#WhyIDoWhatIDo: Confessions of a Children's Pastor

Recruiting teams.  Large group presenters. Small group leaders. Worship. Pre-K. Nursery. Check-In. And more. Let's face it - recruiting folks for our teams is a never-ending, crucial part of leading in children's ministry. It can be exhausting. Frustrating. And at the same time richly rewarding. Exhilarating. When recruiting for my teams, there's a verse in the Bible that stays in the forefront of my mind.  It's not one of the passages on spiritual gifts. Or a passage like Deuteronomy 6 that talks about passing faith to the next generation. Nothing about Timothy learning from his mom & grandma. Or Jesus telling folks to bring the kids to Him. They're all great. I love them all. But there's one in particular that grabs my attention. After this I saw a vast crowd, too great to count, from every nation and tribe and people and language, standing in front of the throne and before the Lamb. - Revelation 7:9 Why this one? Because if we know...

One of my favorite children's ministry resources is a book by Aaron Reynolds called The Fabulous Reinvention of Sunday School . Aaron was a part of the team at Willow Creek, and has some great things to say about transforming Sunday School classes into fun, engaging, transformative environments.  The book came out in 2007, and was really revolutionary in many ways. The whole "large group/small group" thing was just starting to become a thing, thanks to the emergence of curricula like 252 Basics. Aaron's focus on dramatic storytelling, environment, technology & production was cutting edge.  I was leading a 4th/5th grade Sunday School class, and some friends and I were just starting to dream & imagine what a much more engaging church experience for kids might look like. In many ways, Aaron's thoughts scratched right where I itched. I've walked leaders through parts of this book in 4 different states over the past 11 years. B...

What if I told you that it's possible for your Sunday morning attendance to grow during the summer?  Intrigued? Doubting my grip on reality? Wanna find out more? One of my favorite recent television shows was the Animal Planet hit Finding Bigfoot . The show featured 4 members of the  Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization (BFRO). The team included my favorite - a guy named Bobo. Their quest is to accomplish the unthinkable - find Bigfoot. Prove that he's real. Find evidence that is so convincing that even the harshest skeptic would be forced to admit the existence of Bigfoot. And so the members of the BFRO travelled all over the country, donned night-vision goggles, whooped and hollered in all kinds of secluded woods, interviewed lots and lots of Bigfoot believers, and tried all kinds of crazy schemes to lure the elusive Bigfoot out of hiding. But, it never worked. And, it never will. Because Bigfoot is a myth. It's a fun myth to believe...

As legend has it, Harry Houdini bragged that he could withstand any punch to the gut, as long as he had time to prepare himself. But a fan struck him without warning. It caused Harry considerable pain. And a few weeks later, he died from the injury.  I've been through a fair amount of stuff. And, like Harry, I'm pretty confident that I can take anything that's thrown at me - as long as I see it coming. And, like Harry, I found out that gut punches without warning hurt. A couple of years ago, I was at a denominational camp meeting in Brown City, MI, serving as one of the child evangelists for 4th-6th graders. It's a place I have a fondness for. And not because of the camp itself. It had all of the charm and amenities that you might expect from a place called Brown City Campground. There was a lot of dirt. And heat & humidity. And smell from the cows across the street. And, well, a lot of brown . I had previously been a part of the denomin...

Music is amazing & powerful. I've been playing along with a "share 10 favorite albums in 10 days" thing on Facebook. I almost never do these kinds of things, but I'm down for sharing album covers and reminiscing about dubbing my dad's Simon & Garfunkel albums onto cassette tape, or where I was when I heard about Kurt Cobain's death, or how important Jars of Clay's self-titled album was to my very new faith in Jesus. Music is one of those things that allows us to express thoughts & feelings that we would never be able to say with words. There's a reason that couples have "their song". My wife & I's is  Follow You, Follow Me by Genesis, for the record. Music helps us remember. Advertising agencies spend piles of cash to help us remember that Nationwide is on our side. Music connects us to big events. Fee's All Because of Jesus was the first song I heard when I attended a church service after being in a major ca...

"Yes, I try to find common ground with everyone, doing everything I can to save some.   I do everything to spread the Good News and share in its blessings." - 1 Cor 9:22b-23 (NLT) One of the more familiar verses in the Bible. If you've been a Jesus-follower for a while, there's a good chance that you've heard it, and can even kind-of quote it. ("Kind-of" quoting things is my specialty!) And what Paul is saying doesn't make us comfortable. The implications, if we're honest, stink.  My personal preferences. The style I'm comfortable with. How we've always done it. That stuff is incongruent with the phrase "common ground with everyone" (or, "all things to all people", if you prefer).  As my team began talking about what this fall's relaunch of Kids' Church is going to look like, we all agreed that " unchurched " kids are who we're going to build our Sunday experiences for. And so we were force...

We don't spend our time & energy creating a Kids' Church experience for "churched" kids. Let me say that again. My team doesn't spend all the time & energy & sweat & prayer that it takes to create a Kids' Church experience with "churched" kids as our primary target. You praying for me yet? 😊 Let me explain. As we began to think about a relaunch of our Kids' Church, one of the first questions that my team grappled with was this: "Who do we do this for?". Sure, the Sunday School answer is "Jesus". I get that.  But, if we begin with the end in mind, what kids do we do this for? Which kids are our target audience? We've got to ask these important questions, because what our Sunday experiences look like hinges on how we answer. Here's what I know about the community my church is a part of. And the community your church is a part of. It is increasingly less Jesus-y. George Barna's polling ...

Here's a statement. Get ready. It's a doozy. " We believe it is sinful to bore kids with the gospel. " - Jim Rayburn, founder of Young Life Strong words. Audacious. Words that demand a response. How does that statement make you feel? Think about that for a bit. At the end of my description of part 1 of my Kids' Church relaunch, I asked myself this question: "Did my church have the kind of Kids' Church that was going to give us the opportunity to tell God's story to every one of the thousands & thousands of kids in our community?" The honest answer was no . And fun had a lot to do with it.  All I had to do to get that no answer was to look at the numbers. Tony Morgan & The Unstuck Group estimate that, at a healthy church, " the average range for kids attendance is between 19 and 23 percent of total attendance ." I've been at this church for about a year now. It's an energetic church that targets young famil...