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Time to P.P. in your ministry

Time to “Partner with Parents” in your ministry!

Those of us who say we minister to the family need to really stand back and ask ourselves, “Do we really minister to the family or are we more about being successful on just the weekend?”

Look at our prep times. Are we prepping to mainly show off the wonderful and creative ideas that flow from our choice of a curriculum? Or, are prepping resources to go beyond just the weekend?

Do we know what the needs are of not just the kids or the students, but what about the needs of those guardians who spend more time carrying the weekend experience further? What tools do they need? Guardians of those kids and students are looking to the church to help them do a better job at being the priest of their families. They need more than just a take-home paper (or should we call it a floor mat?).

Time to ask some real questions. Here are just a few to get you started.

  1. What are the parents “real” needs?
  2. What do we offer at this time that really address these needs?
  3. What do I have in my tool box of ministry goodies that I could easily bring out and make available for families?

Sometimes we try to offer up just an explanation of what we taught on a certain day and call it good. We expect that the parents will take that 1-2 minute explanation given at the door on their way out and build on that throughout the week. Wrong!!

  • Are you providing daily ways through social media, email, snail mail, quick videos etc. to continue to set the parents up with quick ideas that would be age appropriate for them to use?
  • Have you created a Facebook group or some connection spot for parents to network with other parents and receive encouragement and creative ideas to being the priest of their families throughout the week? Through a group like this, you also have access to their thoughts, troubles, struggles, and questions. You also have access daily to pour into families vision of what it can look like to live a Deuteronomy 6 family lifestyle.
  • Providing information over age appropriate children’s phases. I do this through Kidology Coaching.
  • Have you ever hosted an open house to show off your leaders who pour into the families but also opens up a communication time to hear what families are needing?

This post is to only serve as a starting point. The important thing is that you will start to ask the questions and then design your churches plan to execute on the ideas and needs of your families.

Families want to be successful, will you truly help them do exactly this?

Ministry lessons learned from Underwear and a Toybox

When I was younger I can always remember that dreadful time when I had to go shopping with my mom and she would tell me how she had to go get some new underwear. Please no, not the new underwear time!!

Off we would go into the women’s underwear aisle we would disappear too. The whole time all I could do as a young 6-year-old boy would be look down at the floor and wish we could get out of there. Everything there made me feel uncomfortable. I knew I would never find anything that I wanted while we were in those aisles. I had no conversation that would be joined, thoughts or opinions to give, basically, I knew I was about to be as miserable as a 6-year-old boy could be for the next 15 minutes or so.

Now come with me to this toy box I have in my office.

Every time, I meet with families in my office and they have younger kids as they enter my office those kids will lock their eyes upon this toy box that I have and immediately go to it and start to play. I have yet to really have to tell any child that the toys are for them to play with, they just know. While they play, the parents and I will meet. I love watching the kids play with their imagination being set free build new worlds, conquer territory, cook at the fanciest restaurant in town, entertain Kings, and Queens and so much more.

What lessons did I learn from these experiences? The lesson of an atmosphere. In all of our ministries, and churches we are creating either an underwear type experience for kids, students and yes even adults or we are creating a toy box time for each.

When visitors come, do they feel miserable? Uncomfortable because they can’t give anything or that everything around is irrelevant for them?

Let us all try to strive for those toy box experiences for people. People will know as soon as they come into your ministry if there is anything for them or not.

How will you change your environment to be more welcoming to those who just come in?

Connect with the top 20 Children’s Ministries

push-pins-several

I enjoy reading outreach magazine for many reasons, one of those reasons would be when they compile a list for me where I do not need to do the work.

Here is a list of the top 20 children’s ministries. I would urge you to reach out to them because there are a ton of lessons that they can share with you if you stop asking so much of the “what are they doing” and move more to the “why are you doing this or that?” type questions.

