Making Your Children's Ministry the Best Hour of Every Kid's Week

by David Staal with Sue Miller

• ISBN13: 9780310254850
• ISBN10: 031025485X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-04-01
• Publisher: Zondervan

Summary

Promiseland is Willow Creek's highly successful children's ministry. Using examples from Promiseland and churches of all sizes around the country, this book provides stepbystep guidance and creative application exercises to help churches develop a thriving children's ministry-one that strives to be the best hour of every kid's week. Included are Scripturebased principles and practical resources for church staff members and volunteers who agree with the critical role children's ministry plays in a local church. Making Your Children's Ministry the Best Hour of Every Kid's Week, based on twentyeight years of experience at Willow Creek, explains four ministry foundations: Mission, Vision, Values, and Strategy. Content includes: Detailed answers to questions facing every children's ministry: - What does Jesus expect from children's ministry? - How can we evangelize lost kids and disciple saved kids at the same time, and should we? - How do we engage kids so they don't become bored? - How do we get better at recruiting and leading volunteers? - How can our ministry be a safe place for children? - Six specific ministry values that address the needs of today's children - Practical first steps for ministries that want to get serious about change - Clear indicators of success in children's ministry

Table of Contents

Foreword	9	(2)
Bill Hybels
Foreword	11	(4)
George Barna
Introduction	15	(4)
The Great Kid-Venture	19	(16)
The Journey to Build a Dynamic Children's Ministry
Imagine the Best Hour	35	(12)
A Compelling Vision Makes All the Difference
Your Mission, Should you Choose to Accept It	47	(16)
The Benefits of a Clear Starting Point
The Big Six	63	(22)
Core Ministry Values to Reach Today's Kids
Large Group, Small Groups, Big People	85	(16)
So What Does Sunday Morning Look Like?
Sharing the Dream	101	(16)
Get Wild about Volunteer Recruiting
Lessons Learned	117	(16)
How to Treat Volunteers
Fit For the Adventure	133	(12)
Thriving in Ministry --- Not Just Surviving in Ministry
Sunday Morning Heroes	145	(12)
Real People Making Real Differences
A Final Word	157	(2)
Personal Exercises and Team Experiences	159	(22)
Appendix A: Mission Statements Based on the Great Commission; Indicators of Spiritual Maturity --- The Five Gs	181	(2)
Appendix B: The Ten Core Values of Willow Creek Community Church; Six Core Ministry Values	183	(4)
Appendix C: A Typical Hour in Promiseland; Spiritual Gifts	187	(4)
Appendix D: Promiseland Curriculum	191	(2)
Notes	193	(4)
Acknowledgments	197

