Attention small church kidmin leaders: The Mighty KidMin Conference is tomorrow! If you haven’t gotten your FREE ticket yet, this is your last chance to jump in and make sure you don’t miss any of the presentations!
This totally free event features 28 amazing small church experts ready to help you turn your small church children’s ministry into a big difference maker!
You’ll hear from some amazing experts like
Speaker & Author Melissa J. MacDonald
Family Therapist Monica Barnes
Diversity Expert Pastor Sunny Brown
Entrepreneur Kari Bartkus
Author & Speaker Dr. Rick Chromey
Owners of We Rock the Spectrum Kids Gym Trey & Nikki Wooton
Founder of smallchurchkidmin.com BIll Gunter
Behavior Specialist Holly Sharpe
and the list goes on and on …
And the best part? Every speaker is a lover of small church children’s ministry with small church strategies to share!
I’ll be there, too! I’m sharing must-have safety measures that will put families and volunteers at ease.
Each presentation is happening live during the free conference, but you can also get lifetime access with presentation recordings & tons of bonuses! (But grab it soon for the best deal! The price goes up at midnight tonight!)
If you have any questions about the conference, comment below or shoot me an email. I’d love to help!
Yesterday, I announced (via social media) a big secret I’ve been keeping…
I am officially under contract for my second book!! *cue all the confetti*
It’s been in the works for a while now but the deal was finalized last week. This is an incredible opportunity, especially since my publisher (RoseKidz) has recently merged with Tyndale House, so I’m a Tyndale House author now!
This new project is really special to me and I can’t wait to share more details later. The book will be released summer 2022. Like my first book, it will be a resource for Children’s Ministry leaders, homeschool groups, and Christian educators.
Thanks to my editor, Karen McGraw, who helped navigate all of the details!
Now, it’s time to write!!
P.S. If you’d like to check out my first book, you can find out more here.
P.S.S I will have one more special secret to fill you in on next week…stay tuned!
My first ‘professional’ kidmin staff role was in a small church many years ago. Since it was my first staff role, I was excited to get to work to make our kidmin a place where parents felt safe to leave their children, children were engaged and volunteers thrived and enjoyed serving. Yes, there were bountiful joys, but there were also challenges and frustrations.
Most people in small churches share the same frustrations:
Doing it alone on the edge of burnout and wondering why no one is is stepping up to help
Teaching mixed-age classes and struggling to keep the older and younger engaged AND interested
Wishing for a few more young families to bring new energy to your church
Watching with sadness as another beloved family with kiddos leaves for the bigger children’s program down the street
This list probably isn’t surprising to you. In fact, I bet you could add a few more, and we would all just nod our heads right along with you. But be encouraged…
If you happen to be involved in children’s ministry in a small church – or if you know someone who is – please let them know about the Mighty KidMin! A Children’s Ministry Conference for Small Churches.
During this conference – did I mention that it’s FREE! – I will share must-have safety measures that will put families and volunteers at ease.
In addition, there are other amazing presentations scheduled:
One-Room Ministries: Teach to a Range of Ages and Keep Them All Engaged
Staying Relevant as They Grow: Is It Enough to Get Them to Church or Should We Raise Them to Be the Church?
A Simple, Workable Plan for Including People of All Abilities in Small Churches
Plus so many more incredible presentations about building teams, digital strategies, safety & policies, teaching mixed-ages, inclusive ministry, and leadership – all specific to small churches!
Note from Kathie: Today’s guest post is from my friend Carla Adair Hendricks. I pray you’ll be blessed, inspired and challenged in the second of a two-part post. Read Part 1 here.
Lens #2: View our students from a perspective of hope and love.
A survey of the average school, neighborhood or community center could give a great picture of the state of our nation. We are a nation of brokenness – broken marriages, broken families, broken people.
Today, the image of family has changed much. Our churches are a great representation of this. Most churches are full of single-parent families, families directly impacted by substance abuse and domestic abuse, and families struggling with poverty.
Oftentimes children feel the greatest impact of this. Adoption and foster care are by-products of this brokenness, and each brings its own measure of trauma for a child. A child that has moved from foster home to foster home will struggle with interpersonal relationships and schoolwork. Some children will struggle with trusting the adults in their lives.
And yet, we mustn’t see these precious children in our classrooms as problem children. We mustn’t label them “the foster kid” or the “ADHD kid”. Practically, a better label for these children would be “children from hard places”. This phrase describes where a child comes from, instead of placing a judgment on the child.
Also, we must see these children through the lens of hope and love. We should be aware of tendencies and issues that they may face, but we must believe that each of these children can grow and learn and love.
With God’s intervention – through loving adults like us – they can even learn to love Jesus.
Lens #3: View our classrooms as a refuge of hope and healing.
With a little dose of education and a willingness to adjust, our classrooms can be a place where children receive hope and healing. In order to bring hope and healing, we have to be adaptable.
The way we learned about God decades ago may not be the best method to teach our children today. – Tweet That
For example, having children take turns reading from the Bible is a great way to promote Bible-learning and also literacy. However, what happens when one of your students has missed weeks of school and has just been placed in her fifth foster home? She’s probably not going to be able to read on grade level. An easy solution would be to have children raise their hands and volunteer to read out loud, instead of having each child read in order. This way, the challenged reader doesn’t feel shamed or exposed.
Last year I had a 6-year-old boy come to my classroom after being placed in a new foster home. Despite his squirminess, I had him sit close to me and allowed him to be my special helper. Although he asked for his foster mommy twice, he hung in there and I made sure he got the extra attention he needed. I knew I probably had a short window of time to reach this child with the love of Christ, but that didn’t stop me.
And it shouldn’t stop any of us from sharing His love with a child who may come from a background very different from yours and mine. If we can change our teaching “lenses”, we can impact the Kingdom of God – one precious child at a time.
How can you change your teaching “lens” to advocate for children from hard places? Please share with our community by leaving a comment below.
Carla Adair Hendricks is a pastor’s wife, mother of four, writer, speaker and orphan advocate. Two of her four children are biological, one was adopted from Russia and one was adopted domestically. Her husband Anthony leads the Conway campus of the ethnically-diverse Mosaic Church of Central Arkansas, where she serves the Mo Kids Children’s ministry as a teacher and teacher-coordinator for the K through 1st grade class. She also serves two orphan care ministries: The CALL and the African-American Church Initiative of the Christian Alliance for Orphans. A published journalist, Carla’s shares her heart at adoptionfostercareadvocate.blogspot.com and carlaadairhendricks.blogspot.com.