By the way, don’t be intimidated to contact them thinking that they will never talk to you because your ministry may only have 25 kids. You may just be pleasantly surprised to see how nice they are and willing to help the Kingdom grow if you just ask them. Do have your questions in order of importance of what you want to ask them, have a list of 3-5 questions that are the most important to you, do your homework on each church so you may ask them very specific questions that their unique ministry may help give you great advice in a specific area.

1. Waumba Land, Upstreet and Kidstuf at Northpoint
Community Church
2. Highland Kids at Church of the Highlands
3. KidSpring at NewSpring Church
4. Amazing Kids at Gateway Church
5. Saddleback Kids at Saddleback Community Church
6. Promiseland at Willow Creek Community Church
7. CCV Kids at Christ Church of the Valley
8. CFKids at Christ Fellowship Church
9. Southeast Kids at Southeast Christian Church
10. Crossroads Kids Club at Crossroads Church
11. eKIDZ at Elevation Church
12. Kid-O-Deo and Elevate at Eagle Brook Church
13. Second Kids at Second Baptist Church
14. Planet Kids, Gravity, The Edge and The Ride at
Woodlands Church
15. Summit Kids Ministry at Flatirons Community Church
16. Children’s Ministry at King Jesus International Ministry
17. Port Mariner’s Kids at Mariners Church
18. Kingdom Kids at Mt. Zion Baptist Church
19. K12 at 12 Stone Church
20. Family Christian Center Kids at Family Christian
Center

*This list is based on the 2016 Largest Churches in America report by Outreach magazine.

Back to school and Back to blogging

sitting at desk with computer

The summer of 2016, where did it go?

During summer in Take TWO Family Ministries it was a whirlwind of incredible activity, and, a ton of fun.

Here are only a few of the fun times had by all.

Soccer Camp.
soccer camp 2016 503x503

Marriage Scavenger Hunt. (For the record my wife and I won this one with another couple from our church, the Underfers)
Marriage scavenger hunt 2016 503x503

Kids Camp
Kids Camp 2016 500x503

Family Service week with KidzTurn
KidzTurn at First 2016 503x503

Stay tuned as I will be getting back on a regular schedule for posting blog post.

Love my INCM DISPATCH. 

Every time when I see this brown box sitting outside my mailbox, I know it’s going to be a great day!

Dispatch box

I am so thankful to INCM for allowing me to be part of the dispatch writing group. Thanks, Matt Guevara, for allowing me the honor to take part.

This dispatch as always is filled with some great goodies that would be a blessing to anyone in children’s ministry. Here is a sneak peek:

Dispatch contents 5_16

The Gospel Truth about Children’s Ministry

7 Family Ministry Essentials

Jonah Comic

ICB Big Red Bible

Strong In Me CD

Growing in Grace CD

Now do you understand my excitement? Click on these links and go get yourself some of these wonderful tools for your children’s ministry.

My ministry day with my iPhone


I still get amazed what we can accomplish today with just our phones. 

Today, I’m going to take us on a brief trip of my day in ministry with just using my iPhone. 

  • Started the day off with using my Bible (YouVersion). 
  • After that I went into my weather app to see what kind of weather I was going to get today. 
  • Easily.Do to check for birthdays and send out text or email cards to them. Also get to see the status of all my packages coming and going. Then get a quick overview of trending Instagram pictures from my friend and the Instagram community. One of the last nice things I enjoy about Easily.Do is it gives me an update of any emails I need to respond to. 
  • Next I move into Trello to check on all my group projects. This handles all my project management. 
  • Throughout the day I am in and out of Evernote. It serves as my electronic brain. 
  • Dropbox is the same with me going in and out all day long as it is my sharing tool with others. 

I am amazed at all that I can and do with my iPhone daily. The apps mentioned are just a couple that I use first thing in the morning. This post would turn into one very long list of I was to mention everything that I use. Even this post was made on my iPhone.

What apps do you find the most valuable to your day? 

