LifeWay

Kids Ministry

Dedicated to helping Kids Ministry leaders in their mission of making disciples

Volunteers

Get Teens in Your Church Ready for Serving in Kids Ministry

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With many churches back up and running or planning to reopen soon, I imagine that figuring out kids ministry in this “new normal” will present some new opportunities and also bring back some age-old challenges.

My role at my church is volunteering in kids ministry and I know one thing every church leader needs is dependable volunteers who can serve in ministry. Whether you have plenty of leaders or plenty of open spots, I challenge you to invest in teens as a part of your kids ministry’s future.

We know that kids don’t stay kids … they grow up and turn into crazy teenagers! But we know teens don’t stay teens … they grow up, have families, and figure out stuff in life. I believe there is a place for a person at any stage to serve in kids ministry! You can invest in teens (even those who were in kids ministry last year) and find a place for them to grow and learn about service in the church.

Begin to look for ways to encourage teens to have meaningful experiences and develop helpful skills. All opportunities may not all be in your ministry, but if you are the minister investing in them, trust that you are doing Kingdom work and that it will hopefully turn into more of them coming to serve!

Start with a couple of teens you know and encourage them to:

  • Volunteer at church in some area of ministry
  • Serve in VBS (if VBS is online this year, you better have some digital natives helping you pull off that event!)
  • Coach or help in a sports league
  • Volunteer as a tutor with a younger student

Challenge them with skills that pay off in other situations like:

  • Doing things without their phone in tow … or at least on silent
  • Learning to communicate clearly and concisely
  • Overcoming apprehension talking with folks outside their peer group

If there are older teens or college students that you have relationships with or serving in your ministry encourage them to be a summer camp staffer. You get to send them out to get experience with us, we invest in them over a summer, and you get back an even stronger volunteer for your kids ministry going forward!  See also “5 Not So Hidden Benefits of Serving on Camp Staff.”

CentriKid is for 2nd-6th graders, but it’s also a place for college students to serve! We’ve got camp staff roles for recreation staff, Bible study leaders, production roles, and worship band spots. We would love to meet students you trust in ministry and help develop them further! Point a potential applicant to centrikid.com/staff for more information.

CentriKid, Kids Camp, Parenting, StudentLife for Kids

Help Your Kids Navigate Summer Camp Like a Pro

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There are so many benefits for a child who attends overnight camp. They will enjoy new activities led by the camp staff, visit a fun new place, and break up the routine of normal life. The adventures at summer camp bring life-long memories and help children gain confidence and independence. We want kids to hit the ground running so they can thrive in the camp experience, so here are three skills that parents can build now to help their kids navigate summer camp like a pro.

Train kids to start-up their day. Kids at summer camp need to make good use of their time and know how to get going with their day. Mom doesn’t have to put the daily clothes in a plastic bag. Maybe she could guide the selections while packing for camp, but elementary kids can start their day at camp with picking out clothes, brushing teeth, and getting shoes on. They might need a wake-up call from the adults at camp, but practice during the school year with a start-up routine so kids can pick out clothes and get dressed for the day at camp.

Equip kids to eat responsibly at camp. The food at camp is almost always a punchline, but food issues are no laughing matter. For first time campers, going through the line and making selections at a self-service dining hall can be a challenge. For campers with special dietary allergies, they need to be self-aware about safe foods or problematic ones. For all campers, the temptation to eat a whole box of cheese snacks at bedtime will be real … but that’s never a good idea! Before camp, your kids need to practice making choices for fixing their plate and cleaning up their table area, too. 

Give kids practice with handling money. Most parents send their kids to camp with some spending money, but for some kids it is the first time they have ever handle money that is theirs to make decisions about. Prepare kids for the restaurant stop on the way to camp, the camp store, and considering the missions offering. I’ve seen kids hand a fast food worker their $20 bill for lunch and walk off, and I’ve also heard about kids who spend all their money on the offering and camp store and have nothing left to buy lunch on the way home.  

