While every children's ministry coordinator is aware of the need to maintain good communication with their team, individuals and families, it is much harder to put this into practice. It's time-consuming- working out your content, ensuring you've included all relevant information, maintaining all your contact details. And, you want any message to be well-presented; to stand out from the sheer volume of information most people receive daily, and catch the attention of the recipient. High Impact eMail app may be well worth investigating. This app provides quality email templates for any occasion- casual messages, newsletters, announcements, events- that are easily customised for your individual use. You can add your own images, alter template text, insert links and more. You can also create an unlimited number of email groups straight from your iPad contacts list or add the information manually. And, you can set up your own profile with logo and contact information to be included automatically in your emails. Once you have sent your email, share it easily on Facebook and Twitter. Check out here for more information. |
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The start of a new year brings its own excitement and challenges: the anticipation of seeing anew God working in the lives of children, families and volunteers, with new ideas and exciting programs to launch and new opportunities to glimpse the wonder of little ones learning about our great and loving God. But, there are also the difficulties of working in a ministry area that is time and labour intensive, the ever-present admin tasks, the danger of becoming over-stressed, exhausted, of feeling over-whelmed and left gasping for air. This year, start with a F.R.E.S.H. approach to your children's ministry. Over the next few posts, I'll highlight five aspects of your ministry and provide you with some practical strategies. Establishing some simple but sustaining tools will equip you to handle the pressures and demands of ministry. Finally, in conclusion to this series of posts, I hope to complete and provide you with some practical worksheets to assist in your planning and organisation. But first..... 1. FOCUS. Make sure that you begin this year with a clear and concrete understanding of both your role and your vision. Many children's ministry directors or coordinators find themselves in a role that has developed apace with their growing ministry. Now, while this is understandable, there are clearly some concerns here. A children's ministry director may discover that there are unspoken expectations of them that are beyond their capabilities in both time and resources. A job description is a necessity. If you don't have one, ask for one and if you have one, read it carefully and ask for clarification if you're at all uncertain about any aspects of your role. A job description ensures that both you and the church leadership are clear about your role and your responsibilities. It also means that you can sensibly plan and structure your time and commitments in alignment with your role. Your job description will probably begin with a definition similar to the following: 'The Children's Ministry director/coordinator is responsible for overseeing all aspects of a growing children’s ministry and to ensure a smooth operating, safe and effective program. The director will recruit and train leaders and teachers who will touch children’s lives with God’s love and teach them God’s Word while laying a spiritual foundation for their relationship with Christ and teaching them to serve within the church. The director will also be a spiritual leader to those working in this ministry and provide training and encouragement to parents, equipping them to be the primary spiritual leader of their children.' It can seem a little daunting, but don't panic. Following this, you should find a list of practical expectations. Read it all carefully as this will provide you with helpful assistance in your planning and preparation. It provides you with the information you need to determine your specific areas of responsibility for children, families, volunteers and wider church family. But you also need to focus on your ministry vision. Do you have one? Is it clear to everyone? Is it included in all your ministry materials? Your ministry vision provides a yardstick for current and future ministry programs and outreach? Are these in alignment with our vision and focus? Then, they can be grow and developed. If not, it may be something that other ministry leaders would like to pursue. Do your leaders and volunteers know and share the ministry vision? Do your volunteers and leaders have a strong sense of purpose and direction? Not sure? Take this quiz from Children's Ministry to find out. Here... Then, take some time to read further: * Children's Ministry that Works! The basics and beyond. Group Overflowing with expert insights from ministry leaders. * Piece by Piece- Unlocking the puzzle for an effective ministry to today's children. Tammy Tolman Includes study questions and action steps * Making your Children's Ministry the Best Hour of Every Week. Sue Miller with David Staal Insights that can reshape your whole approach to children's ministry and cast a new vision for everyone involved. "Sit down, Joe!" "Joe, Tyler's trying to talk at the moment. Please wait until she's finished." "Chairs are for sitting on, not climbing. Please, sit!" Do you recognise Joe? Is Joe in your group? These kids cannot sit still or pay attention. They act on impulse, wiggle in their seats, move around a lot, talk too much or interrupt others. Studies show that about 9% of kids (9 out of every 100) will display these characteristics, and three times as many boys as girls. They are not bad or lazy or stupid. But they do require some help