Tag Archive - Brookwood Church

Brookwood Church’s Adventure Week starts today!!

June 14, 2010 in Family Ministry 1

Our Week long Adventure Week/VBS/Day Camp for kids starts today! I’m pumped. We’ve got a few kids and volunteers that will be here this week.

I plan to post a little bit about our Adventure Week Philosophy and hope to talk about some of the things mentioned in a cmconnect forum mentioning VBS Alternatives, Paying for VBS, and Does VBS still work? I’m sure it will be an interesting discussion for sure.

But with all the fun things that we talk about I hope that you will join us in prayer this week. Pray that kids experience life in Christ as they go thru this week with a volunteer, and that for this week they will associate Church and fun together.

Those are the two goals that we have for this week. And we’ve done a lot to accomplish these goals, but nothing happens without God intervening. Pray that He does and the glory ONLY goes to Him.

A little more cheese, signage time!!!

March 19, 2010 in Communication, Life 0

a77_church3

So I’ll just post one. But feel free to insert some in the comments below and don’t forget to vote in the #kidmin March Madness

Don’t you just love cheesy church signs :) I know my friend Matt Mckee does!!!

Fun Cheap Idea #1

June 26, 2009 in Family Ministry, Resources 0

OK so I love fun cheap stuff. It’s builds memories, anybody can pull it off, and it’s something that you can do again and again. I am totally stealing this one from Lifeway but, it’s too awesome not to tell you. Basically tons of hairspray and temporary hair color and charge $1. It all goes to missions, it’s awesome and unbelievable how much the kids enjoy it of course the leaders need to get their do done as well, but it’s worth it. Builds tons of memories and is super fun for Cheap!

got any Children’s Ministry or #kidmin fun cheap ideas?

MGMT vs. TRAIN

June 25, 2009 in Family Ministry, Lead 1

abundant growth, originally uploaded by carolg2007.

When I worked at UPS as a part time supervisor we had a job motto:

“70% of your time you should be training your employees and the other 30% you should be figuring out a way to better train your employees.”

Training was a value that we spent our times perfecting. We had a person whose sole purpose was to train new people. As a result we were the best or second best hub in the region for awhile.

I am a trainer it’s what I do best. My gift is teaching people. So this was right in my sweet spot.

But I wonder how many times in “church world” do we get caught up more in managing than training?

Our job is to develop people and push them to grow in Christ. Or as Paul says “equip the saints” Ephesians 4:12

Too often especially in Children’s Ministry, we get roped into managing or spot filling. I pray alot that all over the world on Sundays, #kidmin peeps would pour into their volunteers instead of being only concerned about them being there.

But I want to know, what are you training your volunteers to do? What are a few must have skills of your volunteers? If you’re in a higher position of leadership, what are you pouring into your staff? What are you teaching others?

Video Render Screen

June 5, 2009 in Life, Tech 0

Video Render Screen, originally uploaded by jcisonline.

Just thought you might like to know what I’m doing today… and for the next 10 days until Swamp Stomp starts on the 15th!!! Can’t wait.

Cluttered Desk

June 1, 2009 in Life 0

IMG_0264, originally uploaded by jcisonline.

Alright here is why I haven’t been blogging much over the last three or four weeks…

My desk is a mess. In about two weeks we will have had an 800 person Adventure Week event and a couple days to rest right before Summer Camp at Centri-Kid Ridgecrest, NC. Some of you might be thinking this is cleaner than your desk right now and that might be true but I generally keep a pretty sweet and clean workspace.

So I’ve got some stuff on the docket but I’m also developing some content for you guys…

  • Some edgy decorating tips for your children’s areas.
  • A before and after look at our Upper Elementary Worship Areas
  • A Motion 3 tutorial that will show you a write on technique for illustration

But I want to know from you all if there is anything out there that is on your mind? Is there something that I might be able to help you with in your area of expertise.

I know it’s like a deadly blogger sin to let readers dictate your content in any shape or form but I’m feeling spicy so gimme what ya got.

Just thinking about this ? today

May 21, 2009 in Family Ministry 3

ABC Blocks, originally uploaded by michaelgoodin.

So this week at BrookwoodKiDs we are in wk 6 of Zooplosion or Gospel presentation week. I love this week (even though the Bible Story is from Adam & Eve to Jesus’ death and ressurection :) ) that I get to present the gospel.

We do things different at Brookwood. But Ned Gable, my CP said something in passing today that I told him he should write a blog about since he hasn’t in awhile. But I chose to instead. He said “We want to be about the Believe more than the commit”

I really want to know what you think about this. Especially after my friend @tberry86 shared this with me:
“commitment is a lot harder. You can Believe anything, but putting your commitment into play takes a lot more faith.”

Hmmmm what do you think?
Are you on the Belief or Commitment side? (not that they are against one another) Do you teach different than what you feel is more important? After Orange I’m thinking alot more about what I communicate!

