Freebie Friday: “How to Hire a Children’s Pastor” eBooklet
A few of my friends who blog have started sharing freebies on their blog. I want to start doing the same here on my blog. I am going to try to share a freebie every Friday. My goal is to share resources that have been a help to me that I believe will be a help to you as well.
Today I have a great freebie to share that will help anyone in church leadership looking for a children’s pastors or are a church leader looking for a children’s pastor position of your own. It’s eBooklet provided by KidMin360 called How to Hire a Children’s Pastor by Greg Baird. It seems like in the past few years full-time children’s pastor position for becoming more popular. Unfortunately, a lot of churches struggle with finding someone to bring on full-time to do children’s ministry. A lot of churches hire a youth/children’s pastor or maybe a Christian education pastor that is over all age-specific ministries.
A children’s pastor position, in my opinion, is one of the most important positions in church leadership. Other than the lead pastor, I believe the children pastor has the greatest ministry opportunity before them. They get to evangelize and disciple children while they are young and set them on a course of following Jesus for the rest of their lives.
I believe this simple eBooklet will help churches in their search for a children’s pastor as well as help anyone who is looking for that position themselves. Feel free to share this eBook with anyone you know who may benefit from it. Click the link below to view the eBook or follow the instructions below to download it.
How to Hire a Children’s Pastor by Greg Baird
Download Instructions: To download this resource, right-click on the link above and choose “Save As.”
Games in Student Ministry
In the past I have worked in student ministries where they used games every week and also student ministries that rarely use games at all. Like anything else, doing games in your student ministry will have it’s pros and cons. After seeing some links recently about youth ministry games, I thought I would share some thoughts that will hopefully help guide you as you think about using games in your student ministry.
1. You don’t have to do them! Games are not essential to your student ministry. I worked in a student ministry that had a game every Wednesday night as part of their mid-week service. It got to the point where it became an “essential” part of the program. But what happened over time was the games became routine and boring to the students, leaders ran out of ideas for new games, and they started taking up too much time in the service. Eventually, we stopped doing games every week and started doing them every few weeks. The bottom line is, you don’t have to always do games. Student ministry is about building discipleship through teaching God’s Word, not having the best games every week.
2. Use them creatively. If you are going to do games in your student ministry, do it creatively. Here are two ways you can use games creatively. First, use games that force the students to interact. Use games to build interaction and community among your students. Get them into teams and force them to work together. Second, use games that build into your lessons. I try to do this as much as possible, but it sometimes is difficult. Use games that build into your particular lesson that night. Use the game has an illustration or an attention grabber for your lesson. However you use games in your student ministry, do it creatively. One last thing about using games creatively, make sure and do all type of games. There are various types of games you can do: upfront games where you bring a few students on stage to play, everyone plays games where every student gets to play, and indoor/outdoor games.
3. When it’s summer, go outside! One of my favorite things to do in the summer with students is water games outside. During the summer months, plan some large group games that you can do outside. One of my favorites is called slip n’ slide kickball. Basically you make a kick ball field with plastic kiddie pools being the bases and between the bases is slip n’ slides (I suggest buying the plastic from Lowe’s). You play a normal game of kickball, but when students are running on slick plastic and diving into kiddie pools, it gets crazy! Do games like this during the summer. I suggest that you do all your teaching and stuff early in the night then do your outdoor game at the end.
Here are some links that provide great game ideas:
YouthMin.org games page has some great game ideas
Rug Burn-E-book full of indoor games
Grass Stains-E-book fill of outdoor games
The Source for Youth Ministry-Games and Icebreakers
3 Things Student Pastors MUST NOT Do
A little over a month ago, I wrote a blog called “3 Things Every Student Pastor MUST Do” which gained some attention and made waves in the student ministry blogosphere. It even was posted as a guest post on Josh Griffin’s website. In that post I shared three things I believe every student pastor must do in their ministry. As a sequel to that post, I want to share a few things I believe student pastor MUST NOT do.
