I had the opportunity to do a KidzMatter Seminar at Mariners Church in the San Fransisco area yesterday. This is a really cool church with a great children’s pastor, Len Banks. It’s amazing that whenever I go to a church to teach, I always come home with a long list of ideas and things I have learned myself. I am going to attach some pictures at the end of this post, but here are 8 things I wrote down on the plane last night flying home.
1. People who use Macs have an instant connection. Children’s Pastor Len switched to Mac a little over a year ago. Before I switched to Mac four years ago, I never saw a PC on someone’s desk and instantly started talking about how much I loved my PC. Mac users have a connection that PC users don’t. Be honest PC users, when’s the last time you sat down and told someone how much you love your computer?
2. Branding is everything. This church does well at branding, as you will see in the pictures below. The kids ministry uses the same two colors everywhere (blue and orange), uses the same fonts in their printed material, and uses their logo a lot.
3. Signs are a huge help. Len has sign all over the place. They aren’t distracting and pointless, but serve a purpose and look sharp.
4. Kid don’t have to sit in chairs. At Mariners, they use orange bean bags from Target.
5. Ikea is a great spot for props and decorations. They got a lot of their stuff from Ikea. Unfortunately for me, they haven’t brought Ikea to the cornfields of Indiana. I have to drive four hours to Chicago to find one.
6. You don’t need a lot of money to make your room pop. Their kids area looks sweet (see the pics below). This was a place that anyone could have designed on a shoe string budget. Len has done a lot with paint, some Ikea runs, and doing some dumpster diving.
7. Communicate your purpose. Their purpose statement was visible several places throughout the children’s area.
8. Be flexible. This church meets in a shopping center. The children’s ministry has changed “store fronts” several times. They roll with the punches and make the most of their space.
Now for the pictures. Click them to enlarge. Enjoy!
cool pics Ryan….I agree…great branding that ties in beautifully with the church name
Good post. It does sound like he has some good branding sense.
Hope you had a great time and your teaching went over well. i love the idea of bean bags, but that can get pricey, I tried it once with a group of only 100 kids. The initial price was similar as to if i bought a decent chair for each child, but then came the unthought of price of repairs or replacing the bean bags. I seemed to go through the bean bags quicker that I would have the chairs, not to mention storage of these bean bags.
But definitely appreciate his thinking differently. thanks for the post.
We use bean bags for our sixth graders only. I allows them a privilege to look forward to in sixth grade. The other kids sit on the floor.
The decor looked pretty cool!
I love the theme!
Thanks for the pictures and the ideas. I so love seeing pics of other children’s ministries! It inspires and encourages me! I especially love to see great design ‘done cheaply’. .. again inspiration for those of us w/ smaller budget!