Children’s ministry of any kind (large group/small group, kid’s church, Sunday School, kid’s choir, club programs) requires volunteers. The need for volunteers is constant and pressing in our field.  Last week I spent some time presenting a webinar sponsored by David C Cook’s Tru Curriculum with three creative geniuses: Matt Barnes from Rock Harbor Church, David Robles from The Rock Church, and James Pomeroy from Christ Community Church.  We spent an hour talking about how to add creativity to our ministry context and how to develop an amazing team of storytellers.

One of the fantastic ideas that emerged came from Matt Barnes.  Matt leads the storytelling team at Rock Harbor.  In addition to developing specific values for the storytellers, Matt empowered the group of volunteers to meet together regularly as a small group using the children’s ministry Bible story each week as the small group curriculum.  According to Matt, the group fostered community within the volunteer team, gave each team member an incredible opportunity to “live in” the text they would be teaching, and helped everyone with creative ideas for how to teach the Bible story.

Great idea! (Thanks Matt)

How are you fostering community within your volunteer teams?

In many churches across the United States, playtime is part of the weekly service routine.  Whether kids are interacting with structured stations in a large group/small group program or running around an open gym before children’s church, play serves as a vital fun-factor for ministry environments.  Now the average school in 2006 allotted 26 minutes for recess everyday.  That’s not a lot of time, especially in light of a growing body of research concluding that increased amounts of playtime have a positive effect on a child’s social abilities, learning capacity, and participation.  Can this research be applied to a children’s ministry setting?  Can play actually empower the learning environment so kids develop stronger relationships with others in their grade or small group and learn to listen more attentively?  Let’s find out…

Here’s a short list of resources on the power of play:

• The State of Play – Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, February 4, 2010
• Play Matters – KaBOOM!, November 15, 2009
• Activity May Strengthen Children’s Ability to Pay Attention – Science Daily, April 1, 2009

What role does play take in your children’s ministry?

Listening is an important skill for a children’s ministry leader, especially those involved in leading a small group of kids.  In my ministry context, we spend time every week doing reflective questions that are less about the facts of the stories and more about the kids applying the story to their own lives.  Here’s a little background on active listening from the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School:

Contrary to popular belief, active listening doesn’t mean sitting patiently while your counterpart talks. Nor does it simply entail saying “I understand” or establishing good eye contact. Rather, active listening is a dynamic process that can be broken down into three different behaviors: paraphrasing, inquiry, and acknowledgment.

• Paraphrase: repeat back what you think you heard
• Inquire: ask questions that pinpoint anything that you may not understand very well, need more clarification on, or that lead the group into a new topic (“Tell me more about that.” “What do you think about this?” “What makes you say that?”)
• Acknowledge: this is an empathetic response that requires you to put yourself in the person’s shoes, lead with acknowledgement in difficult or emotional conversations with kids (“It sounds as if you’re really disappointed.” “Your parents are fighting and that really is making it tough for you.”)

Full article is here.

Vote for the Cory Center in the Ministry-to-Children Blog Madness Contest! The Cory Center is in the Southwest Regional

The first time I heard Victor describe his job, I laughed.  “I create environments,” he said.  I thought to myself, “This is what the young people think work is these days…”  But I’ve never forgotten Victor’s words, especially now that I realize their importance in the teaching and learning process inside and outside the church.

Recent neuroscience and education research reveals the following: “Feelings like embarrassment, boredom, or frustration — not only fear — can spur the brain to enter the proverbial “fight or flight” mode. Therefore, it makes sense — on many levels — to cultivate the learning atmosphere as much as the learning itself.”

I know we make a big deal out of safety in the church, maybe too big of a deal.  We do not want children to be harmed in any way, so we plan and strategize and purchase elaborate computer check-in systems and train volunteers and parents to use them.  But it’s clear that the level of emotional safety a child experiences in the learning environment has a direct connection to their ability to learn in that environment.

As leaders in children’s and family ministry, this “environment shaping” requires:

• Energy and effort to encourage children to participate, even if they are wrong.
• Encouraging leaders to engage kids in conversation.  (Would you rather have a skilled conversationalist on your team or a Bible scholar?  I’ll take the engaging leader over the know-it-all any day.)
• Training on how to follow James 1:19 (Be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger.)
• Partnership with parents and tools to help them nurture learning in what should be the safest environment for their child (their own home).  (Are you passing out stuff that can make it home or recycling bin fodder?)