Parents can role-play scenarios related to each of these at home to set them up for success at summer camp and for normal life. When kids come to camp taking care of these things, the church leaders and camp staff can focus their time and energy on making the amazing camp adventures into life-long memories!  


For more on getting kids ready for summer camp, check out these tips for helping kids who are hesitant to stay away from home, and tips for preparing parents to send kids to camp.

Crafts, Thanksgiving

Turkey Tails and Thankfulness

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Happy thanksgiving from everyone at the CentriKid office! 

I don’t know about you, but for me it can be pretty easy to get caught up in all the family gatherings, home cooked foods, and cute fall scented candles that make you think I’ve been baking cinnamon rolls all morning. All of those are so fun and seasonal, and things that I am so grateful for, but this year we want to focus on being more intentional with our thanksgiving and I hope you will all join us!

Every year the CentriKid office team makes Thankful Turkeys where we list all of the people and places that we are thankful for on the tail of a turkey! We are so thankful for things like camp ministry, a job that allows us to serve the Church, ministry leaders who take the time to serve the Lord every day, and overall we are thankful for the Gospel! 

Here are some ways to step up our Thankful Turkey game:

-Make Thankful Turkeys together with friends or family. Use this time to talk about the things you are grateful for and share ideas of how you can continue to remain grateful for the things the Lord has given you.

-If you wrote down a person or people that you are thankful for, take a few minutes to write them as small note and let them know that you are thankful for them! 

-Make this a habit! Every month, write down all of the people/places/things you are thankful for. Maybe for christmas, you can make a thankful Christmas Tree … who knows?!

-Pray. Take time to thank the Lord for giving you all of these things. 1 Timothy 4:4 says that everything created by God is good … so let’s bring it all back to Him and give Him thanks!

Make sure to post a picture of your Thankful Turkeys on social media and tag us @Centrikid and use the tag #CKThanks. We can’t wait to see all of the things that you are thankful for … and we might even repost some turkeys! As always, thank you for taking the time with us to reflect on what we are Grateful for this holiday season!

Uncategorized

Connecting the Gospel with Activities (Training from CentriKid)

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At CentriKid, we share the gospel with kids by connecting spiritual applications with many of the activities throughout the camp day.

We have a training session for connecting the gospel to every activity with kids. This is a page from our playbook that is available for you to lead your ministry as a more gospel centered kids ministry.

Download the free Training Plan that includes a guide for the session, links to the handout for participants, & training videos you can use as part of the session.

For your kids ministry or for parents in your ministry, here are some great additional resources:

We know the importance of clearly sharing the message of Christ to kids and camp gives many opportunities to connect God’s Word to camp activities. My prayer is that this training will give you confidence in connecting every activity to the gospel. 

With this training session, we are opening up the playbook and equipping kids ministry leaders to train their volunteers with the same materials and plan that we use to train CentriKid staffers. Thousands of adult leaders experienced this training session at camp in 2019 and we hope this resource is valuable for many more to be trained in connecting the gospel to every activity with kids.

Jeremy Echols leads the CentriKid Camps team. He, his wife Emily, and their precious daughter love their church, their neighborhood, and spending time together. Jeremy loves to read, watch sports, and grill burgers.

CentriKid, Kids Camp, Kids Ministry, Leadership, StudentLife for Kids

Camp 2020 – Registration is Open!

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Registration is open for all LifeWay Camps for 2020!  Many churches plan their calendars in advance, so look ahead and make sure you get your camp spots reserved now for next summer.

CentriKid Camps and Student Life For Kids dates are online and open for registration, and many of them will fill up quickly. The earlier you sign up, the more options are available to choose from.

For CentriKid Camps, visit centrikid.com

For Student Life For Kids, visit studentlifeforkids.com

No matter the camp you choose, reserve your spot today, deposit free! Deposits are not due until 2020.  This way, you can register for camp and confirm your calendar dates, but wait for next year’s budget to take care of the deposits.

