“The best question a leader can ask his/her team is, ‘What’s missing?'” ~John Maxwell

I LOVE the women who make up our Children’s Council. In the beginning of my tenure, we met monthly. We now meet quarterly and I adore their company. I enjoy meetings, but meetings with a purpose, a focus, take-aways, and ‘circle time.’ Those meetings give me insight, a filter, and energy.

Last Tuesday we gathered at the local Starbucks because we can get caught up, laugh, and speak face to face as we wait for our dessert in a cup. It’s relaxing, a breather for a hectic day.

Sitting in a circle, we each picked up a folded card that would ask questions to prompt our opening conversation. These questions were emailed earlier in the day to give time for prayerful consideration:
What are we doing well?
What is confusing?
What is missing?
What are we not doing well?
What is fruitful?
What has energy?

Taking notes offers a filter when implementing programming and communicating to our families in the days and weeks to come.

I then passed out a 2015 calendar (I spent the previous couple of weekends in Microsoft Publisher to prepare) with sermon titles, special events, school holidays, and the dates of Fantastic Friday/Parents Night Out, Faith Milestone events, VBS, and CLUB345…the dates of the non-regular-Sunday-stuff. The goal: Families need to plan ahead ( the council should be our greatest advocate and talk up these activities way ahead of time) AND the greater calendar offers the filter to not overwhelm our families and servants in the regular rhythm of our community.

Then, a front/back page of 2014 Celebrations as well as 2015 Plans, along with a more detailed explanation of upcoming Faith Milestone events with the what, the who, the when, the why, and the where that will be shared at next month’s Administrative Council meeting. I also introduced the upcoming three worship services in 2015 that will take place on the fifth Sunday of the month: Families First On The Fifth with a glimpse of what that’ll look like, but really just a ‘jumping off point.’

We started at 6pm and departures started a little after 8pm. It took a while, but a productive and focused meeting where everyone spoke, everyone shared, and everyone laughed.

Three MUSTS for meaningful meetings:

1.  Great preparation – have a plan, share the plan ahead of time (ex: emailing the questions to prayerfully consider along with the reminder email.)

2.  Great participation – have something where everyone shares, all voices are important (what folks talk about offer a glimpse into what their hearts and minds are taking up the most space in their heads.)

3.  Great prayer – before, during, and after.

Top takeaways from last night’s meeting?

1. We have renewed energy for Sunday school (good thing because I had a copy of Sunday School That Works: The Complete Guide To Maximize Your Children’s Ministry Impact put out by Group Publishing for their take away and our discussion for our winter meeting.

2. As an alternative to our typical SCREAM Retreat in March, we will offer a day away retreat called “Deep And Wide” in July. 9am-9pm and only for rising 4th, 5th, and 6th graders…a faith milestone at Mrs. DeDe’s house (great response from the Moms on the Council because I live 45-50 minutes away from the church in the mountains of North Georgia.)  We’ll hike, swim, go the movies, and have a program specific to practicing ‘soul training’ and answering their own personal call into ministry.

3. Sending the weekly Sunday school challenge by text to the families of the older kids.

4. Incorporating the traditional songs with motions in Sunday school…there’s great truth in the traditional songs of ‘Deep and Wide,’ ‘My God Is So Great,’ and ‘He’s A Peach of a Savior,’ etc.

“The most effective children’s ministry director is the one who has an inner circle of champions and advocates who believe so much in what you’re doing they will hide bodies for you.” ~ Lynley Jones, Children’s Ministry Director, Asbury United Methodist Church, Lafayette, Louisiana

This post was originally published November of 2014. Since the pandemic it has been viewed more than 15 times each day.  I began serving a new church family in 2017 and prayerfully waited for the opportunity to implement practices which would engage children in the worship service and set aside Children’s Church here, too. When we opened for in-person worship the summer of 2020, we got our chance. The children do receive age-specific, developmentally appropriate Christian education during the Sunday school hour, which doesn’t look like your typical Sunday school. The fruitfulness has affirmed our decision to say, “No more children’s church for us.”  

Since last summer, our staff team has been on the mission of improving the worship experience for our medium-sized church in the Atlanta suburbs. We’ve attended seminars, trainings, workshops, and even a week-long retreat with The Worship Design Studio team. We have been intentional to institute many details making the experience more personal, more inviting, relative to all learning and worship styles, giving multiple opportunities for congregational involvement throughout.

What has this got to do with little people? Everything.

It has always been our desire to connect as a family of faith…a family where our kids and their parents and grands pray, sing, praise, give, share and greet together.  Before this month, we dismissed the kids to a separate Children’s Church time immediately following the children’s moment and before the pastor’s “big sermon” which took place toward the end of the order of worship.  On Communion Sunday, we ushered the children back to their parents so to participate as a family.