A great deal of time and energy is spent in the teaching/learning process within the walls of the church on facts.  Who did David defeat with a slingshot?  How many books are in the Old Testament? This focus is not recent, but a historical trend within our field.  Teaching kids facts about the Bible helps them remember the important stuff later in life.  This trend follows a similar trend in public education (think of memorizing your multiplication tables or dates in History class).  Is this the best way to teach kids the truth of who God is?  According to a recent article by Edutopia, not without risk.

The latest brain research reveals three things:

Learning experiences do help the brain grow, emotional safety does influence learning, and making lessons relevant can help information stick.

How does this apply to #kidmin?

• We need to shape environments with healthy relationships, safe boundaries, and consistent leadership.
• We need to craft experiences that engage more than the cognitive side of a child’s brain.  This kind of action will require a much more affective Bible story experience than the Sunday School model espouses.
• Content needs to be instantly relevant to a child’s life, focusing what children need to care about – not simply know about.

How much time are you focusing on facts in your ministry?

We finished three weeks of Hot U at the end of July.  It was an intense time that required over 400 volunteers and served over 1000 kids.  One of the things that we looked at this year was trying to find a way to allow the kids a place to catalog what they had learned and experienced.  This year we went low-tech.  We placed a simple poster in each room with a key question on it and asked the kids to write on the poster.

We asked kids when they felt that God was with them.  We received responses like, “At my dad’s funeral.” “Never.” “When I worship.”  It was a simple journal-like way to get the pulse of what God was doing.

Next year I might try GuestReel.  GuestReel is a Mac software application that turns your computer into a video kiosk.  It looks incredibly simple.  GuestReel allows users to put in their name and write a message, then record a video using the computer’s built-in camera or a connected device.

It would be SO awesome to see kids respond after large group in this way.  There are so many possibilities!  I’d love to hear from those of you who have either used GuestReel or a video-log to capture kid’s messages.

This is a great video that challenges current models of education and proposes a different, more organic way to educate children.  Watch the video!

Here are a couple of quotes that I love:

•    “So I think we have to change metaphors. We have to go from what is essentially an industrial model of education, a manufacturing model, which is based on linearity and conformity and batching people. We have to move to a model that is based more on principles of agriculture.”

What is the metaphor for your Christian education model?  Are you attempting to manufacture little followers of Christ with a linear system?  How open is your programming (to change, to the Holy Spirit, to individualization)?

•    “We have to recognize that human flourishing is not a mechanical process, it’s an organic process. And you cannot predict the outcome of human development; all you can do, like a farmer, is create the conditions under which they will begin to flourish.”

When I heard this, I started thinking about an intentional change we are making this fall to orient our ministry more towards spiritual formation and giving kids space to respond to the God they have encountered.  I’m also reminded of some advice from the creators of Flickr who suggested that community does not just happen, it must be hosted.  There is an environmental element to our ministries.  In other words, leaders in children’s and family ministry need to be concerned with the environment where children and families encounter God.  We need to be intentional about creating the “conditions under which they will begin to flourish.”  How much time have you spent crafting your small group or large group environment?

•    “It’s about customizing to your circumstances, and personalizing education to the people you’re actually teaching. And doing that, I think is the answer to the future because it’s not about scaling a new solution; it’s about creating a movement in education in which people develop their own solutions, but with external support based on a personalized curriculum.”

This reminded me of the words of Walter Wangerin, who taught me that teachers are shepherds.  Shepherds take sheep from where they are to where they need to be.  How personal is your ministry?  How flexible is your ministry program?

The following paragraphs are taken directly from Stephen Johnson’s blog.

In his essay introducing The Long Now Foundation, Brian Eno tells the story of visiting a wealthy friend in her downtown loft, in an otherwise destitute Manhattan neighborhood circa 1978:

I just didn’t understand. Why would anyone spend so much money building a place like that in a neighbourhood like this? Later I got into conversation with the hostess. “Do you like it here?” I asked. “It’s the best place I’ve ever lived”, she replied. “But I mean, you know, is it an interesting neighbourhood?” “Oh ? the neighbourhood? Well– that’s outside!” she laughed.

The incident stuck in my mind. How could you live so blind to your surroundings? How could you not think of “where I live” as including at least some of the space outside your four walls, some of the bits you couldn’t lock up behind you? I felt this was something particular to New York: I called it “The Small Here”. I realised that, like most Europeans, I was used to living in a bigger Here.

