Children's Ministry 101

A Quick Peak

2008-06-11T22:24:00.003-05:00

Here's a quick vid clip of my assistant, Casey, and me put together by our creative arts ministry.
Pretty good stuff!

Gang Life

2008-05-19T22:46:00.000-05:00

Francis Chan, session speaker at the Orange Conference and senior pastor of Cornerstone Church in Simi Valley, told of a story about a gang member who attended his church once he was saved. After a period of time the gang member was starting to struggle. Francis had an opportunity to chat with him and found out he was wondering why church life was not as fulfilling as gang life. While in the gang, the young man always had people who were accepting of him, trusted him and had his back. His observation of church life was that people were unaccepting, did not trust him and did not have his back.
What a heart wrenching story. It was the last part that really grabbed a hold of me; having other's back. The phrase has been so important that it's been elevated to my prayer sheet.
I pose the question, do you have other's back? Immediately there's family, friends, co-workers. But what about there at your church? Do you have the lead pastor's back? The pastoral staff's backs? Elders' backs? And of course, the Children's Ministry back's?
Just something to think about.

Orange - Francis Chan

2008-04-29T11:09:00.000-05:00

Pastor Chan is one of my favorite speakers. Truly, every time I listen to him I’m challenged and today was no different.
Three questions to add to my growing prayer list:
Is the Holy Spirit truly in me?
Do I have other’s backs?
What does God want me to do that I’ve not been doing?

This guy is powerful.

Children's Ministry 101
Wayne Geer

Orange – Family Experience: The Non-weekly Option

2008-04-28T15:03:00.002-05:00

“80% of kids raised in church will walk away from church by the time they get to college.”
Carey Nieuwhof is one of my favorite presenters and today he was on fire. Great presentation about the wisdom of using the family experience on a monthly basis. Good emphasis on strategy; so vital to hear. Once again, awesome.

Children's Ministry 101
Wayne Geer

Orange – Family Experience: The Non-weekly Option

2008-04-28T15:03:00.000-05:00

“80% of kids raised in church will walk away from church by the time they get to college.”
Carey Neuhaus is one of my favorite presenters and today he was on fire. Great presentation about the wisdom of using the family experience on a monthly basis. Good emphasis on strategy; so vital to hear.
Once again, awesome.

Children's Ministry 101
Wayne Geer

Orange - Picture This!

2008-04-28T13:28:00.001-05:00

Greg and Jen are leading this session about helping us all with story telling. I am not from a drama background, so the exercises/games they taught us were helpful. Certainly exercises I’ll work through with both our on-stage and small group leaders.
Great stuff.

Children's Ministry 101
Wayne Geer

Orange - Design on a Dime

2008-04-28T09:49:00.002-05:00

Awesome first session with Jeffrey Reed, Design on a Dime.
Came away with great ideas for enhancing our current children's ministry rooms.
Foam, spandex and pvc pipe are our friends!

Children's Ministry 101
Wayne Geer

Orange Conference Day 1 Preconference

2008-04-28T09:06:00.001-05:00

We’re here! Flew in last night, picked up a very cool minivan; I know, I’m old. Drove out to the conference center and painlessly registered. What a relief. Beautiful hotel and now, Monday morning I’m in my first preconference session, Design on a Dime with Jeffrey Reed.
I sat in on a session with Jeffrey at Camp Kidjam and so I’m looking forward to his wisdom.
Update to follow…

Children's Ministry 101
Wayne Geer

How's Your Fire?

2008-04-21T22:01:00.001-05:00

In the midst of prayer today, I thought about a meeting a couple of weeks ago when big, burly, manly-man, Wayne broke down and, yes, shed tears during prayer. Honestly, I’m not much of a crier, but there are times when I lose some salt. One situation that always brings emotion is when I’m brought back to the reality of why I do what I do; the calling God has placed on my life and the inherent urgency of ministry.
I certainly go through times when I look at ministry as just a job or an obligation. I wrestle with those periods; I do hate it when those feelings rise up. But no matter how crabby, stressed, cynical, or dull I feel “in the moment”, ultimately, it’s the calling and the urgency that are my fire.
The “fire” is not the programs I’ve been a part of, the events I’ve helped lead, or the object lessons I’ve brought. The fire is the urgency of knowing true eternal transformation is taking place in the lives of children and their families. The “how” we do what we do changes over time, but the “why” is always John 3:16.
And so I ask you, how’s your fire doing? My sincere hope and prayer is that you serve because of the desire, the calling, the necessity in your life to see others eternally transformed. I pray God would continually stoke the fire of urgency in you. This blaze impacts how you pray for “your kids” and their families, how you interact with them, even how you prepare your lessons. It burns away “job and obligation” and thankfully reveals calling and urgency.