and encouragement to sit still, pay attention or complete a task. So.. what do you do? Many of the programs that you use will probably include strategies that will assist these kids. Allow kids to move frequently. We rotate the kids through various activity stations every 10 minutes. We use music as a tool for transition. The different activity/learning stations employ multi-sensory strategies when presenting the activity. We also hand out something for these kids to manipulate (stress ball, paper folding, clay) when they are engaged in listening, especially during our opening and closing sessions. You can buy these squishee stress balls from toy shops and Australian Geographic or you can make you own. (You can even create these characters for a craft activity.) You will need: *balloon *funnel (I cut a soft-drink bottle in half and use the spout end as a funnel.) *sugar, salt, sand or dried lentils *googly eyes *yarn *glue *permanent markers Directions: 1. Insert the tip of the funnel into the balloon. Fill with sugar, salt, sand or lentils. (This is actually harder than it sounds and will take some time. If you want to do this activity with kids, you might like to fill the balloons beforehand.) 2. Tie the balloon closed. 3. Glue on googly eyes, yarn for hair 4. Draw extra details with permanent marker- nose, mouth, eyebrows Hand these fun stress balls out to those kids that need to keep their hands occupied. The commencement of a new year is a great time to refocus in ministry and ensure that you begin where and how you mean to continue. So, I've included a small list from Dale Hudson (relevantchildrensministry.com) of 10 Top Leadership Tips for Children's Ministry. It's actually a list that would be relevant for any ministry and a great list to consider to ensure that your life and ministry is in balance as you begin 2012. 10 Leadership Tips for Children's Ministry 1. Who you are is more important than what you do. 2. Make people skills one of your priority growth areas. 3. People don't follow a title.. they follow someone they love and respect. 4. There will always be someone who is not happy with your decision.. accept it and don't try to appease everyone. 5. It's not what you can do; it's what you can empower others to do. 6. Learn from everyone.. everywhere... everyday. 7. When hiring, look at what someone has done in the past. Location doesn't change people. Past performance usually indicates future performance. 8. Take your day off and use your vacation time. Your future in ministry depends on it. 9. Your greates ministry is at home. 10. Details done well make the plan gel. As this year draws to a close, I know there are some who are stepping aside from their current role in children's ministry. Some are facing family challenges that are putting extra strain on their time and availability, some are moving elsewhere, some are taking on new roles or positions. Some may not even know where the coming year will see them but just know that God is leading them elsewhere.Whether this is an exciting new move or maybe a daunting prospect, it is sure to be accompanied by feelings of uncertainty and a degree of sadness that an important part of life and ministry has ended. With this in mind, I've included a post adapted for EchoHub by Gary Molander,changed a little for children's ministry, and titled 'You are not your Ministry'. I know some things about you: I know that you are not your program. I know that you are not your church. You are not your technical expertise, or lack thereof. You are not your voice, even though children love it when you're presenting the lesson. You are not what your authority figures believe about you. You are not your blog posts, or your readers' insane responses. You are not your Twitter count, or your Facebook friend total. You are not your impact. You are not your success, and you are not your failures. You are not that thing in your life that didn't work out. You are not that thing in your life that worked perfectly. But, I also know this about you; I know that, in Christ, you are a child of God. My friends, there will come a day when you no longer create exciting learning environments for children. There will come a day when the software you use is no longer in existence. There will come a day when you no longer serve in the church, in that ministry. There will come a day when he's no longer your boss, and they're no longer your leadership team. There will come a day when you quit blogging, and when people put Twitter and eight-track tapes in the same category. There will even come a day when your impact wanes. But... there will never, ever come a day when you stop being a child of God. Ever. It's impossible to avoid..administration. Forms, letters, assessments, job descriptions, references, reports, lists, lesson plans, evaluations... and the list goes on. But time-consuming as admin is, it's also important. Well-prepared enrolment forms, sign-in sheets and procedures tell parents that the safety of their children is important to you and your children's ministry. Appropriate followup letters, emails and thank you notes remind the receiver that they are valued and an integral part of the team. Readily available forms such as reimbursement forms enable volunteers to submit invoices and receipts for ministry purchases without embarrassment and ensure that they are refunded quickly and efficiently. All these administration tools really do have an important role in the smooth functioning your ministry. So, we are gradually building up a collection of helpful forms in the 'Downloads' section of our website. Please download any files there that may assist you in your ministry and allow you to focus more of your valuable time and energies on children and families. |
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