Don’t get any ideas. Please don’t start sending boxes of old bubble wrap to the KidzMatter office. We have plenty.
Ever since I was a kid I have loved popping bubble wrap. Today the Sunday School Superintendent at my church sent me a link to a website where I can pop bubble wrap to my hearts content. Stress relief - you have to love it!
Check it out for yourself. Go ahead, click here. Come on, you know you want to.
Be honest. If you’re like 95% of children’s pastors, you are working on a tight budget. Here’s a website you need to know about. I just found them a month ago in a Google search. It’s GotPrint.com. We needed some postcards printed for KidzMatter, and they’ll print 5,000 for 99 bucks. (See the card we printed.) These aren’t black and whites, they are full-color, glossy, with a bleed. If you find a better deal let me know, it’s the best I have found. I uploaded the artwork and in a week I had them in my hands.
Check it out for yourself. Think of the hundreds of ways you could use 5,000 postcards. Hey, you’ll only be out a couple pennies each and your senior pastor will be proud of the money you saved.
I love coffee. I am the only one in my family that likes coffee (my mom says it’s a bad habit I picked up from Ryan). But I hate the room temperature coffee that we have in the Sunday School classrooms at our church. It gets brewed before 7:30, and sits for at least 2 hours, and I typically, if at all, don’t get to drink it until 10:45 or 11, so there’s only so much I can complain about. Now, I do appreciate that someone gets there early to make it, but it’s just nasty 3 hours later. (I have submitted a petition to put a Starbucks in the church, but Ryan just laughed at me.) I like coffee either icy cold or steamy hot, but room temperature? Blech. No, double blech.
So why am I ranting about coffee on a ministry blog? Because Jesus doesn’t like icky coffee. OK, so actually he doesn’t like lukewarm Christians (or ministries!). But you get the idea.
Revelation 3:15-16 (ESV)- “I know your works; you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spit you out of my mouth.”
That passage was Jesus talking to the church in Laodicea (I had to respell that about 15 times). He was speaking specifically to the church members, but he was imploring them, “Either be cold or hot, but not room temperature!” He was basically telling them to either be all for him, or all against him, but somewhere in between was unacceptable. He didn’t want them to simply be “room temperature”, changing based on the environment they were in, because it looked bad! It was a poor testimony. Jesus was out and out telling these people that he would rather that they not tell others about him and live a life of sin than tell other about him and have a poor testimony! Wow!
Apply this to your ministry. Jesus wants you to have a remarkable ministry. He would rather that you did not do ministry at all, than give it a half-hearted, pathetic attempt and call it ministry. What it the reputation of your ministry with the kids of the community? Is it cool and welcoming, or old-fashioned and stodgy? If your ministry has a bad rep, ask what you could do to fix it! Don’t simply change the tone of your ministry based on the “room temperature”, the “trends in ministry”, but change it to meet the needs of kids to make an eternal impact. Have kids in your ministry, and parents as well, who remark on your ministry. The promise of “sitting on the Throne of God with Jesus” sure sounds better than “getting spit out like room temperature coffee”, doesn’t it?
My wife went shopping yesterday and bought Luci an inflatable swimming pool on sale. It was a Banzai Alligator Pool (pictured to the left) and hey it was a bargain marked down to $15. Or was it? Look at the picture. The front of the box shows two preschool girls and three elementary boys splashing and having fun.
Boy, were we deceived. We blew up the pool to find that it was nothing like the picture. There’s no way three preschoolers could fit inside that pool, leave alone two third-grade boys. The streaming flow of water coming down the slide? It doesn’t exist. The pool is so small that I had to take one of the slides out to make room for Luci and her toys.
Don’t promise more than you can deliver. It might land you a few sales, you might get your audience, you might even get a few pats on the back, but you won’t build trust. Only promise what you know you can deliver.
My wife bought me an iPod for my birthday a few weeks ago. I had been holding out for the wide-screen video iPod that has been on the rumor wheel for a year or two. With the launch of the iPhone, I decided that it would be a while before Apple introduces an iPod that competes with it’s new phone. (No I don’t own an iPhone. I’m a APPLE junkie, but love my Blackberry.)
I love my iPod. I listen to music more now. One thing I have learned is this: the music that was popular when I was a teenager isn’t popular anymore. I guess that’s how life works. What’s in style today is lost with time.