Contact us with any questions you have along the way.  For more planning tips, if you’ve never been to camp, listen to this podcast Planning for Summer: Why Camp Is Important or read 3 Things You Could Be Missing if you Skip Summer Camp.

Jeremy Echols leads the camps area for LifeWay Kids. He, his wife Emily, and their precious daughter love their church, their neighborhood, and spending time together. Jeremy enjoys reading, watching sports, and all of his daughter’s after-school activities.

Kids Camp, Kids Ministry, Leadership

Tips for Kids Hesitant to Stay Overnight at Camp

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Camp is one of THE BEST WEEKS of the summer, but some kids have never been away from home. We hear from kids ministry leaders who ask about helping young campers get ready for their first time away at overnight camp.

One leader wrote to me and asked:

“I am having kind of a difficult time recruiting because this is the first time a group has gone, our ministry is relatively small right now, and we have a lot of younger children that are hesitant to leave home for a week. If you have any tips, I would greatly appreciate it!”

As a leader recruiting kids (and parents) for the first time, you need to provide as many answers to questions as possible. Anticipate questions and concerns that parents or kids may ask and hold a meeting to talk through it all. An “interest meeting” or “Q&A session” can be a way to discuss camp without parents feeling the pressure of having to sign up or commit to going just by coming to the meeting.

Consider getting parents to go with kids who are nervous about the first time away. I know for some groups that could be problematic to have too many parents, but for other groups that is a key to helping kids feel less nervous and a way to get the needed adult sponsors or chaperones that you need.

With young campers who just haven’t been away from mom and dad before, a test-run might help prepare the families for overnight camp. Encourage parents to find a safe/trusted place for kids to have an overnight (away from home) experience. It might be a couple of nights with grandparents, or possibly some families may want to group up and have a sleepover with some of the girls from the group and another with some of the boys … this could be the type of thing that helps kids have a good time, enjoy their friends, and realize they will survive a night away from home.

More than anything … don’t force it. Take whoever is willing to attend this year and then those who go will come back and help sell it to the other kids for next year. Better to have a smaller group Year 1 than to have a bunch of kids you coerced into going, and they end up having a shaky start to their camp experience.

For more about talking with parents about sending their kids to camp, read “Camp Creates Courageous Parents”

Jeremy Echols leads the camps area for LifeWay Kids. He, his wife Emily, and their precious daughter love their church, their neighborhood, and spending time together. Jeremy enjoys reading, watching sports, and all of his daughter’s after-school activities.

Kids Ministry, Leadership, Missions

World Bean Game

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The World Bean Game is an activity designed to provide kids an experience that makes the challenges of global hunger and the need for missions more tangible.  Download the free PDF with game background, setup instructions, and rules for the kids.

This game was used at CentriKid Camps in 2007 during an evening “party” activity—but we still get requests for the instructions and content from church leaders, and it was over a decade ago since we used the game at camp.

QUICK DESCRIPTION:

Players must purchase supplies for their basic needs. By distributing different numbers of beans to players from different groups, you’ll create a situation where some players have plenty and many who don’t have nearly enough.

GOALS / OUTCOMES

After the game, plan for time to discuss the experience. You’ll see some kids who are competitive and frustrated by the experience, but hopefully, all kids realize the physical needs that exist around the world and opportunities missionaries have to help meet physical needs and share the gospel.

Ask questions like:

  • Was the game fair?
  • What made the game easy or difficult?
  • Was it easy to recognize the missionaries?
  • What if everyone had the same amount of beans?

SUPPLIES NEEDED

Supplies are pretty simple, but setup takes a little bit of preparation. You’ll need lots of beans, baggies for each player to hold their beans, and some cards and signs for gameplay.  Everything you need for the game from background explanations, setup instructions, supplies, and rules for the kids can be found in the free PDF download of World Bean Game.

