Resource time!

We can't help but talk resources whenever we're in a room with others in kids ministry, so here's a few favourites!

KIDS WORSHIP MUSIC

Yancy - A unanimous favourite.  If you follow her blog, she sometimes gives out great deals (like 50 CD's for $5 each!)  Her new DVD series has some rocking out hymns remade for kids that are awesome!

Seeds family worship - 100% Scripture put to not-annoying music

Go Fish Guys - a funky take on kids music that parents can even stand

Bethel Kids - the church that brought us so many modern worship hits is now branching out into kids worship!

Hillsong Kids - their preschool CD is full of slightly off-beat and fun worship music

Cross kid nation - great kids music

Owl city - Christian artist, but not necessarily Christian music.  Some fun options for good, clean fun.

VIDEOS

Life Church produces high-quality cartoon Bible stories that work great incorporated into your teaching times.  (They also use these in their preschool video-based FREE curriculum).  Bonus they have a free (awesome) app for kids that goes right along with it.

Owlegories is a new series where owls have a 12 minute episode teaching gospel-based lessons.

Right Now Media is the "netflix for Christians."  Video-based Bible studies, and full access to tons of Christian kids content (what's in the Bible, veggie tales, Theo, and tons more!)  Churches pay for a subscription based on how many users there are.

Technology in KidMin - Part 2 (Connecting)

We've been talking about technology in ministry and one major aspect is using technology to communicate outside of our weekends.  Here's some of what we've seen and love:

SOCIAL MEDIA

Facebook and Instagram win points for the most popular ways to connect with parents.  Some tips from those that do it well:

- be consistent.  Have a regular presence (weekly at minimum)

- post the Main Point and memory verse for each week

- photos of what's going on (small group leaders, or the back of kids heads as they worship, or get permission from parents, crafts, worship response centers)

- ask parents to share "post what service project your kids did for this week's LOVE EACH OTHER" project", or "what is YOUR child thanking God for this week?" - let it become a conversation online, not just a bulletin board of announcements

- preview what's coming up (a teaser you made up, a photo of the new series you're starting, or some curriculums have monthly preview videos)

- make a youtube playlist (the Meeting Place has one bimonthly) to share with parents on Facebook and play before services

EMAIL

Mailchimp is our favourite way of communicating with parents - it's free, looks classy and is easy to manage.  It gives great templates that are fully customizable and tracks how many people are actually reading your emails.  

Parent communication - whatever platform you use to get it out, ReThink group has a service that helps make that communication be more meaningful.  Use their "parent cue" email for a ready-made template that includes weekly blog posts on parenting, interesting trivia #justaphase, and a brief recap of the week before (their default is 252 Basics curriculum, but it's fully customizable).  They also have a similar service included in the subscription that gives email templates for your small group leaders as well.  www.goweekly.com

Constant Contact is another paid service that's great for emails... and also is a full church management database.

WEBSITES

There's some discussion on this - many say it's obsolete, other than as basic info to let visitors know a children's ministry exists, and others still use and maintain theirs, saying if you keep posting fresh information, it keeps the website active in search engines.  Even posting a basic "what we're learning this month" can help.

BLOGS

Haven't seen much activity on blogs for children's ministry, other than as a resource for those in ministry, not your own congregation.  Our children ministry experimented some with this last year - using blogs to post family devotion ideas and "what we're talking about" but it felt like extra work that wasn't really reaching people.  Social media seems to be the simpler, more accessible way to handle this.

ONLINE TOOLS

www.wufoo.com is a premier service (free with limits, or cheap with full features) that does forms for you.  Yes, that means day camp registrations, volunteer applications and any other form you can dream of!

www.jotform.com is also recommended as a paid service that does forms well.

Want to get feedback?  www.surveymonkey.com is a free service that lets you do evaluations and surveys quickly without much fuss.

VOLUNTEER TRAINING

There's a couple new sites dedicated to online training of volunteers.  Ministry Grid and GoodToGo are the two big ones - Good to Go being more kid-centred (and cheaper) and Ministry Grid with more content and is a more church-wide application.  Both come at a monthly cost, and both allow you to upload your own videos.