SOLD OUT!!!

May 20, 2009 in Family Ministry 1

sold-out

That’s Right I’ve been Swamped hahaha! :roll: But in the meantime of not updating the blog we’ve sold out our Adventure Week program. That’s right 450 kids and over 150 preschoolers will be at Swamp Stomp from June 15-19 at Brookwood Church. BrookwoodKiDs is about to set it off in a few weeks.

Times…they are a changing pt. 3

March 16, 2009 in Family Ministry, Lead 0

Alright the first two posts of this series are here: pt. 1 & pt. 2

Basically I’m looking at some ways that children’s ministry and student ministry are changing and ways that we might be able to get ahead of the curve.

Here are probably some of the highlights before we go forward:

  • most skeptical consumers ever
  • growing up digital (1st gen to do this)
  • willing to pay for digital content (has the church capitalized on this???)
  • want to be heard
  • most supervised generation in history (if I could put 1 mil stars by this I would)
  • less than 20% of teens on the internet download podcasts!

Ok so there are some bullets. Now what can we do about it? First and easiest piece of advice… Get ONLINE. Think about a website that is geared to students or kids. Let me ask you a question. Kids play videogames online. What if you provided a place for that to happen??? What if your website had games for them to play?? But regardless of that Get ONLINE. This is the first generation to ever grow up digital and it’s extremely important to be ahead of the game and give them a safe place to go in their digital world.

Second, kids and students want to be heard, they are civic minded, and they feel like no one can be trusted. Now read all of those slowly and tell me what you come up with: a generation waiting to be tapped into. A generation starving for people to believe in them. A generation having the ability to participate in community digitally and the desire to make a difference. You want volunteers that are starving for a chance to make a difference?? Here you go.

Third what is the impact on children’s ministry. Honestly most of the content in this series is more geared to students than children. But alot of the same things apply. But here is where I think that we can make the biggest impact in CM, besides grasping some more teen volunteers ready to make a difference. Kids are creating content like never before. 2/3 of 12-17 year olds are creating content!!

Are we using this? Are we saying to our kids make a video and get it played on Sunday mornings (of course with guidelines and such)? Can we create a safe place for kids to go online and create content and view content from other kids around the world? Can we be ahead of the curve and provide a way to allow kids to satisy their online needs and help them develop a worldview online??

It seems the church is starting to have a presence online but it’s geared more towards adults and not the first digital generation the world has ever seen. You want buy in from the kids and students in your ministry. Give it to them. It’s what you do with your volunteers and adults. It’s our job to do it with everyone that we minister to including students and kids.

What does it look like to you? Is it possible to have this forum for kids to create content and community? Any other trends you think we should look at in student ministry and children’s ministry?

Times… They are a changing pt.2

March 10, 2009 in Family Ministry, Lead 0

So as you can see below this post. I posted some consumer trends that I think most people would agree are becoming more and more prevalent. Here is the first way in which I will connect this to students and kids.

Now I could babble with all of this info but here is a link that you need to check out. Take about 10 minutes out of your schedule to do this. It’s a necessity! Pay special attention to slides 10-13.

Marketing To Millennials

Study on Marketing to Millenials

Teens are responsible for all of the information that they gather. They are more involved in data gathering and content creation than any generation we have ever seen. You seen countless blogs on internet safety and it is most definitely a necessity. But that doesn’t mean that we should try to stop or avoid these internet issues. We need to be involved in what our teens are doing. We must find ways to utilize these trends to provide relevant life changing procedures for teens to follow.

I would hope that the engage part makes sense and that we would provide relevant interesting discussion for our kids and teens.

Empower is where I see the most change happening. You can see this change in a lot of places: Video Production, music, social networking. I think for clockStudent Ministries especially this is a big change. Programming used to be the biggest priority. Stay in tune with culture and try to do the latest greatest things to stay relevant. Problem is that it’s old news now. Teens have surpassed the high production value only stage. They are becoming more and more interested in seeing what they can do to change this…well “off kilter world”. They feel they can contribute right now and need someone to give them opportunities and a platform to do it. They need someone to give them authority to make decisions and be responsible for things and also someone to absorb and someone to bounce ideas off.

Just like this past month in CM magazine talked about some subtle shifts that Children’s Pastors have seen over the last few years. The biggest one that Ned (my boss and CP at Brookwood) saw was the CP’s are now more Volunteer Managers rather than the Pastor to Children. I think that is so incredibly true. I think that this shift will mirror the shift that is about to happen in Student Ministry. The difference: those volunteers are students instead of adults. Student Ministers will begin to manage students in the way that CP’s manage volunteers. They will need to train, release leadership to them, and cast vision and allow them to grow and succeed and to fail.

I still have a few more thoughts on these changing ideas and more specifically how they relate to children’s ministry, but are any of you experiencing these things where you are?

Page 1 of 512345ยป