 Welcome to our workshop here and you are all brave because first of all it's in the middle of lunch or after lunch and so everybody is starting to get like the post-lunch tiredness and I will throw something at you if I see anybody dozing off. Secondly you're brave because we are talking about kids ministry, it is not for the faint of heart. So welcome to everybody here in the room and also online. I'm Pastor Scott, I am the kids pastor here at our Richland campus and we are talking today about building a kids ministry around his presence and I'm gonna share for a little while and then my awesome team with me are we're gonna come up and do a little bit of Q&A so if you have a question talk it away write it down and we'll get to that but really kids ministry is not for the faint of heart. I remember we have a parking team and just in the dead of winter it was like February and they're all bundled up in their jackets and their hats and and the gloves and I walk past them as they were going out and I'm like thank you you guys you're the you guys are so brave like out there and they turned around to me and they're like no you are the brave ones like letting us drop off our kids and they you know this this man with this beautiful gray full beard he was like he would crumble in a room full of children and so I think a lot of you know what I'm talking about how many of us you are involved in kids ministry in one way or another pretty much all of us well thank you so much for doing that and it's a real honor for me to be able to share with you so again my name is Scott my wife is Sam she's hanging out in the back we moved from Rochester New York to hear about nine months ago so in the middle of the pandemic in August we felt a call to come out here and it's been amazing ever since obviously this last year has been wild you know nothing is the same but for me kids ministry has been a new journey I had not been in a you know more of a pastoral or a positional role with kids ministry before coming here but it opened up and I have just a just a love for kids and seeing that the spark in their eye and seeing the no filter when you ask a question they say exactly what they're thinking and so it has been an awesome awesome journey so first of all we're not talking about COVID can I get an amen like where everybody's sick of talking about COVID and you all know all the procedures and policies and stuff to make your environment safe hopefully that's not what this is gonna be I'm so done talking about COVID but we are talking about something else and really if we could get the slide up if we're able to we're gonna start off with a problem that I think a lot of us have heard this statistic that 64% of young people are leaving the church after being active members as kids and teens this was a statistic put up by the Barna group recently and it's something that has sent us shockwaves everywhere and and it's caused a lot of thought and reflection about what is going on with this with this crisis and this problem and so could it be that you know before COVID there were plenty of of plans and programs and different things we do to keep ourselves busy but this statistic makes me pause and think why why are we doing this because programs and all these things are good but they need to be led by a move of the spirit they need to be led by an encounter with the Holy Spirit now I want to ask could it be that kids have grown fat with programs and and events but are starved for an encounter with the Holy Spirit and I know it's kind of provocative to say that but it's it's kept me up at night and it's something I want to explore with you all see I think what we need is a spirit inspired ministry that that everything else flows from and so we need of course discipleship in one hand spiritual mothers and fathers who are teaching the word who are modeling the word discipling but we also need an encounter with the living God the spirit should speak and we will follow and I think also the choices we make in kids ministry directly impact where our church is going in 10 20 and 30 years so for me I'm not the most qualified person to be sharing with you today I don't have the most experience or the most impressive degree or anything like that but what I want to do is just share from our heart really a testimony of what's been going on in our kids ministry over the last year or so and and give you kind of just I know some encouragement today hopefully because it's it cannot can be difficult sometimes and so what I want to do is share some some wins and some things that we've been learning and if we have time maybe here's some stuff that's going on and all your all churches as well so what we're going to do is talk about three pillars for building a kids ministry around his presence and so if we think about actually what kids need is an encounter with the living God maybe you can get in in the habit of of going to programs but when the real world hits them and I thought Pastor Lee's message today was powerful and potent for this talking about when pressure is introduced to a zero gravity atmosphere things can crumble away if it's not rooted in something deeper and so how can we create environments where kids can encounter the spirit of the living God to be able to move on into adulthood with a strong faith and with conviction so I've recognized these three things that have popped up in our ministry and I've kind of explored them and it's cool because I've seen parallels