Tag Archive - #kidmin

The Gap between Kidmin and Jr. High part 1

September 15, 2010 in Family Ministry, Preteen Ministry 2

Now I’ve been working on this stuff for awhile. I really hope this helps someone out there. I want to take a few blog posts to really point out some of the things that we looked at when we started Switch, our 5th and 6th grade ministry here at Brookwood Church. I’ll call it Gap Analysis, if you will. The reality is that there are huge gaps that exist between these two ministries. And those gaps effect both kids and parents. I think if you really took the time to analyze some of the gaps between your ministries that are in sequential order, then I think it might bring collaboration to a new level and a level of continuity to families for the long haul. Had to steal it Sam ;)

Here’s our goal: to reduce the gap and figure out a way to either bridge it or provide some stepping stones for families to take smaller leaps rather than a big one.

There are a few gaps that really stood out in our context. So now for the first gap: Small Groups

Kidmin Breakdown

Kids are checked into small groups. The small group leader is usually the second or third person that the kid sees. They also are dropped off by their parents and so the small group leaders also have interactions with parents as well. Then after about 5 minutes past the beginning of service time the kids are called into large group service. Large Group lasts around 30 minutes and then kids are dismissed back to their small group classrooms. Activities and discussion happen until kids are picked up by their parents from their classroom.

Jr. High Breakdown

We have a student building on campus called the South Campus or SoCam by the students. Kids are usually dropped off in the parking lot and are checked in at a desk we have at the front. Then they are free to hang (play ping pong, video games, foosball, eat at the cafe, or just chill) until the service begins. After about a 45 minute service they are broken down into small groups and then discussion happens. Then they are let go from small groups and they chill again until their parents arrive in their car to pick them up.

So after the Breakdown you can see the very different setup of our two programs. Both are very effective by the way. But different. So looking at the graphic above there are really three things that we saw as different. Time-Place-When small group happens. Those three things are the big gaps. For us the two that are the biggest priority are time and place. These will provide kids the stepping stones that we need, God willing, in order to transition them from Kidmin to Jr. High successfully.

What we do:

Just a quick breakdown of where we are at now in Switch, at least for now.

  • 10-15 minutes of Small Group at least.
  • Looking at doing a small group rewind (recap of series) with more time for small group.
  • Girls small group in rooms. Boys in Large Group.
  • We have chill time in large group beginning and end like Jr. High
  • We do small groups midweek and are really pushing for kids to get involved here. They happen in homes an at church on Wednesdays.

Small groups to me are the fabric of growth and connection. They are a must have not a secondary inclusion. But we, those in preteen ministry, must begin to look at how we can help prepare families for the next stage of our ministry, but not overwhelm them with such huge amounts of change.

More to come.

Any thoughts?

The Love Factor

April 28, 2010 in Family Ministry 0

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I play in our church basketball league on Thursday nights. Love basketball and love the fact that it’s a different environment to meet new people and interact without the crutch of Church Work. It’s so nice to see people interact in their natural habitat.

This past week as I’m watching a game, waiting on it to finish so I can get on the court, a collision happens and a man goes down. Nothing serious, just a little bit of a wreck on the hardwood, or in our case rubber/cement gym floor. His son is sitting a row below me. 7-9 year old boy. Frantic because his dad just took a fall. His otherwise joyful countenance is now flooded with worry. He is only concerned with His father’s safety. No-limit, passionate, relentless love for dad.

I am completely overwhelmed at this point. Dad is ok, for sure. Son is pacing on the floor now, hoping to walk with his dad outside the door and into their car and get home. This young boy’s singular focus on his dad’s well-being.

And then it hits me. Where did those passionate, focused, determined, and intense feelings of love for people go when I became an “adult”? Why have I become so tame? When the collision took place I thought to myself, “no big deal, just rub dirt on it”. This kid’s feelings would never make a manly things to do book. They are not “manly” feelings, but nonetheless lovely.

I think sometimes, in the midst of becoming an adult we lose the raw passion for loving others. I pray today that we look at ourselves and really evaluate the love that we have for others.

Hatred starts fights,
but love pulls a quilt over the bickering. Proverbs 10:12

What issues do you need to throw a quilt over today? Be a man or woman of God and choose the passions of childhood today over the adult know-how.

Organizational Buy-In: Relationship

April 26, 2010 in Communication, Lead 0

handshake

Time for the real crux of this formula. Remember the formula is here. Today we will talk about the R-Relationship.

Relationship to me is the most important factor in this entire equation, that we’ve talked about over the last few weeks. The depth of relationship that you have with people really increases your influence with them. It’s important to continually invest in people. When you come into a new organization, most people will give you this first piece of advice, “Build relationships, with people” and that’s true. You should continually look to build and deepen relationships with people in your organization. Insert this cliche here “People don’t care how much you know, until they know how much you care” and that pretty much sums it up. I know really corny post for such an important part but there are so many resources out there for connecting with people and building relationships.

