VBS is typically an action-packed, week-long experience where kids encounter the love of God through stories, worship, games, crafts, and activities. Maybe you’re starting your own church VBS for the first time, or you’re looking to refresh the experience after many years of learning. As you go into the VBS planning conversations, knowing these 5 things can help prepare you and your team to begin planning for VBS, with no prior experience needed.
Ministry can be challenging work. There is always a lot to manage. Despite our best intentions, we can find ourselves tired, depleted, and overwhelmed. If you’re in this spot, we want this article to be an encouragement to you. When we don’t find the right rhythms, keep boundaries, or have people to go with us, ministry can knock us down or, unfortunately, take us out.
If you’re like me, you’ve worked in environments where your ministry is in a silo. Each one is working for the mission but has little to do with the other’s plans, goals, or dreams. However, the best churches, the communities that value every person – kids from birth to 101, do their best to find connections from one ministry age group to the next. Collaboration between ministries is the best way to achieve a greater long-term impact in the lives of the kids and families you serve.
There is something about ministry that can leave us feeling like there are fewer hours from one week to the next: events, midweeks, meetings, discipleship, programs, curriculum, and Sundays. And just when you think you’ve got a rhythm figured out, you find your week upended and wonder how you’re chasing the clock again. Time management in ministry can be tricky, to say the least. And setting boundaries can lead us to feel some discomfort, self-doubt, and worry about whether things will get done between Sundays (or done to your liking, but that’s a different article about different boundaries). It can also leave us uncertain about where to draw the line between working and serving, or if there is a line at all. That’s why we need to learn to set boundaries, maintain balance, use discernment, and create habits that last.
Relationships, connection, and community are some of the biggest needs with our families today. Creating a solid relationship foundation with the parents in our ministries is key in setting families up for success when it comes to Spiritual Formation. How do you plan on building a relationship with them? Here are some practices to try.
I love Orlando in January! It’s the time of year that I get to go to the Children’s Pastors Conference (CPC). From the moment the confetti falls at the end of CPC, my heart longs for the next time I can reunite with friends who have become family. I work throughout the year to grow new friendships that I formed while at CPC.
You’re only a week away from Christmas Eve and Day services, with events in between.
And the last thing you need is to feel overwhelmed. But, let’s face it, you probably are.
You’re might be stress-eating cookies in the break room and downing your 4th cup of coffee of the day to stay on top of the events that will welcome old and new kids to church for maybe the first time ever or in a long time.
Christmas services feel like the stakes are high! And they are. This could be an opportunity for a kid to meet Jesus for the very first time.
All of us have pain in our lives. As children’s ministry leaders, some of us avoid dealing with our own pain because there is so much other pain that we see that needs to be healed.
We might feel we don’t have the time or energy to deal with the pain.
Maybe we feel hopeless thinking that nothing can take away the pain that we experience from our childhoods, family members, or the world.
A good leader knows a lot. A great leader grows what they know through a lifetime of learning. As a children’s ministry leader, you know a lot. You know how to captivate a room full of children. You know how to manage behavior and social issues. You know how to take a shoestring budget and run a VBS that knocks the socks off your community.
We can all agree that volunteer recruitment is an essential part of our roles as kidmin leaders. Let’s face it: we could not do what we do in ministry without a healthy and expanding volunteer team. But how do we grow our volunteer base to manage large events like VBS, fall festivals, Easter, and Christmas when we often struggle to secure enough volunteers to staff our ongoing weekly programs?
The International Network of Children’s Ministry. Connecting children’s ministry leaders to what they need to shape the church of today and tomorrow.
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