Each January we gather for a pasta dinner as a leadership team before the first Sunday of the year. We met at Olive Garden last year, but our team continues to grow so we met at a team member’s home this year. We picked up fabulous take-out of meat lasagna and spinach tortellini with all the yummy bread and salad from a local Italian restaurant so we could easily move around, chat, share holiday news, and enjoy each other’s company.

To open our leadership conversation, I passed out several index cards, the 2020 Super Summer Sunday idea list, and the five major celebrations of the previous year to toot our horn about. We invited everyone to write on the index cards any thought, idea, or suggestion which came to mind to turn in at the end of the evening. Included on the celebrations sheet were our planned and scheduled experiences designated as Meat, Milestones, Mountain Top Experiences, and Marvelous Moments for McEachern Kids.

Conversations…
– 5 major 2019 celebrations (toot their horns) See last week’s blogpost
– June through August Summer special Sunday brainstorming (why?)
– Idea of a monthly, bi-monthly, quarterly thirty-minute Children’s Ministry Open House immediately following the last Sunday service to enthusiastically introduce how we can join in a family’s quest to grow closer to Jesus AND offer a tour of our environments, spaces, and routines.
– Idea of a Summer Book Club for K5-3rd grade (index cards came in with book suggestions and people to talk to)
– Ideas of more inter-generational opportunities (index cards came in with suggestions and people to talk to)
– 2020 Family Christmas event
– Ideas for topics for Parenting With A Purpose classes

The stack of handwritten index cards were filled with ideas, drawings, dreams, and requests to get together soon to discuss further. I read them over tea the next morning and I couldn’t quit smiling. I share life with the most amazing Jesus disciples.

Next Monday I’ll be making a bunch of phone calls to reserve foam pits and Ice Cream trucks. Now I’m ready for the Family Ministry team meeting next Tuesday to calendar the summer and much of the fall with room reservations and online registration forms ready in February. Wednesday and Thursday we will gather images and map out the communications plans for the year for those Marvelous Moments especially.

How do you get to brainstorm and celebrate all of your children’s ministry team’s pasta-bilities?

“They gathered the church together and reported all that God had done through them and how he had opened a door of faith to the Gentiles.” Acts 14:27

What is YOUR plan for this next school year to move closer to the center?

The holy habits listed around the target are the most impactful holy habits which grow our love and faith as followers of Jesus. Practiced by the saints who came before us, we have amazing tools today easily accessible to practice every single one.

Mark where YOU think YOU are around the target in practice. No judgement here, just a realistic place from which to start.

Then choose one area/holy habit to make the move closer to the bullseye over the next school year. Moving one step closer to the bullseye is reasonable and realistic and achievable.

What next? Make a plan to take a class, read a book or two or more, grow a deeper relationship with a colleague skilled in that area, subscribe to a podcast with that specialty, wake up or go to bed an hour earlier to make margin, and stick it out until the end of May 2023. You’ll be pleasantly surprised at your movement over time because following Jesus is a lifetime journey, one intentional season at a time.

Elisabeth George, A Woman After God’s Own Heart, calls it ‘building a faith file.’ 

Ken Willard, Stride, calls it ‘creating a discipleship pathway for yourself.’

My volunteer/servant-leader team goes through this exercise every year as part of our Taco ‘Bout, Chill & Chat, or Winter Pasta-bilities Dinner. They don’t turn it in. Each leader keeps it for themselves as a reminder they are on their own discipleship journey and get to choose how it will go. This year we’re using Top Gun vocabulary since it’s part of our church’s Basic Training fall campaign.

Top Gun Training Officers are always better than their students because they practice their skills more. What skill will you take to the next level this school year? Share this as part of your team training, but this is also about you as a child of God growing in your own Jesus muscles as a way to beat the Devil who will be at you like fleas on an unprotected, unprepared dog. (I’m from the South and we like using dogs in our expressions for emphasis.) Remember you are a child of God, not His employee.

May 2023 will be here eventually, short of the Rapture. We’ll get closer every day we wake up. Thank you, Lord! Let us not look back and hope we just float into a robust faith and trust in Jesus when life hits us hard. Be ready. Be prepared. Join the holy habits of the saints who have gone before us with the tools the Lord and the Body of Christ has provided today.

How can I help?

How can we help each other? 

Tell someone, so you can celebrate together. Jesus never sent out His disciples one at a time, but rather, two, three, or seventy.

