Childrens Ministry Online

Children’s ministry job security

Posted on10. May, 2010 by Kenny.

I’ve been overwhelmed by churches who are looking for Children’s Pastors. I think one of the best ways to secure a new ministry position is done through networking. Somebody knows somebody who’s looking to move and that person knows a church that’s looking for a new pastor. It’s great because it’s not a random resume or unknown church, but there are are people who can vouch for the church or the candidate. In the last 6 weeks I’ve had no less than 6-7 emails, phone calls or personal contacts from churches asking me if I know anyone who’s looking. If I have a name or a resume of someone on hand, I’ll pass it along. But here’s the truth I’ve come to learn over the years. There are more incredible Children’s Ministry positions to fill than there are experienced and dynamic children’s pastors to fill them. No joke.

It took me almost an entire year to fill my North Campus Children’s Pastor/Elementary Director position (I had the bar set VERY high). My It took me even longer to fill my South Campus Chidlren’s Pastor position. It was a much small position, but we were looking for a very particular candidate and quite honestly, there were precious few who made the cut to interview. I’m grateful for my staff who have filled these positions, but it was so painful to find them. I sorted through hundreds of resumes to find these two.

One thing I know is this. If you’re creative, have great experience (there’s so many ways to get great experience), have strong leadership as well as a few other key ministry traits, you’ll not have any problem securing a great Children’s Pastor position. I just wish there were more of us. Why aren’t there more? I certainly don’t want there to be too many where there are all these great Children’s Pastors who are out of work because there aren’t enough… but seriously, that’s not the case at all.

So, this week and next, I’m going to be posting a series on Kidmin employment. Maybe there are some people feeling called to Children’s Ministry and you want the dirt on what it takes to be a Children’s Pastor or what it’s like interviewing and securing a ministry position. I’m even going to partner with a blogging friend to talk about interviews, resumes and other hiring basics. This should be fun.

BTW, if you’re currently a Children’s Pastor with great experience and strong leadership and you feel God my be closing a door on where you are serving now, shoot me an email, I might have some opportunities you want to consider. My email is kenny@childrensministryonline [dot] com.

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More resources please

Posted on26. Jan, 2010 by Kenny.

In case you didn’t know, this website has a section dedicated to resources. Last year I launched it by gathering people’s check-in registration cards. I got close to a dozen and it seems a lot of people found it helpful. I know one children’s pastor (one who’s not fond of puppets) who found it so helpful he redesigned his card based on some of the ideas he saw. One of the reasons I launched the page was becasue I was in the process of coming up with a new design for Gateway. I took inspiration from several of the examples sent in.

Just because there are several up there now doesn’t mean there isn’t room for more. If you’ve got a unique or interesting registration card, send me a copy (kenny@childrensministryonline.com) and I’ll place it on the resource page.

In addition to registration cards, I’d like to expand my resource page. Actually, there are quite a few resource sub pages I have in mind. So I’m launching an additional resource page today dedicated to policy manuals and volunteer handbooks. Click here to check it out. Right now it only has mine. It took me a year to revise our handbook (it still has a few additions/modifications to go). I revised our handbook based on our old one, one that I used in the past and several other sources that I got from friends. However, I’d love to see what you’re using and post it on this page.

Submissions: Feel free to submit your whole manual or just specific pages. I’ll arrange them on this site in a way that’s helpful and organized. For instance, I’d love to specifically see emergency policies and procedures (that’s on thing I’m reworking right now on ours). If you just want to just send your section on policies and procedures, you can. Perhaps you have policies just for childcare workers or your Parent’s Day Out program. Send them to me and I’ll put them up. If you’ve got them all in one file, just send me that and I’ll post it too. If you can save your book to a PDF, that would be easiest. However, send me what you’ve got, I can probably convert it.

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Calendar Planning: Promotion deadlines

Posted on22. Dec, 2009 by Kenny.

A few weeks ago I wrote about the calendar planning retreat I took the kids staff on. We took about 12-14 hours to map out all of 2010. We wrapped up that retreat with a pretty clear idea of what the following year would look like (there were a few unknowns, but those would be determined within a few weeks). There’s nothing like having your year all planned out. Next year we plan to do this retreat in August or September so we have a bit more of a head start.

