By Rick Chromey
Children”s ministry in the smaller church has the same amazing potential to grow and thrive as a mustard seed. It”s all in how you cultivate it.
This practical guide provides insights that will encourage you in your children”s ministry, along with ready-to-use tools for evaluation, budgeting, and teacher training. Energize your children”s ministry! Use these innovative strategies for mega-impact with limited resources, people, and money.
Energizing Children”s Ministry in the Smaller Church (item 42311) is available from your local supplier or at www.standardpub.com.
To lead a children”s ministry in the 21st century””regardless of church size and shape””requires a new set of skills and perspectives that reflects pure GOLD . . .
GRACE
In a world enamored by techniques (incentives, prizes, gimmicks, and treats), grace remains a compelling and compassionate leadership asset. Grace is messy, offbeat, radical, forgiving, free, and beyond belief.
Grace surprises and delights volunteers. It”s Jesus saving Peter from drowning or freeing an adulterous woman. It”s a children”s leader who forgives (for the umpteenth time) a mess or a mistake. Grace is deeply rooted to incarnational relationship. It understands the unique context of every volunteer””including spiritual, emotional, financial, and career environments. Grace-filled leaders release individuality, creativity, and passion.
Of course, it”s easier to treat your staff like dogs and rats””even unintentionally””but the work of authentic leadership employs unconditional acceptance, love, and expectations to guide and guard.
ORGANISM
For most of the church”s history, and especially within the past 500 years, a mechanized approach to leadership has prevailed. But for the first time in centuries, perhaps ever, due to a cyber culture, we”re seeing a reemergence of hyperrelational, communal, and interactive organizational structures.
So throw out the flow charts, lines of leadership, and “boss” mentality. In today”s culture your volunteer management needs to be fluid and flexible. People skills and communication, not a plan or purpose statement, are key components to motivating change.
This doesn”t mean you don”t have goals, but rather, no goal is sacred. Living organisms are constantly changing, unlike a machine that is programmed and rigid in structure. Therefore, children”s ministry is continually moving and maneuvering to meet the needs of kids, parents, volunteers, and the congregation within a local context. One size no longer fits all. One curriculum no longer fits every church. One resource, strategy, or idea no longer works across the board.
Need a metaphor? Instead of trying to be a one-size-fits-all Wal-Mart, seek to be like Walgreens, contextualized and connected to specific neighborhoods.
LOOPY
Feedback today is loopy, not linear. In other words, evaluation happens all the time in multiple contexts. Leaders employ numerous feedback strategies to constantly sniff the environment for success and failure.
The best feedback is virtual and viral. In a cyber culture, people are growing increasingly comfortable with rating, ranking, complimenting, and criticizing their experiences. A children”s ministry could go loopy through occasional cybersurveys, cyberinventories, or weekly e-mail blasts to volunteers, parents, and even children to seek feedback.
The greater number of detectors you use, the clearer the picture will be of what your ministry is doing right (and wrong) and where it should be headed.
DECENTRALIZED
The emergence of megatechnologies like television, the Internet, and cellular phones has flattened and decentralized our culture. Everybody is a filmmaker (YouTube). Everybody is a star (American Idol). Everybody is connected anytime and anywhere (“Can you hear me now? Good.”). This decentralization has created a wholesale change in how leadership organizations operate for success, especially children”s ministries.
For hundreds of years, civilized cultures, in particular, have functioned through centralized formats. Leaders led from the center and the top. Now leaders lead from the edges and the bottom. Leaders influence and inspire the team. Leaders guide and guard the vision, values, and voice of the children”s ministry community (kids and parents).
They don”t operate in isolation or as a dictator. Rather, they view every person as a leader with power to influence for change. This may be the most difficult of all leadership shifts because it demands releasing control to those who might fail, power to those who might abuse, and vision to those who might be blind.
Nevertheless, decentralized leadership empowers everyone to make a difference. It views every person as a volunteer leader within the children”s ministry. It opens opportunity and creates change.
In a nutshell, a thriving children”s ministry will be immersed in grace (unconditional love and acceptance, surprise and delight). It will be a fluid and flexible organism that changes year to year, month to month, and even Sunday to Sunday. It will also be loopy in its feedback, leaning upon multiple evaluation tools. And finally, the power will flow from the edges to the middle rather than vice versa.
If that sounds like a smaller church in context, you”re right. The smaller congregation is perfectly sized for fluidity, feedback, and freedom.
Rick Chromey of Boise, Idaho, is a writer, speaker, and trainer for churches, schools, and businesses. His Web site is www.rickchromey.com.
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