Tag: kidmin

Settling In…Finally!

Kathie Phillips 2 Comments

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!

Product Review: Eikon Bible Art

Kathie Phillips

A while back Willie Deans, from Eikon Bible Art, asked me to take a look at his website.  Eikon Bible Art offers beautiful graphics designed to be used by Children’s Sunday School teachers and Children’s Ministry leaders.

You can check out their video trailer here:

I have to admit: I was a bit surprised when the webpage opened.  I had envisioned cheesy clip art-type graphics that screamed 1990’s.  Instead I found real pictures that almost appeared animated!  The PowerPoint files were beautifully illustrated and age-appropriate for elementary-aged children.  Included with each PowerPoint file was a pdf file that included an activity page, an art page, and a teaching page.  While none of these could stand alone, they could certainly be used to round out other curriculum options.

You may choose to download individual Bible stories (such as Creation, Adam & Eve, Noah and David & Goliath) or a bundle pack.  PowerPoint files start at $9.55 and bundle packs start at $20 for 3 (for Twitter users only).  You can get a sneak peek of a free “Road to Damascus” download here.

In addition to Bible stories, you can also purchase short films ($8 each); comics (start at $1.50 each); DVD ROMs ($14.99 each); and missionary stories ($17.50).  If you are looking for that one extra visual element to bring Bible stories alive to children in your church, this website is definitely one to bookmark!

Summer Lovin’: A Recap

Kathie Phillips 2 Comments

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

Today, I’ll share my reflections on the summer and what God has been teaching me.

Earlier this summer I shared how this was a new season of ministry for me.  (You can read that post here.)  This new season has meant a wide range of emotions for me.  It’s been exciting and overwhelming at the same time.  We have been busy in summer mode while also preparing for our fall kick-off in a few weeks, so we’ve been making many changes externally (physical spruce ups) and internally (policies, procedures, structure).

When families return for our fall kick-off, they’ll see walls freshly painted in bright, fun colors.  They’ll see new signage directing them around our children’s area.  We’re using new curriculum and aligning with a new vision, mission and overall ministry strategy.  I am excited about all that God will do in the ministry this coming year and will post here what we’re doing, what’s working and what we’re working on.

But what makes me more excited is what God is doing in the life of the ministry leader – ME!  All summer long, people have approached me, asking questions like, “How’s everything going?”  “How are you holding up?”  “Are you ready for vacation?”  Things are busy, I’m still standing and I’m always ready for a vacation, especially near the water! 🙂  But really…with all of the changes that have taken place in our ministry, the most remarkable changes have been within me.

I’ve been in Children’s Ministry (professionally) for 11 years now and boy have I learned a lot during that time frame.  A few weekends ago, I was sorting through some of my ministry resources and I was horrified by some of the things that I thought was my best work!  Thankfully I am older, wiser and insistent on building a stronger foundation this time around by putting a few practices into place:

Without prayer and time in God’s Word, I am operating out of my own strength.  Any ministry that is a product of my ideas, my energy and my plans is downright frightening.  Many times I’ve gone to bed after praying for solutions/insight into things and literally would be awakened during the middle of the night with a God-given idea. (I talked about one particular incident here.)

Start with the basics.  Clarify vision, mission, core values, ministry strategy, job descriptions – all of the things upon which a successful ministry is built on.  With God’s guidance, building the basics now will benefit us greatly down the road.

Build strong teams and delegate.  Loosen my own grip because it doesn’t belong to me.  My primary role as a leader is to equip others to do the work.  This will free me up to do the things that only I can do.  This is very hard for me to do sometimes but I must for the sake of the ministry and my own sanity.

Get out of the office and invest in relationships with those I lead.  One of the favorite part of my job has always been getting to know people I serve with.  I believe that these relationships strengthen our ministry in a very unique way.

Set boundaries.  Protect family time.  Call it quits at a decent hour.  Talk about things other than ministry.  Make time for fun.  This will make me a happier, healthier leader.

Sometimes the changes you see on the outside are no where as big as the changes on the inside!  I pray that the work that God is doing in me will have biggest positive impact on those I serve.

Are you living your life in a way that allows God to transform you from the inside out?

Encourage & Equip Families to Worship Together

Kathie Phillips 2 Comments
Photo Credit: Central Presbyterian Church
Photo Credit: Central Presbyterian Church

This month, our church has encouraged families with elementary, middle, and high school students to worship together in lieu of their regular Sunday morning programming.  It was an idea that surfaced at the end of last summer and again this past April at a staff meeting.  It wasn’t really a hard decision for us to make because of two observations: (1) last summer it was almost impossible to recruit volunteers to serve because of August travel schedules and (2) summer is a good time to try something different.  We had also been asked by several families to promote this type of initiative.

After a number of collaborative brainstorming sessions between Children’s Ministry, Student Ministry, Worship Arts, invested parents and Senior Leadership, we decided to go for it.  But we wanted to be strategic about our approach.

We wanted to give advance notice to our congregation, so we began announcing this change a few weeks out.  Our first announcement fell on our VBS Celebration Sunday (when there were many families – regular attenders and visitors – were in attendance.) Our Family Pastor even gave the children a bit of a teaser by announcing that a special ticket book might show up at their house. *See below for more info about this.

In addition, a number of promotional material was prepared.  We contracted a designer to create a Worship Together logo that was used on promotional material through the Sunday bulletin, our weekly e-newsletter, a letter that was mailed home to parents, our website and video.  Our promo videos included a rising 6th grader being ‘interviewed’ by one of our preachers; a skit by members of our Family Ministry team and one by me (gasp)!

We acknowledged that some parents & families might be a little apprehensive about worshiping with their younger elementary-aged children.  We wanted to ease their fears a bit and supplied a “Worship Together Resource” handout for parents to download from our website.  You can take a peek at that here. (I will also place a pdf copy under the “Parent Resources/Downloads” tab on this blog.)

Being very intentional about including children and students in the service is something we also desired.  This included a special blessing that parents could over children and students on Communion Sunday; creatively telling the Bible story through skits (involving children & students); and using examples that kids could relate to.  Our contracted designer also designed a pew card that explained the elements of the service and why we do them.

Supplying children’s worship bags was also a way for us to be intentional about including younger children in the service.  Each bag (a small, bright yellow plastic bag that I had on hand from a previous event) was filled with crayons, a pencil and that week’s specially designed children’s bulletin.  Our children’s bulletin was a one-page bi-fold which included a cover page; a place for older children to take notes (write down the scripture, who was preaching & what they learned); a place for children to circle corresponding pictures every time they sang a song, prayed, gave an offering, took Communion and read their Bible; and 2 activity pages (we varied the activities each week and chose crosswords, coloring pages, decoder puzzles, mazes, etc.)  Remembering that we were catering to children in grades 2-5, we wanted to offer a balance of activities to suit the wide age span.

Earlier I mentioned a special ticket book for families.  We mailed a ticket book to families with elementary-aged children so that the children could redeem tickets each week for a special small treat.  We chose some items that corresponded with the scripture text as well as general items like pencils and bookmarks.

I am hearing pretty good feedback from parents and other adults about how much they’ve enjoyed worshiping together and seeing the children in worship.  Our prayer is that Worship Together would become a regular practice among families at our church.

You may also be interested in reading:

Dear Parents of Young Children in Church by Sharon Harding

What about you?  Does your church encourage families to worship together?