However, I’ve noticed a flaw in the fully planned out ministry calendar. It’s happened to me and I’ve talked to dozens of others in the ministry who’ve been plagued by this problem. What is this problem I’m talking about? It’s called the “the event is one week away and there’s literally no way we can plan for it or promote it, so we either need to push it back or just cancel it” problem. Has this ever happened to you? I know that this year, I paid a little more in shipping to get my baptism announcement cards than I usually do because the big day just snuck up on us.

So last week I had another retreat. It was our promotional calendar retreat. It was much shorter and we just met at my house for 4-5 hours. Here’s what we did:

We created the 2010 event calendar on a google calendar that everyone on my staff has administrative rights to. Then I created a second calendar and called it Kids Quest Marketing (in google calendar, you can overlap two or more calendars) We took one event at a time and worked backwards. What Sunday’s would we want this in the program? When do we want this on the website? What dates should this show up in the Kids Quest blog? Do we want to distribute postcards, mail them or hang up posters? By what date do we need to order print material or submit graphics to the communications team? How far in advance from that do I need a graphic designer to design all these materials. We schedule all these things as appointments on the Kids Quest Marketing calendar. Now we just stick to this calendar. In staff meetings, we look ahead to see what’s coming down the pipe. We share this calendar with our graphic designer so she can know what’s coming and work ahead if necessary.

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Calendar planning

Posted on23. Nov, 2009 by Kenny.

I did something I’ve never done before a few weeks ago. On of our Early Childhood leaders has a beautiful lake house on Lake Travis and offered to share it with my team, so I took my Kids Quest team away overnight to plan out 2010. It was fantastic!

In the past I’ve always done most of the calendar planing on my own. I usually did this on my own because I was either the only one on staff, it was easier that way or because I was a control freak. I must say it was quite fun to do this as a team. Not only did we need to just get dates on the calendar, but we had to develop some strategy around some new initiatives that were calendar driven.

We started a little later than expected (around 11:00 AM) and work non-stop until about 6:30 PM. We ran out for a few hours for dinner and got back to work around 9:00 PM and worked until 11:30 or so. It was a great outing and we got the entire year planned out. We’re meeting together again in a few weeks to set promotion, communication and design deadlines for all the events we’ve planned. I’ve learned that you can have a calendar planned out years in advance, but if you’re not careful, an event or class will sneak up on you before you’ve done any promotions.

So here’s how we executed our retreat:

Calendars

I found this great website that will create blank calendars for you. I created 18 months of calendars. Everyone on my team got a set and I sent the calendar to a good friend to print them out on his wide-format printer. I was a little over-zealous in the size and ended up with over 50 linear feet of calendar. Check out the pictures of my HUGE calendar.

Process

We started with the easy stuff. We posted all our birthdays. Why not. Then came the non-negotiables. Holidays like Easter, Christmas, 4th of July and all the other holidays that would affect programs or events. We also found out when all the Texas home games were (and big away games) and put them on the calendar. We sent emails to find out when baptisms would happen so we could plan out baptism classes and such. Once all of this was on the calendar, it provided a pretty nice framework for everything else. We scheduled dedication classes, baptism classes, volunteer orientations, volunteer trainings, volunteer events, summer camp, lock-ins, tentative pool parties and everything else we could think of. We spent quite a bit of time juggling these as we wanted to create a rhythm that didn’t wear us out but still made sense to paretns and volunteers. Once we could see how everything was shaping up, we scheduled our staff retreats. We planned them a few months before big events that would require a little extra planning. Most importantly, we planned the calendar retreat where we would plan out 2011.

Recording

While planning all of this out, several on the team were plugging everything into a google calendar. Public and shared outlook/exchange calendar have been a sore spot for me and my team at Gateway and since a handful of us have started relying on Google applications, it made the most sense for us to record this on a google calendar that we all shared. Next month we’ll create a new calendar for marketing. It will be a separate calendar so we can just view events/programs without getting distracted with all the marketing stuff; however, we can easily overlay both calendars and get a good look at the whole picture.

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Great Fellowship One missing in action report

Posted on06. Nov, 2009 by Kenny.

Last week I mentioned that we’ve taken a pretty big attendance hit in October. Our plan was to call regular kids who’ve been missing. In Fellowship One, report M1035E is pretty dang amazing.