with the book of acts and not not as a model but more as a as a goal or a honestly kind of like a paradigm of hey I see this happening in in the scriptures and I see it happen with our kids ministry let's explore this idea a little bit more so these three words we're gonna explore which are expectation alignment and opportunity these three words I think for us have formed the pillar of building a kids ministry around his presence so we're gonna explore them each is gonna have a little tag and a little axiom with it and then we'll talk about some practical stuff that we've been doing and then open it up for some Q&A so first of all expectation and the little tag with it is there is no junior holy spirit I know it can be a little bit of a cliche sometimes we talk about it we hear it but when you stop and think about it there is no junior holy spirit and so when I mean expectation I see it in the book of acts when Jesus has died but he's also risen and he's ascended but first he says wait for the promise of the father wait in Jerusalem for the promise of the father so there's an expectation that they're waiting for and so also reading from the prophet Joel Peter gets up and I just want to read this after the spirit comes and he's explained to everybody there's an expectation that they've been waiting for and he links it together and so this is in acts to Peter says in the last days it shall be that I will pour out my spirit and all flesh and your adults shall prophesy and your parents shall see visions wait a minute oh no your sons and your daughters shall prophesy so there's an expectation that whoa there is no junior holy spirit children are going to prophesy and see visions so there is a expectation that happens when the spirit hits fills them at Pentecost that it's not just the adults who are having flames of fire I believe it was families who were encountering the presence of God and being touched filled with the power to actually go out and fulfill the great commission and so that's that's what I see in the book of Acts and so here's the axiom with that this is why expect expectation is so important setting an expectation of encounter with the Holy Spirit for our team and our kids is important because it heightens our ability to notice the spirit working in and around us sometimes on a Sunday morning it can be like a whirlwind like this volunteer doesn't show up and you know these families are coming in and there's not time I'm putting out fires everywhere but that word notice is key there because if we believe that the spirit it gives grace to the church and works in the church apart from everything that we do he is working all around us and we just need to slow down to notice it but having that keyword expectation helps so first of all we have been giving expectation to our volunteers what one of the cool things we do is a half hour before the service we have a group huddle with our our kids team and we usually give announcements but then we also spend time in prayer just kind of dedicating the service to the Lord and that half hour chunk it's about like a 10 minute or less connect but that if you are a leader and you have the power to maybe introduce something like that or maybe you're doing something like that already is one of the key ways to introduce expectation in your team because what we've been doing is it's a chance to say hey here's what they're talking about in the main service today here's you know they're talking about the Holy Spirit or they're talking about you know whatever it is it links them together with what's going on in the main service it doesn't make them feel like I'm sacrificing here and I'm totally missing out on what the church is doing no what we're doing in the kids ministry is actually a main function of what the church is doing so it's a chance to connect them with the main service it's also a time to share testimonies from our volunteers and their families and encourage them a reach out to me if you've been praying for something contending for something we'll partner with you in that and we we're just going to share it at our little debrief before the service and so there have been volunteers who have who have gotten sick with COVID who have you know their their kids there's you know family crisis all sorts of things and we can bring that to our huddle and say hey we're gonna lift them up in prayer or we're gonna celebrate somebody was miraculously healed or somebody you know found a job or a prayer was answered that energizes people and it helps them notice where the spirit might be working and it's also helpful to remind your team I say phrases like when I'm praying I can just say you know Lord give us ears to hear what you're speaking or I can remind everybody you know Lord thank you that you have anointed us to be here at this moment pray that you would bless every family that steps through these doors saying these phrases like this in this prayer it helps people think you know where I'm instead of you know where am I going to lunch after church you can be like oh I'm anointed like what does that even mean like this Holy Spirit is here the service is dedicated and it helps them go out to their classrooms noticing and ready to encounter the Holy Spirit with their kids and never never let me hear you I don't think any of you would or your volunteers ever call Children's Ministry child care it's like it's definitely not child care that's something that happens and it's important and it's good