The same is true in ministry. Your ministry skills might be remarkable for a time, but if you don’t reinvent yourself, you won’t be remarkable for long. Change is not a four-letter word. Be willing to grow and change. Go to that conference. Take a break and join to that networking meeting. Buy a new book and read it. Hey, buy some new music too. It’s necessary for staying on the cutting-edge.
Saturday morning at our men’s prayer meeting I prayed with Andy Anderson, one of our deacons who is also a faithful servant in our bus ministry. Andy has a great heart for kids and is a good friend.
Andy prayed for at least 100 people by name. These names were written on his heart - he wasn’t reading them off a piece of paper or some “cheat sheet”. Some of them were bus kids, some of them were teenagers in the church, some of them were sick people, some were pastors, and there were others.
After we prayed, I commented to Andy about how my heart was blessed hearing him pray for all of those individuals by name. He said that several yeas ago he was impressed by Paul’s words “I make mention of you often in prayers” (1 Thess. 1:2).
How are you doing praying for people? By name? It’s something I am going to work on. After all, Jesus said He knows His sheep and calls them by name.
How can I pray for you?
The Indiana State Fair, officially “The Great Indiana State Fair”. (Yes, I know it’s cheesy, but every state has a State Fair. And Indiana’s is by far the coolest.) On August 9, I was at the Indiana State Fair. It almost hit 100 Fahrenheit (that’s 38 celsius for our overseas friends) that day, and it was downright oppressive. We were there to see Jeremy Camp and Casting Crowns at 7:30 that night. Before the concert, we had a ton of fun. If you ever get a chance, visit our awesome state fair (I would say most awesomest state fair like ever, but that might get me arrested by the grammar police), and swing by KidzMatter on your way through.
But that is all beside the point. Here’s some good ministry insights gleaned, from all things, the State Fair:
Here’s a thought that popped into my head a few days ago that I thought I would share:
Variety makes a ministry good, selective variety makes a ministry great.
I’m sure you’re wondering: What is that supposed to mean? What it means is that you should always be trying something new with your kids and changing things up. Keeping it the same is boring. But at the same time you need to make sure that you aren’t simply using the first idea that pops into your head or shows up on Google and calling it “variety”. Make sure it’s a quality idea that kids will love.
This may take some crazy thinking. What about some of these ideas:
What ideas can you come up with? I’m excited to see.
This morning I woke up early to meet a friend for breakfast. Tina Houser is an A+ children’s pastor who is one of the greatest people I have ever met. If I had to pick two words to describe Tina they would be encourager and creative. She always has an encouraging word and is always thinking creatively and outside the box.
Tina recently wrote a book called More than Cookies and Punch (Warner Press). You need to buy this book if you haven’t already. It’s a great one. She has another book being released this fall called It’s Not Junk … It’s Resources. Sounds like a good one, huh? She is leading several workshops at both Children’s Pastors’ Conferences this winter and will be representing KidzMatter at our booths in the exhibit hall.
Here’s my Tina quote of the day: Life’s too short to work on little ideas. Thanks for that reminder this morning Tina! Thanks for listening to some of my big ideas too.
Learn more about Tina’s ministry on her website. If you don’t have Tina’s new book, whatcha waitin’ on? Buy it!
WE INTERRUPT YOUR REGULARLY SCHEDULED PROGRAMMING FOR THIS IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT:
Hello, this is Evan Doyle reporting for the Way We See It Blog. This morning in Kids Church while writing this blog post, I caused our media application to crash. We were watching a DVD, and it stopped. It never got started again, because I was tediously fast forwarding at just 2x the regular speed. The moral of this story: Don’t do other stuff on the computer during Kids Church. It’s a bad plan.
WE NOW RETURN YOU TO YOUR REGULARLY SCHEDULED PROGRAMMING.
The 10/40 window. We always hear about this area between 10 and 40 degrees north of the equator. It is reported to be the part of the world where the fewest people have heard the true Gospel. It is the focus of most missions.
But that’s not the 10/40 window I’m talking about. The one I’m talking about is right here at home. Perhaps right next door. It’s the $10K-$40K a year income bracket. The most, perhaps, unchurched income bracket in the entire United States. How is this, you ask? It’s simply how churches have been and continue to be run.