Surprisingly the clean-up after the game is not too crazy because kids are working hard to collect beans as currency, they tend to drop very few of them.

Jeremy Echols leads the camps area for LifeWay Kids. He, his wife Emily, and their precious daughter love their church, their neighborhood, and spending time together. Jeremy enjoys reading, watching sports, and all of his daughter’s after-school activities.

Kids Ministry, Leadership, Parenting

Camp Creates Courageous Parents

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As a leader in kids ministry, you’ve seen kids “grow up” at camp, but did you know camp creates courageous parents too?

Camp is an amazing environment for kids to get out of their normal routine, try something new, explore a new place, and make lifelong memories. Every summer we see kids do brave things like trying a zip line, jump off the diving board, or in some cases, their courage is tested by just traveling on the bus and staying away from home for a few nights.  

While the kids are away at camp, some parents breathe a sigh of relief … but most parents wonder, worry, and have to face fears of their own! Will my child like any of the food in the dining hall? Will my daughter make new friends? Will my son shower at some point during the week?

We love to encourage kids to grow through the camp experience, but parents can grow too. Here are some challenges that a Kids Ministry leader can give parents in your pre-camp information meetings. Encourage parents to grow, and give them support as you challenge them to:

  1. Send your child to an overnight camp without you. This is a huge step for some parents and not as big a deal for others. As a kidmin leader, you must discern where the parent/child readiness is here.
  2. Invest in your child spiritually at home, even if you don’t know all the answers. Your kids ministry teaching is wonderful, but a parent investing at home is so much more valuable than what we can do at camp or at church.
  3. Trust other people like a church leader or summer staff to pour into your child spiritually. It takes a team, and sometimes a new face or new place at camp will uncover a wonderful discipleship conversation where camp staffers and church leaders contribute to a child’s spiritual growth.
  4. Allow your child some independence. Give parents a packing list, but encourage them to allow their kids to make their own clothes selections and eating selection in a stay away situation like camp.  
  5. Make the necessary sacrifices. For some families, it means sacrificing time at the beach or the pool. For other families, they have to make financial sacrifices to afford to send a child (or children) to camp. Help parents see the importance of camp and be courageous to trust God with their time and finances because of the powerful spiritual impact camp can have on kids.

For parents who are not sending their kids away for the very first time, there may be different opportunities for growth. It could be that going to camp and investing in the whole group, eating camp food, and staying in the dorm is the courageous move. For parents who cannot go away to camp, they may need to be courageous enough to allow some distance and NOT call their child every day at camp. This might help the child be more courageous with leaving home and grow through the feelings of homesickness.

Jeremy Echols leads the camps area for LifeWay Kids. He, his wife Emily, and their precious daughter love their church, their neighborhood, and spending time together. Jeremy enjoys reading, watching sports, and all of his daughter’s after-school activities.

CentriKid, Kids Ministry, Leadership, StudentLife for Kids

How about a summer resolution?

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Now that the ideals, attempts, failures, and frustrations of New Year resolutions are behind us, how are you realistically planning to grow and learn this year?  

Consider studying NOW in your personal time around where your kids will be studying this summer. You can lead THEM to spiritual growth if YOU are already pursuing it in your personal walk with the Lord. Summer kids camp is always a milestone event for spiritual growth, so get a head-start!

LifeWay Kids provides camp experiences for church groups that place you in a key role for discipling your kids. Our summer camp staffers will lead the programming and set the stage to make the message of Christ clear in the lives of kids, but you are the one going home with kids after camp and your influence is so important.

At CentriKid 2019, our theme is “All Access” God wants Himself to be known. He has given you an “all-access pass” by revealing His name, the way to Him through Jesus, and His power as an expression of His love for you. God has revealed that He is the only true God, He’s not hidden, and He wants a relationship with you.  The key verse is John 17:3—start memorizing that now! If you take your kids to CentriKid Camps this summer, a resource to consider is “Remember God” by Annie F. Downs where she reminds us that God is who He says He is.