but it's of the furthest from the truth of what happens with us on our weekend services and so it's those things that you help people just shift one little degree changes everything and it brings that first expectation to them and then with our kids when I am teaching I usually teach about once a week and on our elementary room and by the way this is one of our elementary rooms currently shut down it's it's gonna open up soon but you can see it's been a little bit in touch it's like COVID broke out and we sealed this room and haven't thought about it since since we've reopened so these flags and stuff it's a result of one of those one of those program things that we're trying to control so but anyways this is our space this is our this is our domain so I'm glad you guys can can join us here but what I do with with kids is talking about the Holy Spirit just as a person normalizing it speaking to them in plain language it's not just something that can happen you know the Holy Spirit speaking to them it's something that he promises will happen and it's something that God desperately wants to do to them so just that even when you're going into a prayer time or when you're when you're you know doing a ministry time to talk about the Holy Spirit and also sharing personal stories hey you know last week I was praying and I felt the Holy Spirit say this you know tell them tell it to these kids and say you know he can do this for you too or even I love to remind them of stories in the Bible of God speaking and calling people at a young age I know Samuel is one of the classic examples as a child in the temple and hearing God call him saying you know Samuel was just a kid he was probably you know a 10 11 12 he can do that for you too and to bring that expectation for kids to start thinking okay what am I feeling what am I maybe hearing in a time of prayer or during a lesson or something like that there's no junior Holy Spirit and that's that's something we live by so secondly we're gonna talk about alignment and alignment means being tethered to the mission of my local church I know for you know kids ministries I've seen sometimes it can feel like floating kind of a something that we do that's not really attached to the mission of the church but it's kind of something that there's an expectation and they're doing their own thing they have their own name own curriculum but there's not quite a lot of overlap maybe a different vision statement or different values or things like that and what we've found is aligning with where the church is going has been one of the most impactful ways to actually experience and host the presence of God with us and let me let me explain that aligning with the mission and vision of your local church here's our our axiom is vital because it creates clarity and brings you under the direction and covering of the senior pastor or your church governance and so it brings clarity with with what you're doing where you're going even asking yourself why are we doing this it brings clarity and also brings you under the covering to say hey we're at this church because we believe in the mission where we're going and so we're not just you know picking some random curriculum and doing our own thing we agree and we believe that the kids and the youth are actually the future of the mission and vision we're talking about and so for us oh you know let me jump back to axe just so we can stay on track here so I see alignment and it's great because the disciples get it wrong at first Jesus comes to them he's resurrected and they say oh is now the time you're gonna restore Jerusalem now finally you're gonna pick up the sword and liberate us from Rome and Jesus is like no you know you do not know what's going on but then it clicks at Pentecost and what happens the they stand up and they remember Jesus came he was preaching repentance he was introducing the kingdom of God and so Peter stands up and he preaches the gospel and thousands were saved and baptized so they were didn't quite understand it but when they stepped into a line with it the Holy Spirit broke out in the church exploded and so that has been maybe not quite that dramatic but we've decided to do something similar in our kids ministry we had an offsite meeting maybe five six months ago to get away our kids ministry and say okay what is what's God doing what's the Holy Spirit doing and just getting clarity and we felt to that shift to say okay we need to shift our kids vow I think we had some kids values that were good but they were they weren't part of our DNA I think we had gotten them from a church resource website or something and they were fine because we go over our kids values every week in our classrooms but we felt the need to say actually no let's pivot this and comment to alignment with where we're at as radiant if you could put up that slide and I I had to put these up here just to to show you and then one more and we have five core values at Radiant Church and they are let's see go forward a little bit we'll put them up there but our five core values are being word-centered spirit empowered family oriented kingdom focused and mission motivated so and so those are those are powerful those are our directives so what we did is we were thinking okay how can we put this in a way that kids will understand it and it'll light space for more conversation and so what we've done is you can I think you can actually see banners outside and the hallway and in some of our open