LifeWay

Kids Ministry

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

Evangelism, Leadership, Podcasts, Resources, Training, Uncategorized

The Gospel Is For Volunteers Too

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This week’s episode of the LifeWay Kids Podcast features a conversation with John Murchison, the Director of Children’s Ministry at The Austin Stone Community Church in Austin, TX. In our desire to share the gospel with kids, have we neglected to share that same gospel with the volunteers serving with us? The gospel is not just the way to become a Christian, it also sustains and motivates the work of ministry. In this episode John & Jeffrey discuss ways to recruit, train, sustain, and send volunteers with the basis of the good news of Jesus Christ.

Encouragement, Encouraging, Kids Ministry, kids101, Leadership, Podcasts, Resources

Greatest Wins in Children’s Ministry

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Leadership can often times be challenging and discouraging. Any seasoned leader will tell you that having community with other leaders is vital. It’s critical for a number of reasons, but often times, that community is where is an encouraging word that can lift up your spirit as you seek to follow God’s direction to lead the ministries He has entrusted to you. On today’s podcast, we sit down with 3 children’s ministry leaders and ask them one question: What is your greatest single win so far in your ministry? We believe their answers will surprise you. Our hope is that what God is doing in the lives of these leaders will be a catalytic moment in your own ministry & leadership. Today’s guests include Heidi Hensley, Chad Overton, and Chad Owens.

 

 

 

Kids Ministry, Leadership, Parent Helps, Parenting, Podcasts, Resources

Connecting the Church with the Home

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The concept of connecting the church with the home is certainly nothing new, but it has recently become very popular. As this philosophy of ministry is considered, one question that church leaders must ask is who is ultimately responsible for the spiritual development of a child, the church or the home? In church ministry, there is a renewed wave of thinking that is seeking to not just teach kids the Bible, but ultimately equip families to minister to their children as well. So how do we practically equip families? What would happen if your kids ministry assumed your families never go to church rather than assuming they know what church is all about?

Heidi Hensley joins us on the LifeWay Kids Podcast to give us wisdom and insight from her experience leading at Bayside Church, a multi-campus church in Northern California. Heidi serves as children’s pastor at Bayside and has been in children’s ministry for over 20 years.

Heidi will also be joining us for LifeWay’s new ETCH Family Ministry Conference in October. Formerly known as KMC, where this podcast episode was recorded, we’ve expanded our national event to include not only kids ministry leaders, but student ministry and family ministry leaders too.  The topic of today’s podcast really helps to set the stage for what our new conference is all about. As we all work to minister to children, students and families, it’s important that you attend a conference together, as a team. This is where you begin to see strategic connection points with what you are doing in children’s ministry and how it feeds into your student ministry. To make our conference even more accessible, we’ve dropped our rates from last year and even extended these discounts to extend for a few more weeks, so now is a great time to register your team for ETCH Family Ministry Conference. Visit our website to learn more and register today!

Encouragement, Kids Ministry, Leadership, Podcasts, Resources, Training

Growing as a Leader to Grow Your Ministry

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In this week’s episode, we gathered a few kids ministry leaders together to answer an important question: “What can a leader do, in their own life, to grow with their church or to grow their ministry?” The reality is that as a leader, two of your main responsibilities are to develop others and develop a vision for your ministry for the future. Regardless if you are at a small to mid-size church or a larger church, these principles remain the same. We invited Brent Moxey – Children’s Pastor at Westridge Church in Dallas GA, Danielle Bell – Minister to Children at Dawson Memorial in Birmingham AL, and Chad Owens –  Kids Associate Director at Grace Church in Overland Park KS to help us think about this question. These ministry leaders provide some lessons learned from their own journey of leading teams in their various ministries.

Kids Ministry, Leadership, Podcasts, Resources, Training, Uncategorized

The Art of Delegation

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In children’s ministry, it is very easy drift into the mindset that you must do everything yourself. This is why the art of delegation is, for many of us, an area of growth in our leadership. Does delegation mean you are working yourself out of a job? How do you know when you need to delegate something? In the newest episode of the LifeWay Kids Podcast, Chuck Peters, LifeWay Kids Director of Operations, sits down with Heidi Hensley, Children’s Pastor at Bayside Church to discuss answers to these questions. Heidi also shares some of her insights and delegation techniques as she leads her team of staff and volunteers at Bayside Church.

Kids Ministry, kids101, Leadership, Levels of Biblical Learning, Podcasts, Resources, Training

Developing A Philosophy in Children’s Ministry

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In this week’s episode of the LifeWay Kids Podcast, Chuck Peters, LifeWay Kids Director of Operations, sits down with Dr. Shelly Melia at last year’s Kids Ministry Conference (now called ETCH Family Ministry Conference) to discuss how important is it that we have a distinct philosophy behind what we do in children’s ministry. Having a philosophy helps provide clarity and focus in our ministry and that focus helps us to know what to say yes to and what to say no to. In other words, it’s a critical aspect as a children’s ministry leader, to help build and develop a philosophy for how you do what you do.

Many start out in children’s ministry in reactive mode. To develop a philosophy, you are getting to the 30,000 foot level where you can think about the big picture and become more proactive to your approach. Dr. Melia helps us think about practical steps for how we can start to develop a philosophy of ministry.

Dr. Melia has been in children’s ministry for over 20 years and currently serves as the Director of the Master of Arts in Children’s Ministry program at Dallas Baptist University.

Kids Ministry, Kids Ministry Curriculum, Resources, Worship

From Basic to Blown-Away: Different Types of Kids Worship

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rp_land-150x150.jpgA few years ago, when we created Worship For Life: Kids, I had a brilliant idea. I emailed our children’s minister and asked if I could start Kids’ Worship at our church. He did have some reservations, but at the time our kids ministry associate at the church was also excited to help start kids worship. With the blessing of the kids’ minister, we proceeded.