M1035E allows you to select a date range to determine a desired attendance pattern. For my case, I wanted to isolate all the kids who have attended 3 or more times only during September and August. The great thing about this report is that you can select multiple activities. In my case, our services are set on 4 different activities, so this report was accurate even if the kids attended different services.

Then M1035E allows you to select the number of days from the end of the original range (in my case it was since September 27th) that the child hasn’t attended at all. So my MIA list was to find kids who have attended 3 or more times in August and September who have not attended in October. This was my hit list. When I first ran M1035E it only gave me parents names, home phone numbers, a household email and the last date they attended. I submitted a request to modify the report and it now displays the emails and cell phones of both parents as well as the activity and RLC the child attended on their last visit.

So, I’ve run the report and we’re distributing the data to small group leaders and room leaders of the activity/RLCs listed in this report. In the next few days our volunteers should have connected with all these kids just to check up on them and let them know they have been missed.

So, if you’re looking for a great MIA report, look no further. If you know of another, leave a comment!

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The problem with Sunday small groups

Posted on20. May, 2009 by Kenny.

I’m not being a Negative Nelly. I’m sharing the difficulties that come with these models. Yesterday I shared the difficulty with the Sunday School model. It has big enough difficulties that I’d prefer not to be at a church with Sunday School. However, the small group difficulties I’ve faced can be overcome with a little creativity.

I’ve had great success with small groups on Sunday nights or Wednesday nights. They were discipleship/growth focused. The kids were pretty consistent and all my groups had 8-12 kids. However, once I decided to launch small groups during Sunday services at Gateway, I knew I would have a problem. Kid’s attendance on Sunday is not consistent. I would be creating a small group model around irregular attendance. In addition, every week we have visitors who may or may not come back. I knew that it would only be a matter of time before my small group leaders had 50 kids on their rosters even though they only averaged 10-12 kids in attendance each week.

I’ve seen some churches tackle this in various ways.

The Holding Tank
Some create specific groups with kids assigned to the group each week. New kids get grouped in a special “holding tank.” After kids have attended the “holding tank” three times, they promote to a regular small group. What I’ve noticed many times in this situation is that the holding tank got HUGE and the small groups stayed small. It seemed awkward as many of the groups would have 4-8 kids and the holding tank would have 20-30 with only 1 or two leaders. The experience the new or irregular kids got was different from what the other kids got.

Laissez-faire
I’ve also seen some churches try to solve this problem by taking a more laissez-faire approach by changing the groups each week to ensure that no group got to big. This certainly keeps the size thing under control, but even some of the irregular kids might have a different leader each week. It’s not a bad strategy… better than the holding tank in my opinion.

Our Solution
I’m not going to take credit for it. A consultant at Fellowship One connected me with a church in Oregon that is doing this and it seemed to make the most sense to me. We divide our groups into gender/grade groups. First Grade boys are in their own group as are Third Grade girls. In some services, we might have two Second Grade boys groups because there are so many. Even a first time visitor will attend the same group they would attend if they came every week. We’ll do the best we can to make sure the leader doesn’t have more than 12 kids in his/her group, but there will likely be a mix of new, regularaly attending and irregularaly attending kids in each group. The difference is that the small group leader knows who his/her “actual” small group is. Of all the kids who attend this group, we run a report to show us which kids attend on average three out of 8 weeks. Our small group leaders know who these kids are. During the week (outside of class) these small group leaders will call or send notes to their kids. They’ll build the relationship outside of Sunday. Naturally, they’ll have a greater connection wtih these kids on Sunday, but every part of the small group on Sunday will have a similar experience. The commitment we make to parents is that if they will commit to regular attendance, they’re kids will be part of this small group (meaning the small group leader will reach out to them during the week). So, the Second Grade boys roster may have 50 kids on it, but the small group leader is only focused on 10 of them.

Details

• What about these irregular attending and new kids? The Children’s Ministry will provide follow-up for them, not the small group leaders. We can easily run the reports and send a postcard to a child on their first and second visit or even send them a card when they stop attending. Again, this can be handled administratively and we’ll empower our small group leaders to focus on the kids who are committed to the small group.
• Sound like an administrative nightmare? I don’t think it has to be. If you use a system that can run reports, just figure out what reports to run. We use Fellowship One and we have a unique way to do this that takes all the difficulty out of it. We have it set up so that regularly attending kids always check into one “room” and the new and irregularly attending kids check into another “room,” but the kids don’t see the difference. The system does it for us, so we don’t have to think about it. It’s automatic. I love automated systems. With this tool, my small group leaders can even log into Fellowship One, check their kids attendance on their own and access all their contact data. This way my small group leaders can have total ownership and they don’t have to wait on me for a report or information. I love it!