classrooms we decided to launch these new values and they get at what we're trying to do so first of all we have the Bible is true the Holy Spirit lives and us we are children of God Jesus is king and we share the gospel so these five core values for kids ministry have been transformative honestly because we go through them before every single lesson and the kids picking up on them so much and it gives us an opportunity to talk about each one of these you know the Bible it's witness what it talks about the what creation and redemption and what's wrong and where we're going that is a true witness it's something we can base our lives on and the Holy Spirit lives in us when we actually ask him he promises to fill us with power to be able to live a holy life to tell people about him so it just opens up so much conversation and it also I mean you can see where you could take each one of these and so we built a kind of a mini curriculum out of them and they're gonna set the course for us going forward to say okay here's an option or an idea you know one of us has an idea and brainstorming session and we can think okay does it fit in line with these values if yes bring it on if no we probably toss it aside because we're focused and it's in line where with where rating is going they play into one another and we're gonna we're gonna see that in a little bit but here's something I was thinking about is the mission of the church is really the the mission of the generational ministry of kids and of youth because the generational ministry is responsible for shaping the ones who are gonna fulfill the mission of the church why contend for revival if we don't take the time to raise up dynamic disciples who can steward what God has done and so we are a praying and a worshiping church but if we don't take time to invest in the kids who are actually being raised up I don't know if God would move in a way if we're not prepared to steward what he's giving us and so that's why we do it when you step into alignment you feel a clarity and you feel like you can step into the flow of what the church is doing rather than just oh you know we're floating out here we're doing great it's fine but it's not quite as dynamic so stepping into alignment has transformed what we're doing and then finally opportunity making space for the spirit so if you have you have alignment and then you have expectation those are great but they are almost useless if I can say that if you don't make opportunity an opportunity for the spirit to actually touch these kids and transform their lives so in the book of Acts the 120 who are waiting there praying until the day of Pentecost after Jesus ascended they didn't go around yet making themselves busy with activities we got it we got to go we got to go they waited and they prayed and they made opportunity for God to move they said we're waiting for the promise of the Father we're giving plenty of opportunity and then when the Holy Spirit did come they were going out to the temple they were sharing things in common they were creating with the spirit they were creating all sorts of opportunity to move through the spirit so people were getting healed people were being provided for people who have no homes now are having being clothed and being fed and so that all is a function of the Holy Spirit but it's because they made space for opportunity for the spirit to move so I have powerful memories in kids church of the Holy Spirit speaking to me or touching me you know getting baptized in the Holy Spirit you know getting impacted by somebody's message and a lot of you probably do too and so this is here's the axiom with it for opportunity having expectation alignment are great but if you don't have an opportunity it's not it won't do you much good but creating opportunity for encounter with the Holy Spirit is so important because it's where the real transformation takes place everything can change in a moment with the spirit it's where real transformation takes place and again I think Pastor Lee stole my notes honestly when he's talking about one moment with the spirit I said yes the people are gonna be ready for this session so how do we do this so making room during your weekend services so you have all sorts of families come in and some kids have been churched they have some of that biblical framework some not at all so you can do things though that's still welcome no matter where kids are at so I love to give opportunities to to respond when we're talking about anything so you can you can incorporate it with anything you're talking about if you're talking about patience you know kindness courage you know boldness anything in your kids curriculum at the end of the service you can allow them to respond and explain that the Holy Spirit up actually is the one who gives us these things we're not just talking about you know being a being kind to your neighbor but we're actually gonna say okay who wants to be kinder who wants help to be kinder and I always say you know I do and we don't have to just make ourselves work harder to do these things the Holy Spirit because he lives in us value number two he promises that he's gonna give us power to do these things it's not just about rules to make yourself a better person but God himself enables us to do this and so you know let's respond who wants more of this and when kids say yes I want it the Holy Spirit says okay I'll give it to you and again there's no junior Holy Spirit but also I'm a huge