Author’s Note

Now this formula is not for you to manipulate people. But I hope that you begin to look at the formula and see some areas that you can improve upon.

Don’t Be Afraid of Technology

April 22, 2010 in Resources 6

laptop

I know that sometimes there is a fear to go out there and just search for advice. I mean honestly you don’t really even know me that well. But I want to encourage, go ask and connect with people on the interwebs… They have insight for you! Get it and digest it!

Here some places to get you started:

cmconnect.org (Children’s Ministry Community site)

psd.tutsplus.com (a few photoshop tutorials)

google.com/reader (rss feeder. if you don’t know what this is, this is where I would start)

twitter.com (make sure you signup and follow me twitter.com/jcisonline)

And here’s some sites that are my favorites from ministry world!

samluce.com

childrensministryonline.com

r04r.com (by @mattmckee)

My buddies 3amjosh.com and aaronlewis.wordpress.com

Pete Wilson

Church Crunch and all of their other sites!!

Start today and find some people to answer the many questions that you have about ministry and life and technology. Don’t be afraid. Jump in head first!

Who’s in the House

April 14, 2010 in Life, Resources 0

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oS3Olh9DnaE&feature=popt00us10

Post 500: My thoughts on Curriculum…

April 14, 2010 in Family Ministry, Tech 0

brain

One thing that I hope that this little blog has done in 500 posts is push you to ask questions. Asking questions is my favorite part of Children’s Ministry. The questions that kids have about life, God, and everything in between always keep me on my toes. If you can give your kids a comfortable place to ask questions, then you will find spiritual growth in that place. All that to say, I want to pose a few questions today.

First if you haven’t read these posts then stop and come back later. Or really you don’t have to come back, they will talk about a lot of what I want to talk about in this post.

Kenny’s letters to kidmin curriculum publishers (I’ll post the link to the conclusion he has links to all of his posts there)

Henry Zonio’s Something Digital this Way Comes Post

Many of Matt’s posts on Digital learning I’ll post his most recent one! Please scroll through his content, it’s ridiculously loaded on this subject!

And my series on Digital Kids (I also saw that I didn’t finish the other characteristics. I’ll have to get on that )

Here are a few questions that I feel like Curriculum publishers should be asking and probably are asking:

  • How can I use technology to enhance Children’s Ministry, Student Ministry, or even Corporate Worship as a whole?
  • How can we make curriculum more affordable for everyone?
  • How can we expand the learning environment OUTSIDE the church?
  • How can you create an active, dynamic, changing learning environment?

I’m not sure that curriculum is even the answer to a lot of these questions. In this ever changing digital environment, the people that I talk to have a few things that they need in their ministry context: Worship, High End Graphics, and Something to get kids involved in the experience.

So here are a few of my thoughts:

  • I have some issues with the lack of innovation and the fact that churches are hurting everywhere and I don’t know of many producers of curriculum dropping prices. I want to see some new and exciting stuff. FYI I would promote the heck out of it!
  • I think that a lot of stuff out there is quality, but most of that stuff has “money makers” that cripple a ministry rather than help them. (I’m looking at you additional pricing for materials that you could duplicate in house instead of paying extra)
  • Lifechurch.tv provides their resources for free on Open. I don’t expect everyone to do that, but I mean how can a small church afford to buy those crazy cool production resources for their kids if the price of that curriculum is more than 50% of their budget?
  • Is video teaching the most innovative thing going on for curriculum? I had video teaching when I was a kid. It was called Sesame Street. I watched it a ton and learned that one of these things is not like the other and also how to count. But where is the interaction, the group think, the dynamic changing environment where digital learners succeed?
  • What if there was a place that artists could create illustrations for common Bible Stories? Jonah, Moses, Noah, Jesus, Peter, etc. all in different styles by different artists for different contexts of churches. Same thing for worship graphics? Could that work? Would that be an alternative for churches that have the ability to write but can’t create the graphics?

But honestly, I see curriculum will be here for a long time, because for most churches, the staff doesn’t have the time to write and develop their own material for their own individual setting. But what are your thoughts on this issue? How do you feel about curriculum as it stands now?

Totally being honest here

March 31, 2010 in Lead 1

Edit 5133, originally uploaded by jameshodgson100.

I know totally un-manly this morning, but I just need to let you know that spring is here!

If I can just let you into my brain for a bit, I do a little bit of graphic design and am totally self taught. My design is ok, but in no way am I professional designer.

But part of the reason that I love design is because of pictures like the one above this post.

I go nuts over Macro shots of flowers. I am consistently astounded by the creative ingenuity of our Creator. Flowers are a perfect picture of the detail involved in God’s craftmanship. I am consistently floored by the amount of focus put into color, form, and lines in flowers.