1. Do not separate the student ministry from the church. We need to remember our student ministry is a part of the overall local church. Our student ministry should be placed under the authority and direction of the church. We are not called to build a “church of young people,” but we are called to serve students in the context of the local church. The more you separate students from the church, the harder it is for you to get them plugged into the local church. If they do not get plugged into the local church, they will abandon church all together when they graduate from your youth group. They need to be plugged into the church, not just the student ministry. If a student pastor builds a student ministry that is separated from the local church, it becomes a parachurch ministry which holds many dangers (click here to see a post on the dangers of parachurch ministry).
2. Do not build inappropriate relationships with the opposite sex. Students pastors need to make sure they keep boundaries between themselves and the opposite sex. It seems like every time you turn around you hear of a student pastor or a senior pastor being disqualified from ministry because of a situation including someone of the opposite sex. This is why I place Godly women on my leadership team. This allows me to focus on the guys when it comes to one-on-one interaction and the ladies on my leadership team can focus on the girls.
3. Do not put student ministry before your walk with God and your family. Let’s face it, student ministry is non-stop craziness. But student pastors need to learn how to put student ministry on hold so they can focus on their walk with God and time with their family. Student pastors must not sacrifice their relationship with God and their family on the altar of student ministry.It’s not worth it! Jesus will take care of His church and the ministry of it. He has called you to be a Christian first, husband/father second, and a student pastor last. Recently, I read Brian Berry’s book As for Me and My Crazy House which is a great book for this topic.
There are many more things I could write about what we in student ministry should not do, but these are the three that are most on my mind. Feel free to leave your thoughts and add to this small list. At the end of the day, student pastors need to make sure they are doing student ministry according to God’s Word. His Word will not only direct us what we should do, but will also show us what we should not do.
Practical Ways to Keep College Students Connected
Earlier today, I was able to spend some time at a youth pastor’s gathering for youth pastor’s in my area. After we spent some time praying for each other, we started a discussion on transitions. The question was asked about how do we transitions students in and out of our ministry. The conversation quickly turned into a conversation about how we can transition students out of our youth ministry into college in such a way they stay connected to the local church. This is a very important question for us in student ministry and a question we need to address. 80% of students are leaving the local church within two years after they graduate high school! There are numerous reasons this statistic is true (Josh Evan’s shared a few on his blog here), but one of the reasons they are leaving the church is because we are not keeping them connected to our church or another church in their college area. As church leaders, we need to do a better job at keeping college students connected to the local church. This is an age group that the church cannot ignore any longer.
I want to share a few of the ideas we discussed at our gathering today about how to keep college students connected to the church. I don’t take credit for most of these ideas because other student pastors at the gathering gave them. I hope we can all try some of these and maybe add to it some more practical ways to keep college students connected to the church.
Find churches in the community where your college students are going to school and connect them to those churches. Chad Watson, middle school pastor at Triad Baptist, shared this great idea about calling churches and telling them about the college students from your church in there area. I loved this idea! Most of our college students are leaving town for school and we rarely know if they are attending a good church or not. Spend some time looking into churches near where they are going to school and call a church leader to ask if they can connect with your student.
Give them ownership. One of the biggest reasons students stay in the local church after they leave the youth group is because they had ownership and was doing some type of ministry. During their youth group years, allow them to serve in the church and allow them to have some ownership. This will most likely play a factor at keeping them plugged into the local church for a long time. Also, for college students that stay near your church for school, this will help them feel like they have a role to play in the church. Allow them to serve in the student ministry or children ministry while they are in college. College leaders are a great help to these types of ministries in the church.
Provide them a ministry designed just for them. Josh Harvey, student pastor at Grace Baptist Temple, shared about the ministry they have at their church for college students called The Brickhouse. This is a ministry designed specifically for college students. For some churches, adding a college Sunday School class may be a great place to start, but I would encourage you to go past just a Sunday School class. The last thing college students want to commit to is waking up early on Sunday morning for a Sunday School class. They are in class enough! Give them a ministry that is different and designed to serve them and their specific age group.