fan of simple prayers too you don't need to make it weird don't make it weird I highlighted that in my notes I love repeat after me prayers it keeps them engaged and it teaches them to pray it it kind of demystifies it so you know if kids are saying you know we're talking about patience I want more patience you know ask the kids to raise their hands and say you know dear Jesus have them repeat after you you know Holy Spirit fill me give me patience when you when you say these powerful words like this it's it gives me shivers when I'm hearing a group of you know 25 30 kids say a Holy Spirit fill me up and it's not manufactured but it's kids saying I want more of you and then here's what I'm experimenting with lately I I'll say a prayer and then I'll say okay we're gonna take you know maybe 10 15 seconds and after our prayer we're just gonna be quiet and tell the Holy Spirit in your heart you know I'm open would you please speak to me and hear what he says and if you think Scott you're crazy like I I know elementary kids I tell you I've had you know 2025 kindergarten through second graders dead silent for like 15 seconds and it was powerful we were talking about talking about our our our vocation I think we were talking about the Great Commission how each of us is called to fulfill the Great Commission and he calls us to do different things no matter what we do and I said okay we're gonna be quiet for about 15 seconds and ask the Holy Spirit you know Holy Spirit where you want me to go and one kid was like you know I heard he's in first grade I heard I'm supposed to be an engineer or I you know one kid is like I heard I'm supposed to be a missionary and these things that are like I gotta write this down like I'm not I'm not giving leading questions I'm not you know really okay some of you are gonna hear this you're gonna hear but I'm just leaving it open for them to hear and to set that space for encounter is is huge and so I would invite you to just try it just try it that's the cool thing about kids ministry is that that's not you know live-streamed there's not you know thousands of people who are gonna be who are gonna be you know replaying you know some if you fumble over something or if it goes terribly wrong but what the Holy Spirit will honor is a commitment to making space for him to actually speak to people and so here we go we're gonna be tying it all together with just a few testimonies of what what we've tried so if you will go to a radiant church even in the network has anybody else done seek services or something similar to it so we do a season of seek it's in January and in September and it's really impactful for the church we have you know speakers come in and just it prayer and fasting and every Wednesday night we have a really big service along with the adult service of course we have you know full kids ministry which is just wild sometimes because they get dropped off right around the time they're usually going to bed and we get to hang out with them well and monitor all that and it's been it's been fun but this last seek service in January we said okay let's let's go for it with kids ministry so right now we typically do video worship you know with hand motions and things but let's we said let's grab the RSW students and make them do live worship for the kids and we're gonna make it like a camp experience so we're gonna have like a host we're gonna have like a guest speaker we're gonna do games but we're gonna go for it with our topics and so we talked about man what did we talk about like being a disciple of repentance being like living on mission salvation baptism in the Holy Spirit and we saw some incredible incredible things so first of all one of our volunteers came in on Wednesday night she's like my shoulders killing me I can't even raise my arm she almost didn't even come in to serve but when we stepped in we want we all went in our for elementary we all went to the youth room just a bigger space and as soon as worship started her arm pain totally went away like she literally got healed and she's like I heard about it the next day she's like yeah my arm got healed completely and we got to tell the kids about it like hey you know the Lord moves when we're worshiping him like he can touch you and he can heal you another girl we were it was the last night we're praying talking about friendship with the Holy Spirit and we went home and you know we had worship and just an invitation for the kids to just invite the Holy Spirit to live inside of them and on her way home she's like mom I just felt the Holy Spirit pouring over me tonight and we didn't say anything about you know being the Holy Spirit pouring any any kind of language like that but it was an experience a kid had with the living God with the Holy Spirit and it marked her that is why we do what we do like that's what that's what gets us going and and there were all sorts of kids who were marked I had parents coming to me hey I don't know what you did but I'm seeing a change in my kids and and what's going on you know they're just riveted with us challenging the kids and raising the expectation making that alignment and and also making room for the Holy Spirit to move also our baptism services so this was literally last weekend one of the coolest things we can do is live stream our services right on our TVs here because you know just pull up the live stream on on your production computer or whatever and you can put it in your classroom so it was baptism