When we changed the placement of the “big sermon” to be early mid-service, the giving, greeting, and praying were now at the end of the service in response to the Word proclaimed.  Our kids were going to miss some powerful times as a family of faith if we continued Children’s Church.  Oh I could do those things in Children’s Church, but not like it’s done with our whole family of faith.

I spoke with our pastor, a couple of ‘big names’ in KidMin, and some of our Children’s Church families sharing what we were doing and they were game for us to stay and continue to worship together. Families sitting side by side, arms around shoulders, standing in unison in call and response, enjoying time and space together.

We had already offered some interactive pew tools for our kids and now I could kick it up a notch, such as…

Sermon Bingo…our pastor puts out the sermon schedule, scripture, and title for the entire year in advance.  This helps me when I prepare the weekly Children’s Moment, so I set up a bingo card with words and phrases that are likely to be sung, spoken, or shared for the several week-long worship series.  The kids then mark or color the spaces when they hear the vocabulary.  These are placed on clipboards in the narthex.  The kids are invited to place their completed cards in my mailbox outside the worship space.

Etch-a-Sketches…for our littlest disciples.

Clipboards with blank paper…I invite the kids to take notes, draw pictures, write a note or draw a picture of encouragement to give to someone who sits in their row or one of the pastors.

A Challenge…when the sermon was titled “Salt and Light,” I challenged the kids in Sunday School to pick up a clipboard outside my office and tally the times they heard the words “salt” and “light” and tell me after the service which word was said most often.  I have a few tally sheets on the bulletin board behind my desk…”light” won out.

Pockets monthly magazines on clipboards…I attach a note about a few upcoming kid’s events like Fantastic Friday/Parents Night Out or the Jingle Bell Shoppe.  Even our middle schoolers enjoy these.

Cloth 3 ring binder zipper pouches from Dollar Tree (they are quiet)…with crayons, or colored pencils, or a handful of legos (for the pre readers).

And yes, all of them are out each week in a nice, shallow rubbermaid container set just outside our worship space.  Colored ribbons make for a colorful display.  I look forward to seeing what else we can come up with.

Attending the bi-annual CEF Conference (Christian’s Engaged in Faith Formation formerly known as Christian  Educator’s Fellowship) last month in Nashville, ‘kids in worship’ was the topic of almost every conversation.  Facebook has had multiple conversations and some very heated.  We have a Children’s Ministry networking luncheon coming up this week and it’ll be the topic, as well.  I’ll blog afterwards with what we came up with.

We are no longer offering Children’s Church.  We want to live and worship as a family of faith.  Our staff supports it, our parents support it, and our kids are thriving making connections with folks of all ages and stages.  Like family, some things are taught and some things are caught.  We want opportunities for both.

We offer a nursery for ages 0-4 years old.  This gives our parents a choice for our smallest disciples of staying in the service or be loved on in the nursery.  Our Mamas seem to like having the option.

There appears to be a great deal of research out there now that kids who worship with their families and connect inter-generationally in a family of faith are more likely to remain active in the local church as they get older.

This is the research my own family has lived:  We worshipped together in the early traditional service and served together and separately throughout Baby Girl’s and #1 Son’s preschool, elementary, middle school, and high school years at our home churches…in Baton Rouge, in New England, and in Woodstock.  They were invited to serve and lead on Sunday mornings and at other times as they grew in their faith and faithfulness.  They enjoyed a regular diet of adult investment into their lives.  When #1 Son didn’t want to go, the conversation went something like this, “Church and worship is what we do as Reillys.  It’s who we are.  God gets an ‘awards’ day once a week for all He has done for us and we go.  This is not a choice you get to make.  It’s right up there with you don’t get a choice to not brush your teeth or not take algebra.  It’s what we do.  When you get old enough to earn a degree, move out, and pay all of your own bills, then you can make a decision about church.  Until then, we leave in 10 minutes.”  If we were too busy or too tired for church life, we were too busy and something had to go.  It was never church.  The priority of worshipping together and serving in the local church was guarded and made for lots of conversations of who we were as Christians as they grew up.  A life lesson of filtering what is good for what is best.  Oh, and did I mention that I was not on church staff until they were in late high school?

This is what I know:  Baby Girl and #1 Son remain active in their spiritual disciplines and in their separate and distinct local churches now as young adults, along with their young spouses and little people.

“What’s good for kids in church is good for everybody.”  Mark Burrows, Children’s Pastor at First United Methodist Church of Ft. Worth