children's ministry Archives - Page 27 of 50

It’s almost time for VBS!

07/10/201407/10/2014 Kathie Phillips

For the past 5 months, we have been planning for this year’s VBS, which we affectionately refer to as Summer Bible Camp (SBC). Like previous years, we selected Group’s Holy Land VBS, Wilderness Escape. The intensity in prepping has picked up significantly as SBC is close – we kick off on Monday!

Let’s talk numbers for a bit just so that you can get an idea of what’s involved:

17 leadership teams
25 leadership team members
235 campers (rising K – rising 6th Grade)
45 infants, toddlers and preschoolers (children of our volunteers – we provide a scaled-back, age-appropriate SBC for our preschoolers)
>200 volunteers (students & adults)

This week, it’s an all-hands-on-deck approach for the entire church staff:

Our facilities team is prepping the building and helping with take-down, set-up, moving tables and chairs, etc.
Our worship arts department is prepping for our daily ‘Celebration’ times as well as Friday night Celebration Service for volunteers, campers and their families.
Our communications department is printing materials, ordering larger signage, and updating the website and Sunday morning announcements.
Our missions department is helping to coordinate our outreach project for the week.

Our leadership teams are:

Reviewing (and reviewing and reviewing!) notes, shopping lists, supply lists, email, voicemail…lots of details to oversee!
Making last-minute purchases
Gathering supplies
Meeting with team members to review logistics
Conducting rehearsals
Processing last-minute registrations
Reviewing volunteer assignments and making last-minute adjustments as needed
Drawing set-up maps in preparation for Sunday afternoon’s set-up

What about me, the SBC Director? All things considered, I’m relatively calm. (Don’t tell anyone, but I’ve even found time to read for the past few evenings!) This week, my primary concern is being available to my leadership team leaders. I have tried to clear my afternoon schedule to be available for team leaders who need closets unlocked, come in to gather supplies, have questions/concerns/a need for hugs and encouraging words, etc. Our leaders have been working so hard that I get pleasure from supporting them and equipping them to lead well.

Here are just a few pics of what we’ve been up to. We won’t reveal too much now – you’ll have to check back next week for more!

Our mountain backdrop - it looks AMAZING - I can't wait to see it up! — Our mountain backdrop – it looks AMAZING – I can’t wait to see it up!

Who knew that electric Christmas lawn reindeer could become wilderness sheep?

Each camper will receive a bag with these items

We’d surely appreciate your prayers as we serve next week – come back next week for daily updates and more pictures!

Summer Lovin’: Switching Things Up

07/01/201407/01/2014 Kathie Phillips

The following post is part of a series of summer-related posts.

Today, we’ll look at changing up your programming during the summer months.

Our ministry’s ‘summer’ began on Father’s Day, so with God’s help we have successfully survived 3 summer Sundays without our school-year volunteers (who serve Sept – mid June and get the summer off). Because we invite parents, members of our congregation and students to serve during the summer months, we wanted to restructure our ministry to still provide quality programming with the fewest amount of volunteers.

Here’s what we did. and how it’s been working so far:

EARLY CHILDHOOD

During the school year, we provide individual classes for 2-yr olds – Kindergartners at each of our two services (eight classrooms). During the summer months, we decided to offer a class for 2-yr olds (using Group’s Hands-on-Bible curriculum) and a mixed-age group for 3-yr olds – Kindergartners (using Orange’s First Look curriculum). This mixed-age room will be a large group/small group format that will include engaging arrival activities, large group time (live worship and Bible story, on DVD) and mixed-age small groups for application activities (crafts, games, etc.), playground time, snack and prayer. The response has been so overwhelmingly positive from children, parents and volunteers that we are considering continuing this format this fall.

ELEMENTARY

Since we bid our rising 6th graders a fond farewell a few weeks ago, we have again decided to combine our rising 2nd – rising 5th graders for the summer. (We’ve done this for the past few years and it’s worked very well). Our summer programming will be just seven weeks this year, as our elementary students worship with their families during the month of August. (Take a look at how we introduced this last summer here). Usually I order the summer XP materials from Orange but the materials they offered this year was a repeat of materials we used last summer so I began praying and asking God to direct me to what materials we should use for the seven weeks of our Sunday programming. I landed on teaching the kids about Moses since our VBS will focus on Moses in the wilderness with the Israelites.

