In the Real Hope Next Gen Ministry, we have kids and students broken down into 4 phases, split into 5 classrooms, with 1-3 leaders each, teaching anywhere from 2-4 in our nursery all the way to a whopping average of 15 in the younger elementary classroom. In each of these areas, we are helping to “build a house” for the age group that we work with. We are constantly working to establish a firm foundation in Christ and help our Kids and Students shape the walls of their house using the Gospel. I am amazed each week at how all of this happens in the chaos of Next Gen Ministry, to the point where I have looked back on several weeks in wonder at how the Lord pulled off everything He managed to pull off! Now, we aren’t sitting on our hands wondering how God is going to make church happen each week. Real Hope Community Church has been uniquely equipped to handle the chaos of a Sunday morning with exactly what we need in Greeting, Next Gen, Main Service, Hospitality, and every other moving part we have. The important piece of this puzzle for our church, and every church, is recognizing what the Lord has given each of your unique ministries to work with. A little disclaimer could be helpful here in saying we are still only in our first year of church planting. We don’t have it all figured out as a church, and we probably never will. However, in the Next Gen Ministry, I have been able to recognize some simple tools and how to prepare and cultivate them, and my hope is that these tools can be useful in other ministries and other churches in whatever shape they take. Teams are not Tools At some point I will go into detail on how I build up my Next Gen Teams, but that’s not what today is about. We are still on a journey as a church to figure out exactly the right way to do Teams, and we learn new things about building and caring for our Teams all the time and do our best to implement them. Because our teams are so vital to everything we do as a church, I wanted to start this list by making sure it is clear that your Team Members are not Tools at your disposal. If there is one thing I can encourage anyone to do with any of this information it’s this: If you stop working before your house is finished, you might as well have built it on sand. But you can't build the house by yourself, and your teams can't help you if you don't equip them well. When I started out in ministry, I did a terrible job of caring for volunteers. If you had come into my ministry and tried to evaluate my volunteer ministry, you would have come out with a bullet point list something like this:
I took the foundation of my ministry and told my volunteers to help me hold up the roof of the Student Ministry without actually taking time to help them build their own walls, let alone teach them to help students. I expected them to know where I was headed each week without ever taking time to explain the vision or mission behind what I was doing. In my first years of ministry, I had a hot enough head to think that because God had trusted me with this ministry, I was the only one that was supposed to have authority in the lives of my students. I had a team so that I could have support, and I didn’t give a second thought to their Spiritual health unless it started to have an effect on the way they helped me. I used my teams as the walls, when really they should have been right alongside me building the walls. I can’t say that an evaluation of my ministry now would show anything close to perfect ministry, but it would probably show a list of all the things we are clearly working toward weekly. Things like:
You cannot ask your Teams to follow blindly and expect longevity of leadership; yours OR theirs, unless you take time to invest in them and provide their equipment. It is so important that your teams have as much of the 360-degree view of your ministry as possible. Find a way to build the vision of your church into the teams that you have, and meet with them, disciple them, lead them so they can effectively lead others. Engaging Environments A bland room leads to bland people. Why do you think weddings are colorful, or they bring disco balls to parties? Because the way you set up the room has an incredible effect on how people interact with each other in it. We work hard to bring in as much color and excitement into the room as possible. The nursery and preschool are filled with age appropriate toys and stations, our elementary and Jr. High students enter the room to energetic and uplifting music and we smile and laugh and goof off a lot! (because yes, volunteer, you help make the environment what it is!). Focusing on the way we set out an environment sets the pace for ministry that day and can make or break a kid’s reaction to a room. Making your environments fun, welcoming, and safe gives you an invaluable tool that, once you’ve got it set, only needs minor tweaks here and there. Quality Materials The number one tool we always bring on any Sunday morning is the material to get the job done. Each week, I have a checklist with what we need for that coming Sunday. Okay, Marin has the list, but I ask her about it a lot. A good sign of ill-equipped and ill-thought out classrooms is same-ness. If your kids are doing the same activities week in and week out, they are probably not very entertained. We want kids to want to stick around, to excitedly ask about when they get to come back to church! One of the best days I have had in our Kids Ministry is when a parent told me their child was disappointed when Tuesday wasn’t Sunday because they wanted to go to church. While providing engaging and fun games and activities for your ministry does take time and work, it will be worth it, and eventually it will be second nature, taking only a few minutes each week. Engaging, Truth-filled Messages Our teams can be energetic and go all out to entertain the kids in our ministries, but if the material they are teaching isn’t engaging AND truth-filled, then it’s time to re-evaluate the material. Whether it’s your personal delivery style or a curriculum your church has purchased, be aware of how the audience is interacting with it. This doesn’t mean that if a kid isn’t looking at you, smiling, and politely nodding their head that they aren’t engaged. In our Student Ministry, I approach speaking by telling the students this at the beginning of each message: “I have given you a paper with some blanks on it and plenty of room to write. If you want to take the notes I put on the TV, great. If you want to take your own notes because you hear something more important to your situation than what I have personally written down for you, great! If you want to doodle on or fold up the paper, even greater, I’d love to see your artwork!” And that’s it. Then I go straight into the message that I have prepared and I never cut myself off by pointing out a kid who isn’t paying attention. Monioring behavior is one thing I ask my team to do, but I also ask my leaders to only intervene when a student is distracting other students who are trying to engage with the message. If a hyperactive student is doodling instead of talking, I won, because that’s how that student stays focused and controlled. If a generally studious student is doodling instead of taking notes, they probably don’t understand or relate to the material that week, and I’m able to take a mental note to check in with them later. I’ve probably lost them and they want to appear polite. Now my delivery style doesn’t really change from week to week. The material does, so If I missed the mark with how I wrote the message, then it is my job to reevaluate how I am presenting the Scriptures to translate into the lives of the people I am communicating with. It is not my job to make kids listen to me who are uninterested or don’t understand. Evaluating and providing teachers and leaders with truth-filled and engaging materials is half of the battle, but just like everything else on this list, it does take time and energy to build and then renovate outdated material and methods. The younger generation is constantly changing; therefore our presentation and style should too. The Power of Prayer The last but most important tool that I make sure is available to my teams each week is prayer. I gather prayer requests from my leaders on Sunday Mornings and continually follow those up during the week if needed. I also pray over each element (activities, games, message, small group questions) of each classroom leading up to each Sunday. At the end of each week, when the office gets packed up and moved from the local coffee hole back to home, I want to make sure every ounce of what we do is covered in prayer, because when push comes to shove, nothing I do changes anyone’s life. I only get to be here, at this church, with the fantastic people I get to lead and work with, because of the grace and will of God. Ultimately, we put all the tools into place that we can find and arrange them in the best order we know how. We work to equip leaders and teams with everything needed to make Sunday Morning happen. We work hard to build each other up in grace and truth. But prayer is the thing that makes all of these other tools work. If Jesus is the foundation and the walls are made up of the message of the Gospel, then Prayer is the electrical conduit that powers everything, from the tools to the light switches that come on as we all learn together. What about you? Those are some of the tools that I focus my time on most each week. What are some tools that you have noticed are major keys to your ministry working the way it should? What are some tools you wish you had? Percy Hudson is the Student Pastor at Real Hope Community Church and is currently seeking his MDiV through B.H. Carroll Theological Institute
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Marin HudsonMarin likes to stay up late and write. But sometimes Percy will write as well. :) Archives
October 2017
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