Remind the parents to play a role in this. Encourage the parents to help their college student find a church in their area. When they take a trip to the school or help their child move in, remind them to look for a good church in the area. The college students that stay connected to the church normally have a good, supportive family. Partner with the parents in helping their college student stay connected to the church. In a recent blog, I that ministering to parents in one of the things student pastors MUST do.
Don’t just take a college tour, take a church tour. I believe someone might have said this in a joking way, but it’s true! When you take a group of high school students on a college trip to check out colleges, visit churches in those areas as well. Do whatever you can to show them good churches they can get plugged into while in college.
These are just a few ways we can help college students stay connected to the local church. Chuck Bomar’s blog, College Ministry Thoughts, is a great site to check out if you are interested in learning more about ministering to college students. What are some ways you think we can keep college students connected?
Parent Newsletter’s in Your Student Ministry
In one of youth ministry classes in college, we had to create a parent newsletter that could be used in our future ministry. At the time, I remember thinking sending out a parent newsletter is probably something I will not do, but now that I in ministry and have my own parents to think about, I have changed my mind. One of the things I did as soon as I got into this position was get all the parent’s contact info (e-mail, phone numbers, address) and communicate with them that they will receive a monthly electronic newsletter that will provide details on that months activities, resources to help them be parents, and a quick not from myself. So today I sent out our first parent e-mail newsletter for the month of April! I’ll be honest, it can become a burden and just another thing on your list to do, but I believe they are helpful and worth your time. Here are a few thoughts on creating a parent newsletter for your student ministry:
1. Decide how often the newsletter will go out. In my ministry, we are only sending a parent newsletter out once a month. In that newsletter, I try to cover all the details of that month so I don’t have to send out multiple e-mails throughout the month. One of my student pastor friends sends their newsletter out once a week. Everyone does it differently, but the point is to get it out and have a cycle it stays on. I would suggest sending one out at least once a month.
2. Find a good program. There are tons of programs out there you can use to make this task a little easier on yourself. The most popular right now is probably Mailchimp. I know of a lot of student pastors who are currently using it for their newsletters. Personally, I am using the iWorks program Pages on my Mac to design our newsletters. Once I design one, I export it as a PDF and send it out as an attachment in an e-mail to the parents. This isn’t the best and always fastest way to do it, but for me it works for now.
3. Do more than just give details. The main thing you want to do in your newsletter is give parents all the details they need, but don’t stop there! Throw in other creative things like movie reviews, music reviews, parenting resources, student interviews, and other things that allow you to equip your parents. Parents will get tired of just looking at details, give them something to look forward to each time the newsletter is sent to them.
4. Don’t worry about getting the newsletter out to students. Most students don’t use e-mail so don’t worry about trying to get them to review the newsletter. I would suggest make it a “Parent Newsletter” that is designed just for parents. Use social sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and texting to communicate details to your students. If you do have a Facebook or Twitter account for your student ministry, send out your newlsetter through that as well incase people miss it through their e-mails.
These are just a few thoughts on creating a parents newsletter for your student ministry. It is worth the time to put together a newsletter for your parents. It will become one of the best ways to communicate all the crazy details of student ministry to them.
Teens See Teens Do
Over the past few weeks I have seen many stories about teens mimicking what they are seeing in popular movies. The most disturbing stories are the one about teens mimicking the popular movie Project X.
Project X is a movie about three teen guys who attempt to gain popularity by throwing a huge party which gets totally out of control. The movie basically is all about the party and what is taking place there. Click here for more details on the movie. If you read the movie review on Plugged In, you will find that the movie is full of sexual content, nudity, terrible language, drug use, and violence.
