Kids Bible Buying Guide for 2025
I frequently see questions about what kind of Bible to get kids. While there may not be perfect Bible out there for your kids, some are certainly better than others. It can be confusing with so many different translations and Bible types. I want to help you make the best decision possible.
Level Up Your Leadership: The 3 Stages of Delegation
Being in leadership is tough. There are so many things pulling on you, it’s hard to know where to put your focus. And if you’re in kidmin it’s no different. If you’re a children’s director or pastor, then you are a leader. And not just of children but of volunteers, parents, and staff.
No matter who you are or how productive you are, there are only so many hours in a day. Which means you can only do so much. So how can you get all the things you need to get done and still manage some kind of work/life balance?
The key is to delegate.
4 Steps to Launching a Kidmin Check-In System
One of the biggest questions parents ask when they drop off their little one is “will my kids be safe?” We don’t like to talk about all the bad things that can happen to our kids. But spending just a few minutes watching the news or scrolling through social media can make you scared of your own shadow.
As a result, we in kidmin, have to keep our kids safe and project that safety to our current parents and guests. One of the best ways to do this is to provide check-in for your kids.
4 Christmas Songs for your Kidmin
It’s almost Christmas time! While the world is ready for Mariah Carey to defrost, we in the kidmin world are busy getting ready for the season. One of the big questions for Christmas prep is what songs to sing.
4 Ways to Call Parents During Service and Which is Best
You’re in the nursery. You’re doing the best you can with a bunch of kids. But one kid is not having it. They’re inconsolable. The only thing you can do is get the parents. But the problem is they are in the service, and you’re in the nursery.
How do you let them know their kid needs them? You don’t want to disrupt the rest of the service or embarrass the parent. What’s the best way?
4 Steps to Strategic Volunteer Recruiting
One of the problems any ministry faces, especially kidmin, is recruiting. There always seems to be a lack of volunteers. What’s worse, if you don’t actively recruit regularly, you’ll find yourself doing ministry all alone.
So how do you recruit? How do you get people to join your team regularly? How do you find these people?
Fall Festival Planning: 4 Essential Steps Before the Big Day (Part 1)
One of the big three events almost every kidmin leader leads is a Fall Festival. While this event can be a lot of work, it’s never been as difficult as putting together a VBS. Planning a one night 3-hour event is far easier than a 5, three hour events in sequence.
How to Handle Parents Who Want to Stay in Kidmin
There’s a common problem we all run into in kidmin. The parent wants to stay with their child. What do we do? Do we let the parent stay the whole time? 15 minutes? Say no? Do they need to fill out a background check? What about other parents? What about the kids?
5 Steps to Transition Your Kidmin to Small Groups
What does your Sunday morning service look like? Do you have Sunday School and a Kids Service (Large Group)? Large group with a small group component? Just Large group?
Many churches fall into one of those three buckets. Since any successful children’s ministry needs to have some kind of discipleship element, we need to seriously consider how we do that.
How to Help Kids Find Their Calling
I believe God calls all of us to a specific purpose. He invites us into his plan to expand his kingdom. He equips us with gifts, talents, and characteristics to fulfill his purposes. That calling may change over time, but he still has a plan.
That calling doesn’t have a start date either.
4 Steps to Get to Know New Volunteers
I’ve talked about onboarding volunteers before. It’s one of my most popular posts. And while getting your new volunteers the tools and resources they need are essential, there are some questions you need to answer before you plug them in.
4 Ways to Identify Your Kidmin Volunteers
There are a lot of things you can do to communicate to parents that their kids will be safe. But one of the best ways to make it easy to identify who is a volunteer and who is not.
Developing a Ministry Lead Team
One simple truth about leading in church is that you’re not going to be there forever. It may be hard to think about the day you will leave, but it is a simple reality. You will leave. Either you feel the Lord calling you somewhere else, you will retire, or you will die. There will come a time when you’re no longer the leader of your ministry.
The best thing you can do for your church and your current leaders is to prepare them for this eventuality. But how do you do that?
5 Essential Components to a Ministry Resume
How did you get your ministry job? Were you a faithful volunteer that worked your way into a job? Were you an outside hire that found your way through relationship? Or did you find a lead on a job board somewhere and landed where God wanted you to be?
In any case, there is one document that you need to at least get your foot in the door.
Your Resume.
How to Deal with Difficult Kidmin Parent Requests
Picture this. It’s time for move up and a homeschool mom comes to you with a special request. Her just turned 6-year-old is starting third grade. She thinks because her child is doing third grade schoolwork, they should be placed with all the other third graders. What do you do?
How to Involve Elementary Kids in Ministry
In many church models, from birth to young adults, we ask kids to sit and consume. We mean well. We want them to learn about Jesus and follow Him. However, in practice, many times this means coming to a service, joining a small group, and watching what happens.
These are all good things, but they are also passive. In a service, we sit to be fed. In small group, we sit to be fed.
But this is not what Jesus modeled for us.
Using Planning Center Services in Your Ministry
A few weeks ago, I talked about how to set up Planning Center Services. You can see that post here. But once you get Services all set up, how do you use it week in and week out? How do you handle volunteer declines? How do you communicate with them what you’re doing in service, and how can they be prepared?
In this post, I’ll answer all those questions.
Finding the Help You Need with Next Level Kidmin
When I first started out in kidmin, I felt like I was alone. I’d served two internships in children’s ministry. And I still had a good relationship with the kid’s pastor who guided me on my last one. However, I didn’t know what I didn’t know.
Fast-forward a year in and I was drowning. I thought I had it all under control, but elementary was the David Reneau show. Wednesday night was holding together with a hope and a prayer, and don't’ even get me started on Nursery.
I needed help, but I didn’t know where to look
Setting Up Planning Center Services for Your Ministry
One of the most useful tools in my ministry career is Planning Center. I reference it frequently in my posts about planning. As much as I love the program, it can be daunting to a first-time user. That’s why I wrote this post about Check-ins.
Setting up Planning Center Check-ins can be complicated. But Planning Center Services is on another level.
When God Changes Your Calling
It was the week between Christmas and New Years of 2020. It had been a hard year, and I was on the edge of burn out. As I was taking stock of the year and planning for what’s next, I realized I was missing something.
As I planned out my kidmin calendar for 2021, it looked remarkably like the 2020 plan before COVID. I didn’t have any new ideas or initiatives. Nothing was waking me up early excited about what to do next. Children’s ministry just didn’t motivate me as much as before.
Get resources to lead well in your ministry.
This downloadable kit will help you develop and deploy an effective parent info meeting.