9. Make much of prayer. We often grow weary in our service to the Lord because we try to do everything ourselves. The Lord wants to help you! Does your team recognize that prayer is a priority in your life? Is prayer a priority for your team? The team that prays together stays together!

10. Don’t take yourself and those around you too seriously. You’ll breathe easier in ministry if you learn to lighten up. Take time to have some fun. Learn to laugh at yourself.

Start practicing these ten pointers and you’ll find yourself breathing easier in ministry. Don’t try to tackle them all at once. Pick two that you will start working on this week. Then in a few weeks, pick two more, and so on.

7. Be a planner. Anticipate what is coming ahead. Buy a calendar and start planning in advance.

8. Treat yourself to something special now and then. Sometimes you need to do something for yourself. Buy some new clothes. Go on that shopping trip. Take a few days off and stay at home. Take that trip. You get the idea.

5. Get control of your tasks; don’t let your tasks control you. Sometimes you would breathe easier if you simply got organized. Children’s workers aren’t always the most organized people. Clear those goldfish crackers off your desk and start getting organized.

6. Learn from others. Be a life-long learner. What are other teams doing? What are current trends in ministry? What new products are available that will breathe some fresh air into my ministry?

3. Delegate. Get experienced people to help you. Look for people in your church or on your team that can step it up a notch and help you. Look for areas in your ministry that you are weak and find someone strong in that area to assist you.

4. Renew yourself spiritually. You’re like a sponge. If you give out and give out but never absorb, you will turn dry and crusty like an old sponge. You need to absorb as you give out. Place yourself under the teaching of your pastor. Listen to good Bible teachers online or on the radio. Read books. Spend time alone with God. When you absorb you have a lot more to give away.

Leading a ministry can be tough work. If you’re not careful, the week-to-week effort can become routine and exhausting. Here are ten ways to breathe easier in ministry.

1. Get the monkeys off your back. A monkey is something that hangs on your back day and night and won’t let go. Too many leaders procrastinate and in the process end up carrying around too many monkeys. Deal with problems and don’t let them weigh you down!

2. Get training. Go to a good conference targeted to children’s leaders. They are a real shot in the arm. Whether you are brand new in ministry, or you have been doing it for years, you can never get enough training.

We all know that one of the toughest jobs as a children’s pastor is recruiting volunteers. Hardly a week goes by that someone doesn’t ask me for tips on recruiting more help. I don’t know how many times I have told people to buy Jim’s book! I could take this blog post and share ten tips for recruiting volunteers, but I want to give you one thought. It’s this: To get more volunteers in your ministry, make heroes of the ones you’ve already got.

What does this look like for you? Maybe it’s finally starting that volunteer appreciation event you’ve always wanted to do. Maybe it’s sending one card of encouragement every day, like I have done for years. Maybe it’s taking a volunteer to lunch. Here’s my point. Start rolling out the red carpet and you might find a new batch of volunteers raising their hands to help.

Money is tight right now, I don’t have to tell you that. My friend Roger Fields asked the question, “Has the current economic situation impacted your children’s ministry?” Hundreds of children’s pastors said yes (over half said they felt a significant impact).

Here are three quick ways to stretch your budget dollars.

1. Learn where to shop. Go downloadable whenever you can. You save money on shipping and you can be more picky. For example, you might not like every song on a DVD, but on sites like KidzMatter you can download only the music videos you want. Instead of buying new DVDs, pick up gently used ones on Amazon. Shop online at stores like TigerDirect for your computer and tech stuff. You get the idea. You’ll save some green and score points big time with the finance committee.

2) Learn how to shop. Rome wasn’t built in a day-your resource room doesn’t have to be either. Take your time. When I started 11 years ago as a full-time children’s pastor, I began buying one DVD (VCR tape back then) every month. In 11 years, I have built a nice collection.

3) Get creative! Apply for a grant at WalMart. Your local WalMart gives thousands of dollars away and would love to send some of that money your way. Have contests with the kids. Last year we did “Pennies for a Projector” and had a penny war (click here to learn what on earth a penny war is). We used the money to buy a video projector. A few years before that we did “Pennies for a Puppet.”

Budgets are shrinking but your purchasing smarts don’t have to! Be smart! I’d love to hear what you are doing to stretch your budget. Tell me in the comments.

As I mentioned earlier, I am doing Standard’s Studio Go! VBS at my church this summer. We are pretty excited about it.

Last week, my friends at Kidmo sent me a copy of the new Starlight Rescue VBS. Kidmo and GodRocks! have partnered together to bring you an edgy media-driven VBS. I reviewed it for Ryan’s Reviews in the next K! Magazine. I was impressed. The videos and music are really out of this world. If you’re looking for a VBS and media-driven is your thing – this might be what you’re looking for.

Click here to check it out for yourself.

I still love VBS! Even in the day of lots of summer programming options. Here’s why:

Recently I was evaluating our summer ministries, specifically, Vacation Bible School. We do VBS each summer to fulfill the Great Commission (reach kids with the Gospel and make disciples) and to engage our community. I looked at other summer programming options—there are lots of new programs we could start to help us reach these goals. When I stopped to ask which new program would be best, it dawned on me: I already have a program that does what I’m after. Why should we start several new programs to do the work Vacation Bible School was designed to do? I left that evaluation session with a renewed passion to make Vacation Bible School the biggest thing of the summer.

I still love it and can’t wait for this summer. What do you think?

PS. This year, we’re doing Studio Go! Game Show at my church.

The youth pastor at my church, Mike, just returned from the National Youth Ministry Conference. He was very excited and had a great time.

One thing cool about the conference was that at registration, each attendee was given a wide lanyard with their name tag. They chose from several buttons (Jr. High Ministries, Senior High Ministries, Rural Youth Ministry, Urban Youth Ministry, Small but Mighty Youth Ministry, Big Youth Ministry, etc). They were to put their buttons (as many as they wanted) on their lanyard. The idea, as you can see in the picture, is that the attendees looked for other attendees with the same buttons. This created opportunities for networking with others in similar ministries as yours. Very fun.

You might not being wearing buttons all year, but find someone (or a group of people) and start connecting. While there are cool sites like cmconnect.org to connect online (I love that site!!!!) find someone in your town or area and get some lunch. We need each other!