This I know: I can’t do everything. I can’t come up with every new idea. I can’t be my own teacher. I can’t glean all I need to be successful in my call into ministry from a facebook page or a blog. I can’t be all things to all people and to myself.  I want to continue to grow in my field, I want to offer my best to the Lord who gave His best for me, and I can’t do it alone. Here are my 10 reasons for joining a professional organization:

10. Best Practices – Around a table, I can join the conversation of what is acceptable in my industry when it comes to budgets, conflict, social media, call to professional ministry, and Safe Sanctuary, to name just a few.

9. Updates on Policies and Legislation – I’d like to go back to the time when peanut allergies were a children’s ministry director’s greatest concern. With mandated reporting requirements and age level cutoffs, we need to be in the know in our county, state, and denomination.

8. Industry Trends – We can offer insight to how our industry works, industry trends of what’s to come, and hear and tell the stories of how to deal.

7. Jobs – We’d like to think we are where we will retire. Experience tells us differently because the one thing we can depend upon is change. A professional organization will offer references, job postings of what and where is it healthy and where it is not.

6. Mentoring – To grow in our profession in vision, in personal boundaries, and in professional kindnesses, mentoring up and mentoring back is essential. Who is speaking truth of your calling into your life? Who’s life are you speaking truth into?

5. Security & Trust – A professional organization will offer a sense of security and trust as you support and help one another set and meet your professional goals. You’ve got goals, right? This is where you can be equipped to cross the line of surviving to thriving in your call into professional ministry.

4. Share – This is the best place to share ideas, ask advice, offer stories and testimonies, meet and brainstorm with others. This is especially where we can give back and receive. If you think you’ve arrived and don’t need any new ideas, you may be someone else’s answer to prayer just by your presence or sharing your testimony. This community of sharing conveys you are committed to your career field and shows your desire to learn and improve and your desire to help others do the same.

3. Make a New Friend – ’nuff said.

2. Strength in Numbers – A professional organization will offer an established support system of experienced people who are motivated to get things done. This is when you can glean from all kinds of learning styles and personalities.

1.Team Who Rally For Your Success – Everyone needs a team of cheerleaders. Everyone needs a laugh, a shot of encouragement, and a community of fellow Jesus followers who are travailing the same journey.

Are you a part of a professional organization? Can you afford not to be?

“For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them.” Matthew 18:20

With the season of Lent as part of our church liturgical calendar, I wanted to give my parents some easy wins with their little people. So let’s engage in some habits of reflection.
Supplies: 5-6 rocks/stones/pebbles, a quart Ziploc bag of sand (leftover from the Christmas Eve luminaries), and an LED candle.
Place everything in a bag with these instructions:

Pour the sand into a wide, shallow container.
Place your candle in the sand.
Each night at dinner or some other regular time during the day, turn the candle on and say a prayer out loud.
Maybe choose a rock and pray for a special concern or a thanksgiving before adding it to the garden.
This I know: when hands are busy, minds are calm. So keep your eyes open and talk to the Lord out loud just like you talk to Mom and Dad. Draw in the sand with your fingers.
The candle reminds us of Jesus – the light of the world.
If you can get to your family’s Nativity Scene in the Christmas decorations, place the shepherd and the sheep back on the mantle to remind us of Jesus being the Good Shepherd.

Inside the bag, we also included a list of Lenten season activities ranging from the Jelly Bean Prayer to the recipe for Resurrection Rolls. Finding ways for parents to enjoy easy wins to pray with their little people is a beautiful thing.  Praying On The Go bags help us do just that.

“Jesus looked toward heaven and prayed: “Father, the hour has come. Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you.” John 17:1

Our pastor has been preaching a series about the characteristics of a Christian disciple. The ‘prayer’ sermon will be offered on the Sunday before Ash Wednesday. On our staff retreat last fall, as we made plans for 2016, a fellow staff member shared an experience at a previous church to stick with prayer during lent. So we’re doing it!

Picking up large, wooden craft sticks from the local craft store, we wrote names on each stick. We used the directory, the phone list, the youth list, even the regular visitor sign-in sheets, to write names on the craft sticks. We’ll have them placed in red galvanized buckets (only because that’s what I’ve got in the basement…and it’s February!) throughout the sanctuary during lent for folks to pick a stick and pray for that person or couple.

On Palm Sunday, we will have our egg hunt, donkey appearance, and missions lunch following the last service of the morning when folks can bring their sticks and meet up with the one they’ve been praying for during lent. I know…not everyone will come, but maybe they will.

What are you planning to build family and community for the season of Lent?

“They all  joined together constantly in prayer, along with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brothers.” Acts 1:14