I’m struggling with the ending here, so I’ll end with the question, “How’s your fire?”

Children's Ministry 101
Wayne Geer

Updated: Mrs. EVAN'S Famous Saying

2008-04-02T09:34:00.002-05:00

"When someone tells you who they are the first time believe it!"
Ah, the famous saying from John Stickl's mother-in-law. It was about a year ago that I first heard it and from that very first moment, I knew this woman had great wisdom.
John is our Adult Ministries Pastor and oversees small groups; this guy is good. He and I talk a lot because I can always pick up some nugget from him. His MIL's saying has been one that has resonated with me. I wish I had known it sixteen years ago when I first started in ministry.
As I've looked back at first impressions of my different ministry opportunities, I've peeled away the "happy happy joy joy" parts of the visits. I've seen an interesting correlation between the first impressions and how the future at each particular position has developed.
People who have "told me who they are the first time" by going out of their way to be friendly, show trust, be respectful have been the one's who've proved themselves to be that way. Churches that showed characteristics of generosity from the first visit were that way in real life. The unfavorable impressions have also played themselves out. Very interesting.
So I'm adding the saying to my bag of wisdom in hopes of it being one more gauge to use.
Thanks Mrs. Evans.

Wayne Geer
Children's Ministry 101

Mac + Water + PRAYER = Dodged a Bullet

2008-03-26T10:03:00.008-05:00

Oochie mamma! I dodged a bullet last night. I'm settling into my favorite chair, about to check email from the day, thirsty so I go to take a drink and then splash! Water on the Mac PowerBook G4.
Ahhh! I unplug, tip over and run to our other computer to search online for "spill on laptop." I then run back to the tipped over Mac, power down, remove the battery and start with the hair dryer on medium. Throughout this time, much prayer.
Well this morning everything works fine so far. Powered on, screen looks fine, keys and trackpad work. I'm about to go into the office, so we'll see if all the plug in items work. Update coming... Yes, everything works.
By the way, I've been a Mac convert for about two years now and love them! Unless forced to, I'll never go back to pc again. You can check out the newest Macs here, here, and here.

Children's Ministry 101
Wayne Geer

LinkedIn and Facebooked

2008-03-23T20:23:00.000-05:00

I took the plunge a few months ago and joined both LinkedIn and Facebook. Both of my accounts kind of languished for those few months until this past weekend.
I went on a social network blitz.
I took time to update both of my profiles and worked at connecting with friends, family and colleagues around the country. And it's been fun. I've reconnected with some old friends who I would never have found had I continued on my path of not connecting via LinkedIn or Facebook. Also, I'm interested in both networks being an avenue for me to expand my professional network. It seems to be all the rage. Have you had success connecting on either network? Let us know.

Church Staff 101
Wayne Geer

Dance Praise 2 - Get Ready for the Lines

2008-02-29T11:22:00.006-06:00

We made a very cool purchase about a month ago, Dance Praise 2. It is one of the funnest interactive games we've added to our children's ministry.
Here's a rundown of the product.

Dance Praise 2-The Remix with Pad

Dance Praise, Christianity Today's Children's Product Of the Year for 2005 and 2006, is now better than ever. Dance Praise 2 - the ReMix combines new Christian music and may new features in an action packed dance game. With up to four pads, the whole family can dance together! It's a great way to get everyone off the couch and moving to the music. Each player can dance at their own level. Compete and see who has the highest score, cooperate for a combined score, or play follow the leader in a shadow dance. Music from top Christian artists includes Superchic, Pillar, Building 429, Third Day, Casting Crowns, tobyMac, Jeremy Camp, Ayiesha Woods, Plumb and more!