Your ideas
I know I haven’t seen everything. What are you doing? Tell me how it’s working or isn’t working. Although I’m happy with what we’ve figured out here at Gateway, it still has it flaws. Maybe you’re doing something that will help us do this better. I look forward to your comments!

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Emergency policies and procedures: I need your help

Posted on14. May, 2009 by Kenny.

Hey, I need some help.

I’m in the final stages of totally re-writing our policy and procedures manual for the Children’s Ministry here at Gateway. Something new we’re adding are emergency procedures. We’ve got fire and tornado taken care of. However, I need to write our procedures for these emergencies:

• Child abduction: Someone succeeds in taking a child who isn’t theirs.
• Intruder: Someone enters our property or facility with the intent to do harm. What are your lock-down and response procedures?
• Lost Child: We’ve probably all experienced this (usually it’s when a child gets checked into the wrong room or one parent picks their child up without telling the other). However, what procedures do you follow when a child is potentially missing?

Your help on these things would be greatly appreciated. In a few weeks when we have our manual finished, I’ll share. I promise!

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North Point Visit – Summary

Posted on26. Apr, 2009 by Kenny.

Here’s a quick video summary of the before and after from my visit to North Point. I have a lot to share, but that probably won’t post until after Orange.

Enjoy.

Childrens Ministry Online: North Point Tour from Kenny Conley on Vimeo.

I didn’t do any video inside the church as it didn’t seem appropriate. I’ll tell you later about what they gave me to satisfy my needs to photograph everything I saw.

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Attendance milestone

Posted on08. Apr, 2009 by Kenny.

I’m not even going to get into a numbers debate with anyone. I like the way Craig Jutila approached the topic. Who cares how many kids you have in your ministry, the important question to ask is, “Do you have more kids in your ministry this year compared to last year?”

Do you have attendance goals for you ministry? You should! It should be our goal to increase our influence and setting attendance goals is one way to motivate us toward expanding our reach. We have a pretty bold goal for this year and so far we’re on track to reaching it.

When I came on staff at Gateway 11 months ago, the average children’s attendance was between 550 and 600 kids. During the summer, we actually dipped into the low 500’s and high 400’s. I was told that the Fall was always a high attendance time and January was the highest. This January we crept into the low 700’s twice. Three weeks ago we actually hit 775… so close to the 800 mark. Well, this past Sunday we broke the 800 kid barrier. Woo hoo!

Yeah, this was a spike, but yesterday’s spikes often become today’s average when you’re experiencing healthy growth. I’m just proud of my team for doing what it takes to handle 800 kids on one weekend.*

You may be wondering, “what did you do to allow for this kind of growth?” I’ll post later this week with information on what we’ve been doing and what I believe has caused this surge in attendance.

* This attendance number is just kids birth through 5th grade on our North Campus. This number didn’t include volunteers or kids at our South Campus.

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Show me the registration forms!

Posted on16. Feb, 2009 by Kenny.

Hey people! I need your help. Last Sunday I picked up and looked at our “registration card” that first time visitors fill out. Embarrassingly, it was the first time I looked at this. I’ve got several new volunteers who are doing our data entry and I was overseeing their training. I tried to enter one of these cards into the database and found myself guessing and making assumptions. Unfortunately, our registration card causes you to guess who the cell phone belongs to and who the email belongs to. There are other things as well, but I won’t get into them.

So, I plan to revamp this sucker in the next few weeks. Here’s where I could really use your help. I love to look at how other churches do their cards. What information do you ask for? How big is the card? What is they layout like?

If you would, send me your card. Take a picture of it, scan it or send me the original file. When I get it, I’ll create a new post and upload all your examples. Here’s a great opportunity to share and learn from each other… and it sure would help me out a lot!

UPDATE: I’m posting the cards you send me here.

This is the card Gateway has been using for at least the last several years. It’s 5.5 x 4.25.

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