The first time I saw a story about a group of teens mimicking Project X was when I was scrolling through The Youth Culture Report app on my iPad. There was a link to a news story about a group of teenagers who vandalized a for sale home and was getting it ready for a blowout party following what they perviously saw on the movie Project X. Then a few days later I saw a tweet with a link to another news story about the same thing. I’m not sure if the two stories are actually about the same situation or if this was two different situations, but either way, the lesson for us who work with teenagers is clear: Teens will mimic what they see.
Since teens have a tendency to do what they see, how do adults who work with teens, whether as a student pastor or a parent, respond to this truth that teens mimic what they see? Here are a few things I believe we can do to in response:
1. Be a Godly example for them to follow. Many teens follow the examples they see in movies or in music because they don’t see any other examples worth following. I believe parents and student pastors should do everything they can to be Godly examples for teens to follow. Spend time growing your walk with God and becoming passionate about it so teens can see your Godly example. If you are being authentic and passionate about your walk with God, teens will follow you and try to do the same. Paul had this idea in mind when he said, “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ” (1 Cor. 11:1).
2. Set a standard for the movies your teens watch. I don’t want to sound legalistic here, but teens need to understand that there are some movies that are ok to watch and some that are not worth watching because they do not honor God. Parents, as long as you have a teen under your roof, you need to set a standard as to what movies will and will not be watched. This is a tricky issue for student pastors, because we cannot set a standard for the teens ourselves, we need to allow parents to do that. I was recently just on a camping trip with some teen guys from my student ministry. The last night of the trip we all slept inside a house because it was cold overnight. They wanted to watch a movie that I knew was not a good, clean movie at all. I used it as a teaching point to encourage them to choose movies that honor God. I set a standard and said we were not watching that movie and allowed them to pick another movie.
3. Don’t just tell teens not to watch a certain movie, teach them why they shouldn’t. What I mean by that statement is this: don’t just tell them they cannot watch Project X, take some time to teach them why they shouldn’t watch it. Show them Biblically why the movie is sinful and does not honor God. Show them in the Bible where God tells us to fill our mind with what is good, honorable, pure, etc. (Phil. 4:8). If we just set a rule and say they can’t do something, like watch a certain movie, but not teach them why they shouldn’t watch it, they will never learn how to set their own boundaries and learn how to discern what is Godly and what is not.
These are just a few ways we can respond to the truth that teens normally do what they see. Below is a powerful video that was actually used as a commercial that shows how a teen does what they see done.
Freebie: FREE Book “Redeeming Leadership: Shoulder Pads”
Normally I share a freebie on Fridays, but the freebie I want to share is only free until midnight tonight! That means if your reading this blog about this free ebook, you need to grab it asap before it goes up to $4.99 tomorrow! The FREE ebook I want to share with you is called Redeeming Leadership: Shoulder Pads by Mark Riddle. I had the opportunity to meet Mark personally a few weeks ago at the Simply Youth Ministry Conference. I have not dived into this book just yet, but plan to in the coming months. From what I am hearing it’s an excellent leadership book that those in church leadership. One review of the book said, “This book should be required reading for church staff and lay leaders alike.” Here is a short review of the book by Tim Schmoyer:
Most church leaders deal with the issue of congregation members who expect the paid staff to serve them, provide services, and direct programs. For the most part, the congregation members are involved, but they’re serving the youth pastor in his ministry or the children’s director in her ministry rather than taking responsibility for THEIR ministry. Things like this happen because somewhere along the line the team player removed his or her shoulder pads and placed them on the paid staff member. Unfortunately, the staff member accepts them because “this is what I get paid to do” and before long, it’s a church of people with unrealistic expectations who also share no ownership in the outcomes.
Mark’s little book addresses issues like this and more as he talks about how we can discover our role in misplacing responsibility because church staff members do it, too. He also addresses how we can begin to give back misplaced responsibility that’s been delegated to us.
I hope these thoughts have wet your appetite to read this ebook. Below is the link to download the book for FREE from Amazon as a Kindle edition. If you don’t have a Kindle, don’t worry! You can click here to download a Kindle reading app (for FREE) that allows you to read Kindle edition books on your computer or tablet.