Part of Eno’s point is that what we mean by “here” has a sliding scale to it. Sometimes “here” is the room you’re sitting in; sometimes it’s your block; sometimes it’s your neighborhood; sometimes it’s the Greater Metropolitan Area. We make those spatial adjustments all the time without thinking about it. When we’re looking for a paperclip nearby, the “here” is even smaller than Eno’s friend’s; but when we’re looking for a new apartment, the scope widens dramatically.

“The Small Here.”  I like that phrase.  As I’ve been pondering these words, I’ve come to the conclusion that part of my job as the director of small groups in our children’s ministry should be to create a smaller “here.”  Leaders in children’s and family ministry need to crack the code in their contexts on how small or big their “here” is.  Here are some key questions:

•    Do kids only experience community in large groups?
•    Does a large group only context create opportunity for kids to experience the kinds of relationships with other kids and adult leaders that could catapult their spiritual growth?
•    Do I consider a small group 8 kids or 15 kids?
•    What are the ideal sizes of my small groups?
•    What steps do I need to take to make these groups smaller?  Is it a recruiting step, a vision casting step, or a training step?

Over the past several weeks I have been working almost full-time to prepare and execute the large group environments for our summer camps, Hot U Jr (for 3 year olds – entering Kindergarten) and Hot U (entering 1st grade – entering 4th grade).  Summer camps are fun and exciting but they pose a challenge for me because I do not spend the summer preparing for the fall.  I have been carving out additional time early in the morning or when I’m eating lunch to think through some fall training materials for my elementary small group leaders.  Here’s four C’s that I think will help shape those materials.

Content: The primary focus of a small group is the content, but not just games or questions.  Our content will always be Biblically focused.  Kids and leaders will read God’s Word.  In the era of digital learners, content must have impact, be more than information that can be summoned at a keystroke, and focus on skills (studying God’s Word, applying God’s Word, prayer).

Context:  Content is delivered in two environments: small group and large group.  These contexts have different purposes.  Small groups exist for prayer, building relationships, and to talk about God’s Word.  Large group exists for corporate worship and Bible teaching.  These contexts have unique flavor and texture.  Small groups are more relational, feel small and individual, and eyeball to eyeball, moderate, muted.  Large group is a corporate experience, togetherness, part of something bigger and whole, loud, bright.

Connection: A small group leader’s role is to connect to kids through prayer, building relationship, and talking about God’s Word.  A small group captain’s role is to connect to small group leaders in this same way.  But where do parents fit here?  We asked parents to rate their relationship with their child’s small group leader and most indicated that they did not really know the small group leader at all.  However, we asked how important that relationship was (parent to small group leader) and most parents indicated that it was not important at all.

Community: KidsWorld is a church.  It is not the church of tomorrow, it is the church of today – right now.  As such, we are part of bringing children into real, authentic community where they can grow to become more like Christ.  As Reggie Joiner comments, Hollywood will always out-produce the church but it cannot do better at the church at creating community.

He was The Worst Sunday School Teacher Ever. Period.

Last night a good friend of mine graduated from community college and I had the opportunity to attend her graduation ceremony.  Whenever I go back to the town I grew up in (Rockford, IL), I see people that I used to know.  Interestingly enough, one of my Sunday School teachers from elementary school sat right behind me during the graduation ceremony.

He was not a great Sunday school teacher.  How do I know that?  Well, he did not like kids very much.  I realized that because he spent most of his time yelling at us and belittling us.  He also brought his own curriculum, which was different from what the other classes were using and happened to be from a different denomination.  My 1-year experience in his class is something I will never forget.

When I looked back at that memory, I realized that it had been twenty years since I was in his Sunday school class for eight months.  Only 32 Sundays.  I still remember the experience.

This week I had the chance to pray with our senior pastor Jim Nicodem for the recruitment of new leaders for the summer.  He prayed that God would arrest the hearts of many with a love for kids.  At the time, I found that an interesting thing to pray because I know how many leaders we need and right now we have less than 5% of our summer team filled.  But after seeing my old Sunday school teacher, I realized that Jim’s prayer was right on the money.  It’s easy to fall into a trap where we do not put first things first.  A love for kids is a requirement for every person who works directly with kids.  Kids remember the leaders they have, good and bad.  As ministry leaders, we need to give them shepherds who love being with them.