HOWEVER, after testing the two of them, the monthly subscription price and the cumbersome method to assigning videos to each volunteer individually (plus the amount of email it generated) made both sites less attractive.  Our favourite idea was to simply post our video training on youtube.  You can make it a private channel if need be, and a tip from a university is to have a secret "code word" near the end of the video - if your volunteer comes in having watched the training & they know the code word, a free coffee or little gift can make it worth their while!  You can just email the link (or have it on your website) and it's free to use.

VOLUNTEER COMMUNICATION

Forget the emails - one church just does a weekly video outlining any changes made in the curriculum for the week.  A webcam and 2 minutes is all it takes.  It can get emailed out or posted online for small group leaders to watch ("Hey guys - we're doing the first craft in the lesson plan, only instead of hearts we're using leaves.  Here's an example of how it looks...  Don't forget our memory verse is changed this month to this one... We've got a guest speaker this week, so you won't have time for the closing activity...")

As a parent or as a minister... what's been an effective communication tool for you?

Technology in KidMin - part 1 (weekend services)

What does "technology" mean in kids ministry?  Does it terrify you, or does it come as natural to you as breathing?  Is your ministry using it to its best advantage?

For me, we've moved full-swing into some aspects of technology: child checkin (a rocky start, but going well), multimedia (nailed it), online presence (mixed results), and social media (nonexistent).

But sitting around a table with others in children's ministry always brings up new aspects to technology we had never considered, or were underutilizing in a big way.  Listen in to some of the tips, tricks & resources we came up with to use technology well.  Since this is such a broad subject, I'll be breaking it up into a few blog posts to make it more manageable.  

Let's start with using technology during your weekend service.

APPLE TV

- If you haven't jumped on this bandwagon (or are still using it ONLY to watch netflix) this is one of our favourites.  Why?

- it's low cost (about $100 per unit)

- you can manage it from any apple device (your iPhone, laptop, or purchase an iPod)

- from your pocket, you can show slideshows (download slides as photos to your computer, and they upload automatically from your apple device), music (iTunes playlists or youtube), videos... anything!  It puts the controls in your hands - not back at the tech booth - is easy to upload and simple to manage

- real-time uses: video teaching & stream it live on TV as it's happening (great for magicians & object lessons), or show off photos from that morning on the TVs while parents pick up kids (with permission, of course!)

CHILD CHECK-IN

More and more churches are moving to child check-in.  This is worth a whole series in itself, but so far the hands-down favourite is planning center online.  It's a low monthly cost (based on church size) with great add-ons useful for worship teams, scheduling and church management.  Those who have it say it's a simple & seamless transition for even the non-technology savvy.

SCREEN TIME

Strategically placed screens can be a great way to have announcements, celebrations and even just ambiance as you use them (with apple TV, of course) to welcome children as they arrive and communicate with parents during pick-ups.

CAUTIONS

Technology fails.  A lot.  Having a reliable internet connection is a big deal, and a secure internet connection (especially if you are using it for managing children's information) an even bigger deal.  If you can swing it, a dedicated secure server just for your children's ministry is an expense worth investigating.

SMALL GROUP APPS

The ReThink group has put out an app for apple and android phones just for small group leaders called Lead Small.  It helps manage any small group information, gives practical tips for leading small groups (age specific - sign up for preschool, elementary or youth age groups), links to a weekly age-specific blog, has training tools, and best of all - a customizable curriculum (it uses Orange's 252 Basics as their default, but is easily switched to whatever you want) so small group leaders can access it all right there during your ministry time.  Best of all, it's on their phone and easily accessible throughout the week as well.  If you do not use Orange, it does take some time each week to upload your curriculum.

How does your ministry use technology during your services?

5 ways to overcome a slow start

September is coming to a close, and I'm exhausted.  August was awful, September was worse, and I praying that with the turn of a calendar page it will get easier.