At Student Life for Kids 2019, we have designed our theme to help your kids understand that without Jesus we are broken. When we believe in Jesus, God transforms us, and God uses us to help transform the world. We filter everything your kids experience through our theme, from dramas and games to sermons and Bible studies. The key verse is 2 Corinthians 5:17, so commit that to memory!  If you are taking kids to Student Life For Kids this summer, a resource to consider is a book our camp team is reading right now! “Spiritual Leadership” by J. Oswald Sanders will challenge you to grow as a leader and also spur you along your faith journey.

Jeremy Echols leads the CentriKid Camps team and manages the LifeWay Kids events.  He, his wife Emily, and their precious daughter love their church, their neighborhood, and spending time together.  Jeremy loves to read, watch sports, and grill burgers.

Kids Ministry, Leadership

How Do You Get Ideas Done?

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Ministry to-do lists involve a lot! If your ministry to-do list is anything like mine, it involves things that happen every week, larger monthly projects, and a few annual events that all have actions required. And, often I have unexpected things that arise because I work with people, and I work inside of an organization that is larger than just my team. Getting everything done would be no problem if (a) there were no unexpected things added, (b) ministry didn’t involve people, or (c) I didn’t have a life outside of work.   

Since those things aren’t going away, here are a few tips to support and encourage you with getting things done this year for your ministry. This can help you with taking your new ideas from “ideation” to “action” and this can also help you sharpen the focus on your existing work:

  1. Start with a Plan—Take a few minutes to identify a plan, even if you can’t plan out every detail in the first sitting. Be realistic and start writing out your ideas (paper, computer, markerboard) so you can begin to see all that is involved. Don’t forget to consider the big picture and make sure the “why” of your work matches the mission of your ministry. Also, consider the details. For some, the details will come to your mind from the very beginning, and others will need help thinking of all the details. In either case, make a plan!
  2. Watch the Calendar—Whenever ideas emerge, sometimes they can be put into practice immediately, and other things have to wait for the right season or timing. So, identify when your idea needs to happen and build in the proper markers along the way. One of the tools we use in LifeWay Kids is a “start meeting.” This is a specific type of meeting with the key personnel needed to kick off a project and give it a budget, timeline, and parameters. After the start meeting, there should be a clear delivery deadline and hopefully some markers along the way for seeing progress.
  3. Involve the Team—We are smarter together than we are individually, so plug your team into making your ministry ideas happen. If you don’t have a formal team, you can create a team to serve together on a project. Cast vision for the “why” and look for opportunities to develop their connection, earn trust, and get buy-in towards the goal. As you move forward with the team, assign tasks clearly and check in periodically. You can do more with a coordinated effort than you can alone.
  4. Leverage Technology—Make lists, share documents, find apps that support your idea and make it easier for the team to collaborate. One of the oldest tricks in the book is to write down a list, but if that is only in your paper notebook, nobody can view that or help you with it. Even something as simple as a shared list in the “Notes” app or a shared Google Doc will make it easier to get your team involved and keep them on the same page. There are certainly more robust project management apps if your ministry idea requires it, but starting with a shared list and a couple of meetings or updates along the life of the project will do wonders for team collaboration and accountability to the deadline.

Your best ideas deserve an opportunity for excellence. The kids in your ministry will never realize your effort to bring ideas to “done” in a more intentional way, but the impact of your work is powerful and has eternal implications. So start with a plan, watch the calendar, involve the team, and leverage technology so your ministry can transform from “lots of ideas that may somehow happen” to “ideas are developed and making an impact!”

Jeremy Echols leads the CentriKid Camps team and manages the LifeWay Kids events.  He, his wife Emily, and their precious daughter love their church, their neighborhood, and spending time together.  Jeremy loves to read, watch sports, and grill burgers.

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