“So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.” Colossians 2:6-7

Pray for and chat with your children’s/family ministry leaders.
Set the table for some facetime with your top, committed leaders who are the face, hands, feet, and heart of the ministry with families in your local church. Ask how they are. Ask what they hope for in the year to come. Invite yourself into their lives to partner with them to take the next steps in their discipleship.
Ideas: Pastability Dinner, tea, coffee, join their morning/afternoon walk.
Gentle Reminder: As church staff our job is to equip the saints for the service God has called them to do.
Ephesians 4:11-12

Pray for and chat with your littles.
Set the table for some facetime with the littles you serve.
Ideas: Play a game, ask what they got for Christmas, find out what they are doing on Saturdays.
Gentle Reminder: If the littles you serve are Christians, they are your full-on brothers and sisters in Christ with a full-on Holy Spirit. You’ve only got a few more months with your 5th graders before they transition to student/middle school ministry.
Ecclesiastes 3:1

Pray for and chat with their bigs.
Set the table to be available to the disciple-makers in the trenches of your student’s every day.
Ideas: Ministry FB group posts, Family Resource station, Parenting workshops, arrive early and stay later in the Narthex.
Gentle Reminder: Partnering does not mean overloading their family calendar with church events, but rather ask good questions so you are aware of the rhythm of their days, weeks, seasons, etc. and plan accordingly.

Pray for and chat with your grandparents.
Set the table for intergenerational conversations, story telling, intergenerational social spaces and places. These saints of your church have stories to tell and every kid loves a good story.
Ideas: Add kid entries to the adult chili cookoff or bake sale, one-on-one invites for a very specific role, call them by name often in front of kids. Relationships are key.
Gentle Reminder: The average age of a first-time grandparent in the US is 47 years old. This generation is the team of worker-bees and well-trained super volunteers of 15 years ago so make their commitments shorter, smaller, super enjoyable, trustworthy, and resourced.

Pray for and chat with your church leadership.
Rev. Rhoda Howell is a prayer warrior. I’ve asked her for help with better prayer vocabulary to share with other family ministry leaders at a Children’s Ministry Hot Topic Table Chat in North Georgia last December. With her permission…..

• Pray that your antagonists may be blessed today. Period. That they may be wowed by God’s presence. Do this every day.
• Remember, they have hurts and wounds just like you. The antagonists have had to fight for their place at the table at sometime in their career.
• Give thanks for their year(s) of service in their area. Remember, that they have reasons for the way they do things, just as you do in your area. They have seen lots of changes…the good and the not so good and are shaped by all.
• Remember, some are a long way from the raising of or ministering to children. Let us not hold it against them.
• Ask God to send you encouragers. You need more than one.
• Pray for your pastoral leader. Pray specifically that he or she might hear God’s voice above all other voices, including yours. Remember, if someone is coming to you to tell you how to do ministry, there are probably a ‘gaggle’ of folks telling the Pastor that they don’t know how to do anything.
• Remember, the pastor is over the whole church and has to manage every single ministry, special interest group inside and outside the church.
• Ask questions instead of assuming. Ask the Lord for a Spirit of curiosity.
• Be open for unusual ideas. Resist setting up or speaking obstacles. Ask the Lord for a Spirit of YES.
• Don’t attend every fight you are invited to. You choose how you will rise to the occasion.

Children’s Council last Wednesday evening was a thrill as we looked at the summer programming AND the last month of “the good, the bad, the ugly, and stuff we gotta look at next month.” Made me laugh. Only a few things were tabled and we have begun our summer reading of Rick Chromey’s “Energizing Children’s Ministry in the Smaller Church.” When Rick signed my copy a few years ago, he wrote, “Dare to be a David.”

“David wasn’t concerned about what other people thought or what he couldn’t do. Instead he concentrated on what God could do through Him.” (page 60) We serve a can-do-through-you kinda God and when it comes to kids, He shows up and shows off all the time.

Our 2nd Fantastic Friday/Parent’s Night Out was themed “Noodle Night.” Dinner was multishaped pasta, butter, parmesan cheese, carrots, and watermelon. The children played a game where they had to “use their noodle” to figure out what their back-tags said they were, noodle baseball, and other pool noodle games. Then off to the sanctuary to watch “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs.” We will take a break for the summer and use “our noodles” in July to plan for the next school year.

Summer Jubilee is planned for the regular Sunday School and Children’s Church servants. We already have June covered; now to prayerfully recruit for July and August.

Servant-Leadership applications are out for folks 7th grade through adult to serve with children, 3 Safe Sanctuary trainings on calendar, mass emails to winter basketball leagues about Art Camp and Puppet Camps for June & July, and VBS volunteer signup boards in the narthex are now sitting on the floor in my office.

Scripture claimed for the summer . . . “SO, whether you eat or drink, or WHATEVER you do, do it all for the glory of God.” 1 Corinthians 10:31 Keep a lookout for the tshirts to come.