On Sunday mornings, we set up a few arrival activities and lead the children in a large group game to introduce the lesson for the day. Then we move everyone to our large group space for a fun, interactive countdown, worship, prayer, and our Bible story (led by a main storyteller). When our large group time concludes, we split the group into 3 groups and allow the groups to rotate through 3 activity stations, which has included object lessons, memory verse activities, crafts, games and snack. The slightly different format has worked so well that I’ve signed up a few volunteers to serve with us this fall!

In our ministry, attendance fluctuates during the summer months, so we like to take risks and try some new things in the summer. If something’s a hit, we include it in our programming for the new ministry year.

Related article: “Should Kids Ministry Take the Summer Off?“ by Brian Dollar

What does programming in your kidmin look like during the summer months? What ‘risky’ things are you trying this summer?

Snack Idea: Edible Campfires

06/25/201406/25/2014 Kathie Phillips

This summer, in preparation for our VBS (read what we’re doing here), our elementary children are learning about Moses. So far, we’ve covered his birth and God calling him to lead the Israelites. This past Sunday’s lesson was about the burning bush and I wanted a fun snack for the children to enjoy that tied in to the lesson. I researched ideas online but wasn’t really pleased with what I found. Then I had an idea and ran it past my daughter (she’s my unofficial focus group!). She loved it, so we went with it! Here’s what we landed on:

Edible Campfires

Supplies:

Hand sanitizer
Paper plates
Pretzel sticks
Canned mandarin oranges, drained
Fresh strawberries, sliced

What you do:

Have the children wash their hands or use hand sanitizer. Review the Bible story (Exodus 3:1-15).
Place a small amount of pretzel sticks on the plate. (These represent firewood.)
Add the flames (mandarin oranges and strawberries).
Pray and then allow the children to enjoy the snack.

Whenever we serve a snack, it’s always a big hit. It’s an even bigger hit when the snack ties in to the lesson. Cha-ching!

{From the Archives} Summer Lovin’: Recruiting Volunteers

06/18/201406/18/2014 Kathie Phillips

The following post was originally published in June 2013 and is part of a series of summer-related posts.

Today, we’ll look at recruiting volunteers.

For the past few weeks we have been busy making the transition to Summer Sunday school. Our ministry gives school-year volunteers the summer off to rest and recharge. Because of this, we heavily rely on parents, middle and high school students, college students and others in our church to step in and serve.

Some of our recruiting strategies this summer have included:

Online sign ups. Last summer we used Sign Up Genius to keep track of our volunteers. This was an easy, convenient way for folks to sign up to serve. We are using it again this summer. I like that Sign Up Genius sends reminder emails to those who sign up through its program. That is a huge help.
We also used bulletin ads, upfront announcements, email and e-newsletters to the entire church body. Some say that these are not effective recruiting strategies but I feel that they can get the word out to people who would otherwise not be aware of our needs.

Despite all of our best efforts, I found it increasingly frustrating that we were not seeing the type of results that we needed to ensure enough coverage each weekend. I went to bed one evening last week with this on my mind and was awakened early the next morning with a God-given thought (at 5am!).

While we were asking people indirectly, we had not directly asked. Duh! So…I wanted to try that. I wasn’t sure the idea would work but I thought, “We don’t have anything to lose.” Here’s what we did:

We set up two tables in strategic areas in our children’s areas, so strategic that parents could not get to their destination without passing one of them. We decorated the tables with summer-themed items such as beach balls, pails and shovels, cups and crazy straws, citronella candles, balloons in fun colors and life-sized popsicles (my daughter made those). These items sat on top of fun flip-flop tablecloths. Because food definitely draws people in, we placed donut holes on the table, too. The purpose of the decor was to draw attention to the tables so that parents could stop over, check us out, and sign up.

The last thing we added were sign-ups sheets, pens and signage. I asked several ladies on my team to stand at each table to answer any questions and assist in the sign-ups. This added a personal element to our strategy.

The results…we had 50 – yes 50! – sign-ups that day! God blew my mind yet once again.

Here’s what I learned through all of this:

Pray that God will provide. Pray that He will show you creative ways to bring people into your ministry.
Use various methods of recruiting. One solo method will likely not bring the desired results.
Bring a personal element to your recruiting strategies. If you’re using an electronic method, tell stories of how volunteers might be impacted. What might they experience? If you’re using an on-site sign-up, have someone there to greet and ask questions. It’s hard to walk past a smiling, friendly face.
Bring others into the process to pray and brainstorm. Do not carry the burden of recruiting by yourself.
Take a risk. The idea that you have may not work – but then again, it just might! Go for it!

What are some of your best recruiting strategies? Let me know in the space below.