I stop reading American children's ministry blogs around August, as they are full of energy and excitement in recruiting volunteers, while I'm still spending more time calling subs every week for our non-existent summer team and praying for fall to come so we can go back to normal.  September comes and I'm chasing people who didn't respond to voicemails, have my inbox full of "sorry I didn't reply to this email LAST month, but..." and am scrambling to put together teams for our children's ministry when it seems like everyone else passed this hurdle two months ago.

I sit around the table with my fellow children's ministers in my hometown of Winnipeg and wonder if my excuses are just that... excuses.  Until one person sighs.  And then another.  One confesses they don't even start children's programming until mid-October.  "There's no point," she says, "Everyone's at the lake until then."

Another is like me: the kids are back, but leaders are all still away (how does that happen?)  They're dealing with 60 kids and 2 leaders... just for another week or two until the weather turns.

Another is harnessing the power of young adult students, who have to be back for the start of university... but had forgotten the fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants lifestyle that often accompanies that age group and is wondering if he's made a mistake.

In the end we realize: this is what ministry looks like in our setting.  It's not that we are worse at children's ministry than our American brothers and sisters... it's that our culture is seasonally driven and we have to figure it out.  So what happens when you're not off to a strong start?  What does your church do to gain momentum, protect the kids and recruit volunteers?  Here's some of what we came up with:

1. Target a volunteer audience.  

Parents, young adults, teenagers, grandparents... rather than throwing out a "we need volunteers" missive, go after a certain demographic.  You will get a better response and your team can grow as you reach out to a new group of people.

2.  Delay your start. 

 If you can't start strong in September, don't.  Wait a month.  It may not be intuitive, but it's better to have a strong start later on than limp through and not gain momentum at all.

3.  Enforce your child protection policy.  

If your policy states that you need a 4:1 ratio, and you only have 2 leaders, you only take 8 kids and turn the 9th kid away.  This is for the children's protection as well as for legal and insurance reasons.  Don't fudge on this.  If it causes outrage, that's okay - when people realize there is a real need for help (not just children's programs constant begging for more) they are more likely to respond.

4. Simplify.  

If you can't do it all, don't.  Use video training for a season rather than a live storyteller.  Use a one-room approach where two or three strong leaders can manage a larger group together.  Ditch the craft.  Figure out where you can cut corners - temporarily - and still deliver quality programming safely.

5. Over-communicate.  

The stereotypical volunteer campaign consists of an on-stage announcement and a bulletin insert.  Ironically, people are LEAST likely to respond to these invitations over almost any other kind (email, phone call, personal conversation).  Make it personal!  Pick up the phone and call people.  Stop people in church.  Become brazen at asking.  The number of people who are now serving in our children's minsitry who tell me they started now (instead of years ago) because "no one asked" drives me CRAZY!  I ASK!  I ASK ALL THE TIME!!  But until they had a personal invitation, it was meaningless to them.  So I make sure that I invite.  A lot.

Some of these our church already does - but I've never thought of targeting a demographic.  And to be honest, we could use some grey hair in our children's ministry.  I've got a grandma in mind as I type this.  And I think I just might give her a call.

What do you do to help your children's ministry through a slow season?

Welcome here

A conversation about the lack of voices in kids ministry in Canada.

A meeting of incredibly wise, gifted and experienced children's ministers around a table with bad coffee and good cinnamon buns.

A sigh of relief, realizing I am not alone.

And a pocket full of ideas on how others are doing ministry that just might work in our setting.

This is the beauty of camaraderie, and I am so blessed to live in a community where we meet regularly to love on each other.  We pray for the sister whose church is in pain.  We celebrate the new church plant of the surprised young church that's growing like a weed.  We jump on an idea and ask "yeah, but how..." and we feed off each other's creativity and experience.

But for those who dont have that... who feel isolated, who don't have a team, who wish they could feed off those ideas, too, this blog is for you.  One more voice to add to the repetoire.  I want to post some of the wisdom and ideas that come out of our group of ministers here in Winnipeg, and throw out some thoughts from my end as well.

So for those of you who don't have a team... welcome to ours.

And if you live in Winnipeg, come out and join us next month!