Settling In…Finally!

I’ve mentioned several times through this platform that the question I’ve been asked most in the last few months has been, “How are you doing with everything?”  Earlier this summer, I accepted a new position at church and just a few weeks ago, my father-in-law passed away suddenly.  So, it’s not surprising that, “How are you doing with everything?” has been the million dollar question…too bad I can’t collect each time I’ve been asked that! 🙂

It wasn’t until last week that I really felt like I was in a groove.  As a result of the new position and additional responsibilities, many aspects of my ministry were (temporarily, I prayed) on the back burner.  If you know anything about me, you know that I am all for having a personal ministry.  I love connecting with people under my leadership – volunteers, children and parents.  Sadly, I have not had the chance to offer as many personal touches as I had in the past.  That really bothered me and left me feeling like I wasn’t leading well.

While things are still quite busy and we continue to settle in to the new ministry year, I found a couple of hours to work on re-introducing a few personal ministry elements.  These included expanding our social media presence and resuming our weekly Parent Connect e-newsletter.  I feel strongly that if we are partnering with parents, the lines of communication should not only be crystal clear but also varied in approach.  We have to get the word out to parents where they are likely to spend the most time.

Many of our parents are on Facebook more so than Twitter, so I have concentrated our social media efforts to Facebook only.  I have been thinking about our ministry’s social media presence and whether we should have one page for each area of ministry (Nursery, Early Childhood, Elementary and Preteen) or just have one page for our entire Children’s Ministry.  In the end, I decided to create pages for Sprouts (our Nursery environment) and The Backyard (our Early Childhood environment) – we already had pages for The Treehouse (Elementary) and Route 45 (Preteen).  We are still spreading the word about these pages, but feel free to stop by and take a look.

In addition, I communicate weekly with parents electronically.  Years ago, I sent a weekly email, communicating what’s coming up, what the children would be learning and any resources they could take advantage of.  But let’s face it – the look of email is boring.  So, I wanted to spice things up and make it visually appealing while still delivering important information.  Thankfully, our Middle School Director inspired me to use Mail Chimp to accomplish this.  Honestly, it was one of the best moves I have made.  I love how creative I can be in crafting communication to parents.

There are several other things brewing in my head that will be added in the coming weeks and months but we’re taking it one step at at time.  These simple but effective means of communication have made me feel like screaming, “I’m back!!”  And that feels really good!

How do you communicate with parents and volunteers?  Leave me a comment below and fill me in!