  Like many churches, our church is configured of several different buildings connected by a labyrinth of hallways. We decided to meet in the choir room so that it would be close to the sanctuary. We had the right technology and a couple of volunteers, so we were set to go. As God often does, he called away our kids ministry associate to serve in another church and soon, there I was, with one other faithful volunteer planning kids worship.

  Gradually we have been able to build our volunteer base to a few faithful volunteers so we are no longer in children’s church every week, but it is still a struggle. So, we have what I would call a “basic” kids’ worship. Here are some different ways I’ve seen churches using Kids Worship resources from LifeWay.

  1. Basic: This kids worship option is one where you have rotating volunteers and they are able to read over the session quickly and mainly rely on the videos available. Worship For Life: Kids is a great option for this type of worship. Please note that Worship For Life: Kids is becoming Bible Studies For Life: Kids Worship starting in the Fall of 2016.
  2. Blended: This kids worship option combines the best of both worlds. You have video options, as well as, live host links. In the blended option, volunteers do not rely upon the video options as heavily as they do in the basic option. Explore the Bible for Kids, The Gospel Project for Kids, and Bible Studies For Life: Kids Worship could all be examples of using a blended approach. Using this approach you might use the music videos and Bible story videos provided, but the host or leaders do all of the other teaching segments. The blended approach might also be for churches where kids are in the worship service for part of the time and then move out to children’s church.

Blown-Away: This is a totally produced children’s worship service. Live music, drama, and Bible story tellers. The use of video is limited to countdowns and other bumper type videos. Bible Studies For Life: Kids Worship provides a fully scripted kids worship hour that a church could use for this type of service. For more information about this service, check out this video from an awesome Kids Worship service at SugarCreek Baptist Church in Sugarland, Texas.

Jeff Land serves as the Publishing Team Leader for Bible Studies for Life: Kids. Jeff holds degrees from Mississippi College and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. Jeff has served as a Children’s Minister and teaches kids weekly in his church.

Encouragement, Evangelism, Kids Ministry, Leadership, Missions, Podcasts, Resources, Training

Reaching the Inner-City with the Gospel

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In this week’s episode, we sit down with Dr. Eric Mason (@pastoremase) at our Kids Ministry Conference in 2015. Dr. Mason is the lead pastor at Epiphany Fellowship in Philadelphia, PA. He is also the founder and president of Thriving, which is an urban ministry organization committed to training leaders for ministry in cities locally, nationally, and internationally.

In this conversation, we talk about the greatest challenges in our culture to reaching kids and families, especially in the inner-city. Dr. Mason shares his insights on what churches can do to reach across ethnic, socioeconomic, cultural and other boundaries to win kids and families to Christ. Dr. Mason also expounds upon how his church has engaged their culture and some practical things they do to reach families and their community.

 

Kids Bible Study, Kids Ministry, Kids Ministry Curriculum, Parent Helps, Resources, Sunday School

Using a Social Media Plan

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Jeff Land-150x150Are you a planner? Do you always want to know “What’s next!”? It seems that lots of Kids Ministers are planners and for a very good reason. We have to have a plan for helping kids know Jesus as their Lord and Savior. That plan is effected by what camps we choose, which VBS we use, and the weekly curriculum we choose for our kids to study. Each of LifeWay Kids’ curriculum lines will help you as you develop that plan.

In the past few years, Kids Ministers and church leaders have recognized what we have known for many years: Parents need to be a part of the plan. Apps, take home pages, cards, and other resources have been developed to help bring parents in on the conversation.

There’s another great planning resource that you might not be aware of: it’s a social media plan. Each of LifeWay Kids’ ongoing curriculum lines now offers a social media plan to help you connect parents to what their kids are learning each week in their Bible study classes.

Using the plan is easy:

    1. Find the social media plan that fits the curriculum you use in your church: Bible Studies For Life: Kids
    2. The Gospel Project for Kids (choose the quarter you want and look under “Parent Resources.”
    3. Explore the Bible Kids (available on Enhanced CD)
  1. Decide how you want to share the information. Consider starting a Facebook page, Twitter Account, or Instagram for your church’s Kids Ministry.
  2. Copy the information provided from the Social Media Plan for your chosen curriculum and paste it into the status update bar for your social media site.

Remembering to update your church’s social media every single day could be a confusing and time-consuming task. I like to use Hootsuite, because you can schedule multiple posts to update each day on several different sites. I take time at the beginning of every quarter to use the social media plan on Hootsuite for the entire quarter, then I don’t have to think about it again for three months.

By providing social media posts for your parents to read each day with their kids, you are giving them little nudges toward spiritual conversations with their kids.

Keep up with Bible Studies For Life: Kids and The Gospel Project for Kids on Facebook for all of the latest information.

Jeff Land serves as the Publishing Team Leader for Bible Studies for Life: Kids. Jeff holds degrees from Mississippi College and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. Jeff has served as a Children’s Minister and teaches kids weekly in his church.

Events, Fun, Kids Bible Study, Kids Ministry, Leadership, Podcasts, Preschoolers, Resources, Small Groups, Training

How Do You Setup Your Classroom?

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In this week’s episode of the LifeWay Kids podcast, our lead kids ministry specialist, Bill Emeott, sits down to discuss the importance of setting up a classroom. This is an element of kids ministry that has evolved over the years. Setting up a classroom in today’s culture can mean very different things because a classroom setting looks different at every church. For this conversation, we are simply defining a classroom as a physical place where kids will gather. The classroom environment starts with what kind of person is leading that small group, but then it moves to all the physical attributes of the space you are in. Bill and Jeffrey discuss the different types of environments and how that environment impacts the type of setup you need.

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