I am getting ready to pastor our children ages K-6th grades. If there are any children's pastor's on board, do you have any advice? I am excited, yet thinking, will I be able to handle this? I have 4 children, ages 2,4,5 and 8. I have been the nursery coordinator for a few years at my church. I teach 5th graders in public school and my husband, who is Senior Pastor asked me to coordinate our children's program. We have had an influx of young families to come in our church with children ages 5-12. Sometimes, I am not so sure, because children require so much. I love them, though.
Just looking for any wrds of encouragement. I really want to keep it fun, creative and interesting for them.
I just completed my second year of full time kids' ministry (as in, getting PAID full time for it - I was paid a small weekly stipend at my last church!), and I do not, in any way, feel like I have "arrived" as an expert in the field, but I can definitely share some things that have worked for me.
Bombard me with questions, and I'll try my best to answer them!!!!
So far I have 12-15 kids who are ages K-6th grades. I do not have the space to teach them during regular worship service, nor do I have enough volunteers. Most of my volunteers are mothers and they are already assigned to Nursery ministry and one other ministry. How can i make an impact on the lives of the school aged children, when i do not have the space nor the volunteers. By the way, I must mention that our ministry is growing with young couples with small children from babies to 6th grades. i am having such a struggle knowing how to handle this. Do you think we are just not in a position to serve school agers at this point? Sometimes I think I am just having to make a choice between nursery ministry and children's ministry. To me, nursery is very important for the parents of young babies, so that they can enjoy service without being distracted. How do I handle this? It is tough being in a growing church, without enough volunteers. Are you familiar with this?
I totally understand being in a small church and having no volunteers - that was my life for almost three years ;o).
You need to do something, though - if you do not have ministry opportunities set up for school-aged children, you will lose the families you have and not gain new ones.
A nursery ministry is definitely important - but if your church is small enough, you probably do not need more than two workers at a time.
Ultimately, the first thing you need to do is evaluate your thinking as far as kids' ministry goes. It is not just something that you do to occupy the kids while mom and dad are in church. It IS church! And you need to have a passion for it. If a passion for children's ministry (notoriously a difficult area to draw volunteers!) does not come from the top, then no one else is going to be passionate about it, either.
Even in my church, which is large enough to have a full-time children's pastor (me!), it is important that my senior pastors have a vision and are passionate about seeing kids come to Jesus and grow.
So the first thing I would do is to ask God to give you that passion and desire to have a children's ministry. If you view it as something you're "stuck" doing, then that attitude will rub off and you will never get any volunteers.
As far as space goes, have you considered doing your "main" kids' ministry on another day of the week? Think outside the box...maybe a "Saturday school" program, or something after school or on an evening (I used to do my main ministry on Wednesday nights, because we were too small to divide into "clubs," and we also had access to a bus from the school system to transport more kids during the week!). There is no law that says you need to minister to kids on a Sunday morning, and if space is an issue, then just make sure that you really include the kids as part of the church community throughout the service on Sunday mornings and make it clear that you DO value reaching kids.
A fantastic book on the topic is "Volunteers that Stick" by Jim Wideman. I think I am going to give myself a refresher course on that in the next few weeks, as a matter of fact!!!