The box above comes with the computer game and one dance pad. You'll probably need at least one more dance pad

Dance Praise 2 (Pad Only)

so your kids can dance head to head. Since the game runs on either a pc or apple computer, you'll need either a desktop and monitor combo or a laptop. You'll also need a usb port per dance pad. Load the software, plug in the pads and start the dance party!
We've been able connect our laptop to the room's sound system and projector so the whole room hears the music and sees the games from the big screen.
And the lines are LONG! The kids can't wait to get their turn on the pads. I love the fact that it's showcasing great Christian artists. It's giving our kids a Kingdom alternative to the secular game and music.
Plus you can purchase expansion packs:

Dance Praise Expansion Pack 1: Modern Worship
This CD Rom expansion pack accompanies the Dance Praise kit, offering 35 new Modern Worship songs for dance and exercise. Includes songs by ZOEGirl, Chris Tomlin, David Crowder Band, Newsboys, and more.

Dance Praise Expansion Pack #2: Hip Hop and Rap
Layin' Down Rhymes For The Lord!

Building on themes of life everlasting, overcoming temptation, and other real-life issues, this high-energy collection is a "must-have" for any hip-hop fan. The lyrics in the rhythmic poetry praise God while the pounding bass creates a backbone for over 100 new dances. Celebrated hip-hop artists, including tobyMac, DJ MAJ, Grits, and John Reuben offer performances that rock the house and will inspire you in your walk with God.

The 35 tracks were selected from best-selling CDs. They integrate directly into the 50 hits in Dance Praise to give you over 85 songs-and over 250 dances-to pick from. You can sort the dances by play list, artist, title, or difficulty level.

and many more.
If you purchase it, you and your kids will love it!

Wayne Geer
Children's Ministry 101

Stories Just Keep Coming

2008-02-09T13:07:00.000-06:00

For about the last eight or nine months we've been reminding our leaders to email us stories of life change taking place in their worlds. It's always good to know that the effort being put into ministry is making a difference.

The stories we've been receiving have been inspirational, touching and most importantly, they've been personal, hands-on, real life stories about people they know. We email the stories out to the rest of our team. It's been neat to talk about and hear our leaders talk about the great things taking place.

Stories are powerful.

If you get a chance, check out my post about stories entitled, Country, Opera and Stories.

Wayne Geer
Children's Ministry 101

A BIG All Staff Meeting

2008-02-08T09:20:00.000-06:00

Every month, our church has an all staff meeting where everyone who's employed meets for about an hour as one big group. It's always fun and encouraging. Early this week, we had an extended all staff meeting where we met offsite for most of the day and it was wonderful. As a giant team, we had fun together, worshipped and prayed together, learned together and of course ate together.
Our jr. high student pastor, Josh Wintermute, summed it up perfectly, "It was truly a life giving event."
What about your team? Do you get a chance to pull everyone together a few times a year to encourage, fellowship, laugh and pray?
If your team is struggling with feelings that their environment is not life giving, take a chance and put this type of event on your calendar. Go ahead and get the process started of producing a life giving environment.

Wayne Geer
Children's Ministry 101

Orange Tour DFW - Session 3

2008-01-25T22:51:00.000-06:00

Session 3 was with Carey Nieuwhof, a senior pastor from Canada. Great session with deep insight about the "c" word, change.

Change is a constant
Every change has a life cycle; an upswing and an eventual downswing
Easy change takes place on the downturn, though this may not be the best time to change
Well-led organizations change while on the upswing; this is the most difficult point of change, but potentially the most productive
We may have to change stuff that was working in order to have greater impact
We need to look at why we do what we do all the time

5 Steps to Implementing Change

Study the concepts
Get as many of your team on-board as possible – need leaders aligned
Define an action plan
Reorganize for change
Implement the change – soft launch, evaluate

A great session to wrap up an inspirational day. Tomorrow, Children's Ministry 101 continues the love!

Wayne

Orange Tour DFW - Session 2

2008-01-25T17:11:00.000-06:00

Session two with Reggie. He talked about the phrases that need to come in-between the words from the two lists he talked about in session one.

So to get from list one to list two, we need to do the following:

To get from focusing on Students to focusing on Leaders, we need to Integrate Strategy.
To get from Content to Experience, we need to Refine Our Message
To get from Production to Relationship, we need to Elevate Community
To get from Age-focused to Family-focused, we need to Reactivate the Family
And to get from Growth to Service, we need to Leverage Influence

Reggie passed out the “Calibrate” card. A "scorecard" to be used to see where our churches/ministries are at when it comes to getting us from the first list to the second list using the "in-between" phrases. Very good stuff. Even during our break, great discussions with our leadership that are here with us this weekend.

