Rebuilding Kid’s Church

Introduction

Beginning in January 2017, I began teaching Sunday school for my church, The Heights. In the year and a half that I have taught, I have seen leadership transition through two different people, and essentially all of the volunteer staff resigned from a serving capacity. This is due primarily to ineffective leadership, poor organization, and lack of vision for where the ministry might go. Essentially, to be completely transparent, there was no actual leadership, and not even effective management. People were unwilling to remain serving under this capacity, where expectations were not clear. Furthermore, it has caused the heart of the ministry to become convoluted. What should be serving as a resource to the church body, and outreaching the community, is merely staying afloat. While the ministry has served me well, and was a catalyst for meeting my now wife, I could see all along how it is floundering. The disservice of this ministry is directly affecting the church body, as well as our youth population. Not to mention, the ministry was not growing, which should be the aim of any successful organization.

In April of 2018 my wife and I took over leadership roles of this particular ministry. By this point, we had unofficially been leading the ministry for approximated three months. During those three months we had been attempting to make changes to the limited capacity that we had, given that we weren’t actually given leadership over the ministry. Once the ministry was turned over to me, it became my immediate goal to completely revamp the organizational leadership of this ministry. This serves two goals: first, to re-establish the ministry with a stronger foundation, and secondly, to grow the ministry and provide outreach to the community.

In order to be successful, I immediately submitted a timeline to the senior pastor of our church and begun working towards establishing effective and tangible changes to the leadership of the ministry. Some of these changes have already begun taking place as I work towards my goal, while others have yet to arise. Overall, my best approach to begin rebuilding The Heights’ Children’s Ministry breaks the next year into 3 month segments, and  highlights points of change that will take place within that segment of time. The goal being, that at the end of this year long process, the church, and community, will be able to tangibly see and feel the difference in Children’s Ministry due to more compassionate and effective leadership.

Where Are We Now?

Children’s Ministry is something that is near and dear to my heart. I truly believe that a thriving children’s ministry is the foundation of a thriving and growing church body. A cohesive ministry serves as a catalyst to the entire family, as well as becomes attractive to the community seeking family friendly activities. In order for this specific ministry to thrive, it needs to be restructured from the inside out. By splitting up changes into three month segments it becomes so much easier to track progress and approach tangible alterations. Not to mention, it creates the momentum for something that might otherwise feel overwhelming to undertake. By focusing on micro adjustments that improve the daily atmosphere and function of the ministry, we ultimately begin to alter the culture of the ministry. By altering the culture of the ministry, we alter the culture of our church body. By making the ministry more people centric, we ultimately encourage a culture of more acceptance, unity, and growth for the entire church body. While this endeavor will not be completed by the end of this course, this challenge is one that will ultimately leave an impact o the entire church body, and hopefully begin a catalyst to the culture of the community my church resides in.

At this point, realistically, I am only 6 months into this twelve month endeavor. In the last 6 months I have seen many wins, and a few losses. Some victories that have been accomplished have been restoring unity within the ministry. There is a peace between leadership that did not otherwise exist. Before taking over leadership of this ministry, it was constantly filled with strife and this was felt throughout the entire church body. The culture of this ministry is being changed drastically. Furthermore, we have entered into the team building phase. We are now recruiting new volunteers and able to have them join a healthy and functioning team.. We are establishing the culture that the victory of Kids Ministry should not rely on any one person.

Where I can see myself doing better falls into time management and curriculum. I still feel there is room to be grown in terms of having curriculum prepared for our volunteers. Though, it should be noted, while this is an area to be improved upon, it has improved from the utter lack of organization it was when the ministry was taken over. Purely because we are only 6 months into this project, our team is still working on finding its community voice. I have faith that because we are now functioning cohesively as an overall unit that this will come to fruition. This entire process has stretched and grown me beyond what I could have imagined. My own skills and interpersonal abilities have grown leaps and bounds.

I am beyond grateful for the gifts this opportunity has afforded me, and only expect positive things from the next six months of my year long ministry transformation. I look forward to the next 6 months, and seeing how we begin growing from here. I look forward to beginning our community outreach phases in this project, and finding ways to engage our families beyond Sunday morning.