Redeeming Leadership: Shoulder Pads by Mark Riddle
Balancing Seminary and Ministry
One of the things I considered when planning for seminary was: am I going to do it full-time on campus or would I do it part-time, and maybe even full-time, online as I work in vocational ministry. I knew the latter would be hard and require discipline, but I wanted to get my feet wet in vocational ministry and didn’t want to wait for a few years while I was on campus as a seminary students. So I decided to do seminary online while pursing vocational ministry at a local church.
I’m only four classes into seminary, so by no means am I an expert at this yet, but I have been learning a few things about how to balance my seminary work with my ministry work. It’s a delicate balance that requires discipline and hard work. Here are a few things that have helped me with this balancing act that may be a help to you if your in the same place I am.
Take a day off to focus 100% on seminary. This has been the biggest help to me so far in this journey. Taking a day off during the week, for me Mondays, and focusing just on my seminary work is a great way to stay on top of your seminary work while staying busy in the ministry world. Find the weekday that works best for you, and stick with it. Don’t schedule any meetings or do any ministry work, find a quite place and work on your seminary stuff. Your ministry stuff will be waiting for you tomorrow, no worries!
Get ahead on your seminary work. Another way to balance seminary and ministry is to get ahead on whatever class work you can. On that day off, get extra reading done and get started on the next paper. Don’t wait until the week something is due to work on that assignment. Stay a week ahead. This will help you focus on your ministry work without feeling like your falling behind in your classes.
Don’t take too many classes. One of the biggest reasons people struggle with balancing seminary and ministry is because they take way too many classes. If you feel like God has called you to do vocational ministry while in seminary, make sure your giving yourself enough time to serve Him well in your ministry. Take a few classes so you stay on track with your program, but don’t overload yourself. Ministry seasons where it’s really busy, like summer for me since I am in youth ministry, take only one or two classes. When there is a season in ministry that you may have more free time, take a few more classes. Be wise and use discernment when planning your classes.
These are just three of the many ways I am learning how to balance seminary and ministry. In our culture, we are blessed with online education so we can serve God in vocational ministry while we do seminary. But remember, we need to be wise with our time so continue figuring out how you can balance seminary with your ministry.
I originally wrote this post for The Baptist Resource blog. The Baptist Resource is a great website ran by Greg Moore, an adjunct professor of religion and church history and a former college registrar. The Baptist Resource is a great site that provides practical advice and information on college/seminary education.
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Choosing Curriculum
One of the things I am currently working on right now in my new student pastor position is choosing a curriculum for the student ministry. This is no small task and can be somewhat overwhelming when you start to discover just how much curriculum is out there for students. Because of the amount of curriculum out there, student pastors need to take time to look around and discover the curriculum that best fits you, your students, and your church. With all that being said, here are some questions to consider when your trying to choose a curriculum for your student ministry:
Does it have Biblical content? The first, and most important thing, you need to consider when you’re looking at curriculum is how much Biblical content does it have. Unfortuantley, there is a lot of curriculum that does not have a lot of Biblical content in it. I believe teaching God’s Word is the most important thing we do as student pastors. God’s Word will change students, so we need to make sure our curriculum has plenty of God’s Word built within in.
Do you want expository and topical? Personally, I lean towards expository teaching. I believe it’s the best way to teach and allows you to keep God’s Word at the center. Even with that conviction, I do not discount or throw away topical teaching. I try and throw in topical lessons and series from time to time and believe they have a place. Because of this, I try to look for curriculum that is a balance between the two. I usually use curriculum that is overall expository, but has topical lessons as well. This is sometimes a hard thing to find. But when your considering curriculum, decide what style of teaching best fits your style of teaching.
Does it agree with your overall church? You need to make sure the theology of your curriculum agrees with the theology of your church. Out of respect for your senior pastor and overall church, try and stay within the theological “circles” that your church is. I say this because you don’t want your students learning one thing in youth group and then another on Sunday mornings. You want your curriclum in the student ministry to compliment and agree with the teaching of your church.