Check out Orange Tour to check out the conference and Children's Ministry 101 will continue the live blogs.
Wayne

Orange Conference - DFW Friday afternoon

2008-01-25T13:36:00.000-06:00

The giant ice storm was a dud, so right now, at this very moment I'm in the opening session at the Orange Tour DFW stop with the great Reggie Joiner. And as usual, incredibly "meaty" material from "the man."

Here's Reggie's list of things we probably think about every week:
Students
Content
Production
Age-focused ministry
Growth

And here's Reggie's list of things maybe we should be thinking about every week:
Leaders instead of students: most effective way of reaching the kids is us as pastors reaching the adult and teen volunteers who can multiply our influence.
Experience instead of content: There is a gap between what we’re teaching and what really happens out there, and it’s our job to close that gap.
Relationship instead of production: The world’s culture will always have better production, BUT what the world’s culture doesn’t have is the importance of relationship
Family-focused instead of age-focused: our 40 hours per year with the children we minister to has limited influence and impact. We need to leverage parents because of their 3000 hours of influence. We need to help make our parents experts at influencing their children. We need parents to fight for their relationship with their children, and we need kids to fight for their relationship with their parents
Service instead of numeric growth: serving must be a component of discipleship. We need people to volunteer for our ministries to help them grow spiritually, not for them to help us with our ministry

What would happen in our ministries if we moved from thinking so much about the first list and rather focussed more time on the second list?

Children's Ministry 101 will keep the updates coming.
Check out the Orange Tour website and sign up for the tour stop near you. It will be well worth your time, energy and money.
Wayne

Orange Tour - Dallas

2008-01-24T22:06:00.000-06:00

Tomorrow, hopefully we'll be able to attend the Orange Tour stop here in Dallas. I say hopefully because it's forecasted that we'll be receiving this year's ice storm tonight/tomorrow morning. We'll see...
Anyways, Children's Ministry 101 will post with the best from the tour stop, maybe I'll be able to blog live!

Wayne

Honor's Reward

2008-01-17T21:29:00.000-06:00

Honor’s Reward
A few weeks ago, Pastor John Stickl let me borrow a cd set entitled, Honor’s Reward. It’s six cd’s of messages that John Bevere preached about the concept of honor. I’m only on cd 2, but getting smacked pretty hard in-between the eyes.

Growing up, the Korean half of the family was pretty forceful in molding me into what I thought was a honoring mindset. In fact, I prided myself on how respectful I was to those in authority in my life. Bevere’s messages have made me reexamine how I show honor to everyone.

I always think of honoring those in authority over me, but Bevere uses Scripture to show that I need to also honor those equal to me and those I’m in authority over. Very thought provoking stuff so far.

A couple of honor verses have grabbed a hold of me.

Romans 12:10 “Honor one another above yourselves.” So I guess I need to respect, value and show as precious everyone, not only my authorities. Not that I’m a total jerk all the time, but I can’t be a jerk ever, to anyone.
Psalm 15:4 “honor whoever fears the Lord.” No more making fun of the folks on the Christian tv channels. That’s truly the first thing I thought about when reading this verse. Certainly I need to be proactive in honoring those who fear God.

If only there was a honometer, so I could see how I was doing on this road of honoring...

If you’re interested, you can get the book here Though WARNING, I have not read the book, I’m just listening to the cd’s, but understand the book to be the written out version of the concepts in the cd’s. Let us know here at Children's Ministry 101 what you think about the cd set or the book.

Wayne

Top 10 List for Children's Ministry - Part 1

2008-01-14T07:46:00.000-06:00

Last weekend, we had our biannual Children's Ministry Orientation. It's a time when all our CM leaders, paid and volunteer, gather for a dose of refreshing vision casting, fellowship, prayer and ministry specific training. It's always an awesome time together.

One aspect of the meeting is our ever growing list of important things to know and do as a member of our CM team. Last summer it was called, Wayne's Top 10 Things to Know, our current list is Top 27 Ingredients for a Delicious Children's Ministry. Casey, the assistant children's pastor, Brandon, our intern, and myself get a little stir crazy cooped up in our small office.