I can not get over how amazing they appear. I love spring so much more because of the colors brought out by the seasonal change.

When I look at these flowers and realize that they were good to God and then I think about myself and how in God’s eyes we were created VERY good, it puts a lot of things into perspective for me.

One of my friends is about to have a baby girl and I can imagine when she is born in the next few days, I can only imagine the amount of thought and detail that God put into her design.

Do flowers change your perspective on the value that God gives you? For me they most certainly do.

Vote for Kenny!

March 30, 2010 in Communication, Family Ministry 7

vote-for-kenny

So I’m officially throwing my support behind one candidate. His name, Kenny Conley. In my best Lanny Donoho format I’m going to give you a few reasons to vote for Kenny.

First of all he’s the only Children’s guy that I know named Kenny. Kenny is a very special name, generally reserved for people with musical abilities. Kenny G, Kenny Rogers, Kenny Loggins and Kenny Chesney are the only famous people that I can even think of with the first name of Kenny. So the fact that Kenny is succeeding in something other than music with the first name of Kenny is in and of itself amazing.

But here is where it gets interesting, a singer by the name of Souad Massi who was influenced by Kenny Rogers is from the country of Algeria, Kenny Conley as you know hates the Algerian font.

Kenny Chesney wrote a song called Tequila loves me. There is a restaurant in Texas called Azul Tequila. It’s in the city of Austin which is also where Kenny’s church Gateway Community Church is located. Azul Tequila is about 14 miles from their McNeil campus. If you add 1 + 4 in 14 you get 5, which is about how many times Kenny posts each day… Crazy I know…

But it get’s so much better :)

Kenny was called to Children’s Ministry at the age of 14 as a child, which is also the miles Azul Tequila is from the McNeil campus. He has been a children’s pastor for over 11 years. He’s been married to his wife Sara for 8 years. He also has one child named Titus. If you add 14+ 11 + 8 + 1 together what do you get?

34.

Which is also the number of people in the group think project called Collaborate:Family + Church which I would love to review if someone could get me a copy :)

Also if you spell Kenny backwards it spells ynnek, which I’m pretty sure is Canadian for Awesome. Ask Sam Luce for confirmation on that one, though.

Overall, childrensministryonline.com is one of my most favorite blogs for Children’s Ministry. The amount and quality of content that he provides is sorta unreal. I’m still just trying to figure out how in the world he can blog as much as he does. But Kenny is incredibly deserving of your vote in the final four of the #kidmin blog march madness tourney.

So head on over and vote for childrensministryonline.com today!

God’s Word and it’s role in our lives

March 22, 2010 in Random thoughts 1

books-and-ear-buds

I’ve been thinking alot about the innocence of a child and when Jesus says “I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Matt. 18:3 NIV)

What does that look like as we relate to His word and then pay it back and teach it to kids. Then as I was reading this passage this morning, I reflected on it’s simplicity. I’ll give you the JCSVFTWTCUKJV (JC’s shortened version for those that wish they could understand KJV) spill.

It comes from Joshua 11:6-7, Joshua had a huge victory and all these kings form an army together. As this happens, God seeks out Joshua and two phrases are the key for teaching kids on listening to God’s word and what to do with it.

Then God said

For kids, this is where I see what we have to teach. We want them to get to a point where there hearts are open to hearing God speak. As God pursues kids, we want them to be ever vigilant about hearing what God has to say in each and every situation. God is speaking, we must listen. We need to get them to pursue the Spirit, search out His word, and be silent to hear the still small voice.

So Joshua…

then respond. For kids, that’s really it. When Mom and Dad speak they respond. When their teacher speaks they respond. May not be favorable and we would like them to get there, but they most definitely respond. How can we get them to respond to the word of God?

Both are necessary, we need to hear God as He speaks and also respond to the word of God. Simple message, but how often does this appear in scripture?

God speaks, so _____ responds.

In my life, it goes something like this.

God says J.C. you need me, I respond by committing my life to Him.

God says, J.C. you are going to be in ministry, so I began to search for where and how (still don’t have it totally figured out, but am responding to where He is working)

God says, J.C. you are going to marry this girl, so I proposed and later married my amazing wife.

God says, J.C. I want you to trust me and leave your home and move to where you’ll be living without a job for awhile. So, I did and that’s how this whole Brookwood thing started.

And the reality is for us is that it’s this easy, allow God to speak, hear him and then respond. So teach your kids to search God’s word, listen for His voice and make sure to respond when you hear Him speak.

And make sure that you live it out in front of your kids as well :)

Video 2…late hehe

March 21, 2010 in Family Ministry, Life 14

Drop your comment below. Let me know which cheesy thing you would keep….

Don’t forget to vote for me here

And for Dad in the Middle and Matt Mckee.

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