Does it have good media? Some might think this is shallow, but this is huge! In our culture, student ministries need to invest in and have good media. That is why we need to make sure a curriculum has good media with it. Most good curriculums will have good media. Curriculum with good media built in will save you time, energy, and money. It allows you to focus on preparing the lesson rather than spending an hour making a PowerPoint and trying to find a video.
I hope these questions will help you as you look for curriculum for your students. As I said earlier, curriculum is a good thing and believe it you take the time to find the right one it will help your students grow and your teaching to become a vital part of your ministry. Here are a few curriculums I have used or am planning on using that you may want to check out:
Word of Life-This will be your more conservative theology type of curriculum. I lean more towards that, so this is a curriculum I have used and will probably be using more in the future. Has a great balance between expository and topical and comes with a great media package.
YM 360-If you have not checked out YM 360′s curriculum, you need to! I am planning on using one of their studies in the coming months and have a good relationship with the guys over there. Their stuff has a lot of Biblical content and comes with probably the best media stuff out there.
Simply Youth Ministry-The curriculum you get from this group will be more broad in theology than others. I have used a lot of there stuff and usually am happy with it. They allow you to edit it and make it your own which is a plus. Also, comes with top notch media.
The Gospel Project (Lifeway)-This is brand new and has not officially been released yet, but from what I can see it looks really good. It’s a Gospel centered and Bible based curriculum. Matt Chandler has been a huge contributor to this and I am looking at using it in our ministry.
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Starting Off Right in a New Student Pastor Position
As many of you may know from my last post, I am the new student pastor at Courtney Baptist Church in NC. I started this past Monday and have been using most of my week setting up my office and getting all my stuff there. Other than just moving my books and such to my office, I have been trying to do a few things this week to help me start off on the right foot at this new position. Here are a few things that I’m doing that I believe are things that will help you start off right in a new student pastor position:
Get to know the senior pastor. This is probably the biggest thing to do when starting a new student pastor position. Spend as much time as you can getting to know the senior pastor. Hopefully you have done a lot of this during the interview process, but get to know him as a person. Maybe leave ministry out of the conversation all together. Find out about his likes, dislikes, relationship with God, his family, his hobbies, and things like that. You will have plenty of meetings and time to talk to him about ministry, spend some time getting to know the person behind the “senior pastor” title.
Get your office set up like you want it. This may seem silly, but spend a few days getting your office set up exactly how you want it. The last thing you need is your office being set up over a span of three weeks while you’re trying to do student ministry. Make it your own place and get it the way you like it. You will be spending a lot of time planning, writing, meeting, and doing al your admin work there so make it comfortable. Make it a place where students, parents, and leaders can come and spend time with you.
Set up communication with leaders and parents. Make sure and spend some time getting your lines of communication set up. Try and get all the students, parents, and leaders phone number, Facebook, Twitter, and e-mail. These will be vital ways you will communicate with them so the faster you get it all set up the better. You may have to have a meeting with your parents and leaders to get this done and I would encourage you to do just that. Have a meeting and get to know your parents as well as leaders. Use part of that time getting all their contact info so you can start communicating with them on a regular basis. I am holding a parent/leader meeting next Sunday where I will share all my contact as well as get the contact information for all my parents and leaders. Once you got this, set up a database or document that hold all the contacts. Then you should be good to go!
Spend time preparing yourself spiritually. In all the craziness of starting a new position, don’t forget where your strength and effectiveness will really come from-God. Make sure you spend time preparing your heart and soul for the task ahead. You have students, parents, and leaders who are looking to you as a spiritual leader. Make sure your ready for that. Truth is, none of us are so make sure you go to the One who will make you ready.
These are just a few practical ways to start off right in a new student pastor position. Feel free to leave a comment and add your thoughts or other things you may think one should do when starting out in a new position.