Ministry lessons learned from Undercover boss.

UndercoverBoss 796x448

Undercover Boss is one of those shows that I learn a lot more from than even the show thinks people take away from it.

I watch them early in the morning because I tivo them. I am the big nut for them and not the rest of the family. I was watching one and the usual lessons and tears started.

The format of the show goes with the boss going into disguise and visiting their employees. They learn a ton and hear a ton and then go back and change out of disguise. Then the meeting happens and the tears start for me.

Tears? Yes, tears. I tear up when the boss meets those he was under disguise around and share how they affected his life. Then he dishes out great benefits to those workers that change their lives forever. Gifts ranging from money, vacations, kids college starter money, cars and so much more.

The show ends with a caption at the end that says..”In the weeks following”..then it tells you what the employee has done since meeting the boss and getting their gifts. May not sound like it but it really can be a tear jerker.

Some quick thoughts I think about applying to my ministry, personal devotional life with Jesus.

1. What would truly be learned from me through my witness if Jesus would show up in my life as an Undercover Boss? Would I be loyal? Complain? Be grateful?

2. Do I see that I have an opportunity to speak to the Boss every day without waiting for him to show up undercover?

3. Do I recognize the gifts that He does give me and already has given me?

4. Am I as thankful to Him as those who receive from the Undercover Boss?

5. After my time spent with Him in prayer, what would be able to be said of the minutes since? Weeks since? Years since?

Made 2015 Top 100 Kidmin blogs

computer showing stats

I was honored to find out that my blog made it into the top 100 Kidmin blogs for yet another year. This year, though, we climbed to #38 which is a little higher thanks to all of you who faithfully read my blog.

top children's ministry blogs

There’s a tool that was added to the list this year that I think is an ingenious idea and a great resource to those in KidMin and other ministries. It’s a custom google search engine to search the Top 100 Blogs in the list! Find out what our blogs are saying about volunteering, training etc. Enter your word and search.

GO HERE to check it out. I searched several of my favorite topics. My search on Training pulled up 10 pages of blog posts.

Dispatch a great tool for ministry

Dispatch Nov 2015

Allow me to share with you a fantastic tool that comes from INCM called Dispatch.

Dispatch is a curated selection of some of the latest ideas and products for children’s ministry leaders. It comes packed to the rim of the box and makes you feel like it is Christmas all year round.

Here are just a few of the items that came in this last box:
– The Gospel Truth about children’s Ministry
– 7 Family Ministry Essentials
– Strong in me CD

and so much more.

What are you waiting for, go now and get your box of goodies.

Dangerous and Risky and will make you…

internet-safety-09-300x210

Dangerous and Risky and will make you AWARE!!

There was a show on a few back called, “The Masked Magician”. This show caused a lot of stir in the magician circles because the whole show was a “masked magician” would show the secrets to a lot of tricks. These were not some small pull a silk from what was once my empty hand, but more like cutting a person in half, disappearing from a chained up trunk and more. Tricks that were still being performed and providing the bread and butter for many magicians families.

Through this show, many people began to understand what was a mystery to them at one time. It put on the minds of many who never thought about this stuff before but were now pulled into a new knowledge. The purpose that the masked magician said he wanted to accomplish was only to try to raise the bar of what Magicians would do. He was tired of people doing the same illusions for all these years.

The motive was good, but I’m not sure it was accomplished in the best of ways. The same is true in my opinion when we post well-meaning articles like this one:http://educateempowerkids.org/dangerous-apps/

It is understood that we want parents to be aware of apps out there that may not be the best for kids of different ages. But, we may also have a “masked Magician” type effect taking place as well. Putting titles and info like this one out there in an area that people of all ages read and visit may be doing just the opposite of the intended purpose. Now it may be putting it in front of kids who had no idea of these apps but now are made aware. Then they will go and explore them, just like many did when the secrets were told of illusions being performed.

Is there a better way? Thoughts?

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