Anyways, I wanted to share our list with you here on Children's Ministry 101 in a few parts. Hopefully some of it will be helpful to you and your ministry.

Top 10 List for Children's Ministry - Part 1

Prayer. An essential, vital, can't make it without it, aspect of EVERY children's ministry. We can never pray enough, and we can never encourage our team's to pray too much.
Growth. Not numerical, but personal growth. We often say, "You can't give what you don't have." Spiritual growth is necessary as we pour spiritually into those around us.
Tell us stories. We love hearing stories of transformation taking place in our kids, so we encourage our leaders to tell us and send us an email of stories they hear.
Be informative. All of our CM leadership are mouthpieces of our church. And so they are encouraged to be as informed as possible about the children's ministry and our church in general. Our job as children's pastors is to give them the info in easy to understand bits.
Continuing Ed. We highly encourage our leaders to further their knowledge about CM and spiritual matters. We provide a weekly email with CM and church-wide info, provide relevant articles about CM, encourage our leaders to attend local CM conferences (we try to cover some portion of the cost), provide two orientations a year and are always on the lookout for relevant books for them to read.
Be flexible. No, we don't offer Bible yoga classes, but we do want our leaders to be flexible about their serving role; always looking for areas of need and helping out in the moment, willing to change at the last minute if the time requires it.
Feedback. We do want to hear from our leaders. They are the "hands and feet" of our ministry, seeing things that we sometimes miss. We have an open door policy. Not every suggestion we're able to act on, but everything brought to our attention will be heard and thought through.
Free advertising. Our leaders know they are free advertising for the CM so it's vital for them to be positive when talking about the CM. Smile, tell good stories, have the "back" of the CM.
Recruiters. Whatever word you use, recruiting, attracting, blah blah blah, our leaders, paid and volunteer, are the single greatest recruiting force we have at our hands. Planting the seed that they are needed to pray for more volunteers and talk to their sphere of influence about joining the team is a necessity. We tell our team to think in terms of replacing themselves this year with someone they've asked to join the team.
Membership. At our church, membership is mandatory if a person is leading other people. To us it shows that they are on board with the vision of the church

That's 10, I've got a bunch more for another post. Let me know what you think, I always look forward to your comments.

Wayne

A Note to Pastors: Work Less

2008-01-09T22:46:00.000-06:00

Scot Longyear has an eye opening post at the Worship.com blog containing some startling statistics about our profession, pastoring. He also includes a short list of practical to do's for a healthy leader.

Click to jump to the post, A Note to Pastors: Work Less.

It doesn't matter your ministry position, Children's Ministry 101 highly recommends reading Scot's post.

Also, take a moment and read my post, Taking a Break, about vacation, something Scot talks about in his post.

Wayne

Getting Started in Children's Ministry

2008-01-09T09:09:00.000-06:00

Jason Rhode, children's pastor, co-founder of Children's Ministry University Online and adjunct faculty with Valley Forge Christian College, co-author's the blog, Children's Ministry Insights.

Children's Ministry 101 is always on the lookout for great insight from around the blogosphere and so check out his post, Getting Started in Children's Ministry. It's chock full of nuggets of truth everyone needs when first starting out. In fact, it's full of practices we need to constantly work on no matter how long we've been in ministry.

Check it out.

Wayne

"How" and Note Taking

2008-01-08T22:02:00.000-06:00

"This is the ultimate guidebook for successful living. Its truths are simple but stunningly powerful." I'm hoping Marianne Williamson's quote is correct since I'm starting the book, "How" by Dov Seidman tonight.
Click here to jump to the post at Church Staff 101.

Wayne

How to Spoil Those You Lead

2008-01-06T21:50:00.001-06:00

Jim Wideman, children's ministry professional and one of three authors of the blog, The Way We See It, writes:
"I love being spoiled. My wife has spoiled me for over 29 years. My daughters have spoiled their Dad all their life, my employees spoil me at the office on a regular basis. Because I like it so much I want to spoil others. A great goal for the New Year is to purpose in your heart to spoil your volunteers outside their classrooms as well as in. You’ve heard me say this before, you gain those you serve. It’s a spiritual law. Christ Jesus came to serve not to be served."

Read the rest of the blog article and Jim's Top 10 List for you to stand out in your church as a leader who serves their volunteers, How to Spoil Those You Lead.

Wayne