masks, let down the defenses, and just be real with one another. It was hard, and I’m sure for some it was scary. But I cannot truly explain to you the depth of our relationships after this.

I went through this study as a student with the church staff, and I went through it as a facilitator for our children’s ministry leadership team. Trust me on this one. You WILL not , CAN not walk away from “Jesus on Leadership” unchanged. And thereby, your ministry will be changed. Study God’s Word together and it will be the greatest investment you can ever make in your ministry.

Click here to join the discussion on leadership in our forum.

shareshare

About the Author

Tina Bryson
Tina Bryson

Tina Bryson is the author of “10 Things Every Kid Should Know About God,” and works to equip parents to develop a biblical foundation at home. She loves Zumba, reading a good book, and drinking hot chocolate with lots of marshmallows.

  by Tina Bryson »

 

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KIDMIN

There’s No “Best” Way

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There’s No “Best” Way

 

Over the past few weeks I’ve been coast to coast at churches and conferences. Every time I go to a church or conference I am constantly taking notes in my head and carefully observing everything around me. Why do I do this? I do this because if I like the way someone does something I’m going to “steal” their secrets and implement them in our church. (FYI: Copyright really means Copy It Right; God made eyes to plagiarize—just kidding don’t send me hate emails)

This is what I’m realizing more and more: There’s no one right way to do ministry. Our church is in a position where we have influence in both the charismatic and seeker movements. I’ve seen some pretty crazy services that were powerful, people getting saved and the church growing. I’ve also seen seeker services where they reach tons of unchurched people, the word is very practical, the power of God’s there and lives are changed. Both are good. Both are needed.

What’s my advice to you as a leader? Do what you do best. That’s it! Whatever it is that you do, whatever style is your style, do it 100%. Don’t try to be like anyone else. At times our church tries to emulate a certain style and it’s just not us. It’s when we are ourselves that we find the most success with salvations, lives impacted and the church expanding. Sure, there are systems that work better than others. Our church gleans from other churches and implement those things that fit into our vision. We don’t change our vision to fit a system.

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ARTÍCULOS, KIDMIN

Care More For Volunteers Than Empty Positions

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Care More For Volunteers Than Empty Positions

People who volunteer and stay over the long haul tend to do it more for personal reasons, not organizational reasons. Over my years in children’s ministry I have picked up successful recruiting efforts that tend to focus first on the motivations and talents of potential volunteers and then go on to organizational mission and vision.

I would like to suggest some quick ideas or suggestions to take when recruiting volunteers from all the pools of influence each of us have.

1. Talk to them about them, and then talk to them about you.

Your goal is finding alignment between personal and organizational values, mission, and vision. Remember, YOU MUST BE MORE INTERESTED IN THEM AS A PERSON MORE THAN JUST FILLING A POSITION. You will never do anyone any good in lassoing them into a “POSITION” just because you have it available, but you will do eternal good in helping people find where they would be successful.

2. Begin by explaining what you give them, not what they give you.

You provide opportunities to learn new skills, channels for giving back, and richness of life. You give them an opportunity to matter. If you don’t, close the doors because your organization doesn’t matter.

3. Before recruiting volunteers know the answer to this basic question. “Why do volunteers share their time, talent, and treasure with your organization?”

I am amazed that I can ask this very question to my teams or to other teams and many times I hear no response. If those of us leading cannot answer this or are unclear of this answer ourselves, why would potential volunteers want to partner with us in our organization?

4. After you understand potential volunteers, always lead with organizational mission and vision.

Don’t focus on tasks, focus on vision. Don’t say, “I’d like you to man the front desk on Sundays for the second service.” Do say instead, “I think you can help us invest in the lives of families in our community by being on the front line and influencing them by greeting them when they come to check in and help them find where they need to go.”

5. If you can’t clearly articulate your mission and vision in compelling ways, you aren’t ready to recruit volunteers.

Compelling vision establishes your true North and fires passions to charge off in that direction. Convincing people to perform tasks doesn’t create dedicated volunteers. Connecting values, mission and vision does.

So are you ready to recruit or are you missing some of these and that may be the reason you are getting the results you have been getting? I am a firm believer that you are perfectly designed for the results you receive.

Visitas: 25