Excerpts

Making Your Children’s Ministry the Best Hour of Every Kid’s Week Copyright © 2004 by Willow Creek Association
Requests for information should be addressed to: Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49530
Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 0-310-25485-X
All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible: New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.
Interior design by Tracey Moran Illustrations by Liz Conrad
Printed in the United States of America
04 05 06 07 08 09 /. DC/ 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
An Adventure That Can Happen in Any Church Children’s ministry is an adventure, and I sure love adventure stories. There’s just nothing like the quest to solve a complex problem, discover a lost treasure, or find a new cure. And the best part is watching the characters—how they’re stretched and tested under impossible circumstances or unbeatable odds. It’s fun to join them as they bravely face earthquakes, shipwrecks, or battles against stronger opponents. These stories require people’s best, and then some.
And these tales have another universal trait—their creation. At some point, somewhere, someone pulled out a blank sheet of paper and began to write. Okay, maybe today they’d click to open a new document. The point is that someone deliberately decides to tell a tale that’s never been told.
Including the stories that God authors. Rewind the ark story and we see Noah erase his current lifestyle, turning his new blank sheet into blueprints for a boat that will earn him mockery from the neighbors. Abraham was promised a new chapter in life that required a move, and expectantly looked at an empty page until he turned one hundred—a story that was also good for a few laughs. Before Moses’ fiery encounters with Pharaoh, we read about his new beginning that started with a famous bush. Even Joseph’s life story was deleted and started anew when he landed at the bottom of the well. And what a legend that story became.
This book is also about an exciting adventure. Let’s call it the Great Kid- Venture. And this story can take place inside any local church of any size and in any country—because it’s about leading and building a dynamic children’s ministry. The kind of ministry that prevails over time, and that does so much more than simply survive week to week. One with a plot that involves leaders who wrestle with how to teach the Bible relevantly to children, brainstorm ways to care for adult volunteers, and concoct cuttingedge recruiting strategies. And one that includes other scenes like intense budget and facility negotiations, safety and security precautions, and new kids arriving every week (especially in the infant area!).
Sound familiar? With all the action required to serve kids well these days, no one in children’s ministry is bored, that’s for sure! But the best part of the story is that God unfolds this drama for more than pure entertainment. He has placed each of us in a ministry with the potential to change lives. And sifting through ideas about how to maximize this potential keeps every children’s ministry leader awake at night. Or at least it should.
In Hebrews 11 we see that the common thread of many great Bible characters is their faith-filled lives. Noah believed God had a reason behind the boat construction, so starting over was okay. Abraham remained steadfast in his faith, even when his wife did the chuckling. Moses took a little convincing, but eventually had faith to believe he was on a God-directed mission. And had Joseph given in or given up, which seemed much easier than remaining true to his faith in God, he would have become just another Joe.
Today’s children’s ministries share common ground with these biblical patriarchs—it requires a modern-day leap of faith for someone in a local church to dare pull out a blank sheet of paper and change the way ministry is done. In many settings, there are years or even decades of tradition standing guard against change. Or maybe there’s apprehension to do anything outside of the denomination’s program. It can seem ludicrous to start a ministry over or even to seriously rethink whether it really works—to whatever degree. Let’s be real—children’s ministry must happen every weekend, leaving little time for pondering change.
But maybe there’s something just a little exciting at the thought of a new adventure in children’s ministry. Maybe it can be a place that kids love so much that they actually want to attend each weekend. Maybe it’s an experience they enjoy enough to invite their friends. This thought—this dream—quickens the pulse of many children’s leaders and can become the heartbeat of an entire ministry. And the good news is that this isn’t a fairy tale. Every year more kids’ ministries throughout this country and around the world decide to try something new—and report the awakening of a new, exciting day.
Often these adventurous days come filled with very real challenges. Throughout my tenure in children’s ministry, I’ve known what it’s like to survive the lows and then hang on for the highs. I have felt overwhelmed with panic from a shortage of volunteers on weekends. But I’ve also seen God convince a man to change his schedule so he can build into a group of fifth-grade boys. I have labored under the weight of a commitment that Sundays will never bore kids. Yet I’ve also watched God inspire creative gospel messages that help usher kids across the line of faith. I have tasted the loneliness that sets in following church leadership’s resistance toward change. And I’ve also received leaders’ support to expand our budget and space, support that can only be attributed to God.
Across years of meeting with and challenging leaders to begin a new adventure within their children’s ministries, many have asked me to tell the Promiseland story. Most are surprised and encouraged to discover that our blank-sheet-of-paper experiences happen over and over again—and that we remain a work in progress. The rest of this chapter describes our ministry’s early journey and provides five faith-promises from God to hold on to when considering or experiencing change. Then chapter 2 focuses on a personal epiphany that landed me in Promiseland. The remainder of the book provides detailed guidance that, when adopted, will help you start your own Great Kid-Venture.
The Story of How Promiseland Began
As you read the next few pages, you will see that our story offers at least one scene that will strike familiarity with nearly any ministry. Look for one or more that relate closest to your situation. You will also see that Promiseland hasn’t always been so promising. But it will become clear how God can use ordinary people in extraordinary ways and give them the adventure of a lifetime. And he can do the same in your ministry.
In the Beginning, There Was Nothing
The Promiseland story begins with the genesis of Willow Creek Community Church. A twenty-year-old college student named Bill Hybels attended a New Testament course taught by Dr. Gilbert Bilezekian. During this class, Dr. Bilezekian often

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Excerpted from Making Your Children's Ministry the Best Hour of Every Kid's Week by Sue Miller
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