weekend and a lot of parents were like hey can I pull out my kid I want them to see baptisms but so what we did was just like hey let's let's just put the baptisms on the screen and it'll give us a chance to talk about it and and see what happens so the kids were watching it and they saw some of their friends getting baptized they saw a whole family is getting baptized and we got to say talk about baptism what it means what it is and even say is anybody feeling just the Holy Spirit maybe talk on your heart or just feeling like hey I want that I want to do that and we had over 25 kids come and say I want to get baptized and I was blown away and I'm like is this hype or something so I was with the clipboard and I don't want to be too single but I'm like I looked each kid in the eye and I was like do you want to get baptized okay and they said yes and so I write down their name and the next one do you want to get baptized and I'm like okay I'm just trying to figure out so when I go to my campus pastor they're gonna be like well there no and it was a great response honestly but each kid were like you know yes I want to get baptized they were serious about it so next baptisms coming up in July it might be half kids and I'm gonna be up there Duncan um and probably weeping so that was really really cool for us to have all of these these pillars of host and God's presence come come together and and just try it just a couple more we've got what else did we put up there oh our radiant kids values so you know we talked about that with you know word-centered the Bible is true and it's cool because they they inform one another I was gonna try to put these in a almost in a circle because they go they are we able to okay are we able to put those five values up there because you're able to talk about them and how they all are interwoven and they tied together so you know the Bible is true and the Bible tells us that the Holy Spirit lives inside of us and because the Holy Spirit lives inside of us we you know God is our father we're a common family we're all children of God and because we're children of God he is our Savior but he's also our Lord there's a Lordship aspect he's our King and because of this good news that Jesus died rose again and he's our King that's the gospel and we share it and we share it because the witness of what happened with Jesus his life death and resurrection is in Scripture and so it's you can talk about the whole grand biblical narrative in this small small tool and that's where we had expectation I mean talking about the Holy Spirit lives inside of us that is a heck of an expectation and then you have alignment hey this is where radian is going and then you have opportunity to talk about it with our different values and then finally the one of the last things we were taught we're talking about is kids crew now kids crew is our kids discipleship program kind of where kids can volunteer and help in younger kids classrooms but this is where we're going so this is just kind of raw because it's on our heart to how can we feed kids who are hungry they get it and they want more and so we have kids who are serving in younger classrooms but it's like how do we make space for kids to maybe come you know once a month have a meal play some games and dive into some more teaching dive into the word dive into discipleship and hearing about their lives and that is an opportunity again for the Holy Spirit to come and fill these kids and just to be able to pour into them more so that is that's where we're going so kind of to wrap up a couple really helpful resources for us have been faith for exiles it is a study by the Barna group again by David Kineman and he takes that statistic we talked about and he said okay so among people who are not falling away here are these five common distinctives that are common in kids who are raised in the church all the way up through high school and into college who come out of college with a really strong resilient faith and it's talking about discipleship and resilience in a digital Babylon that's the idea so that's been a huge idea sparker for us and then also the spiritually vibrant home by Don Everts and he actually takes some of that data and plugs it into how do we apply this for families and the power of bringing that discipleship piece into the home and so those have been some of the things we're reading some of the things we're thinking about lately that we just wanted to share with you so as I'm gonna wrap up we're gonna invite Danielle and Terry on out for some questions but I just wanted to say you know it goes back to with these three pillars we got to ask why why are we doing kids ministry is it just because it's what we've always done and there's expectation there and you know it's my job or you know I'm I enjoy it it's great you know those some of those things are fine but I want to challenge you that we need to lead from a place of encounter with the Holy Spirit and everything else follows so we'll wrap up with that and my team is gonna come on up if you want to grab your stools and we can do some some Q&A so I know it's kind of maybe a lot of info but I'm excited to dig in thank you to to some questions so and so real quick this is Danielle she's our kids coordinator at our portage campus she is awesome and this is Terry Terry Evans she yeah she is very inspiring to me she has been on on staff a lot longer than me and so I have whenever I'm have a question or totally lost I'm like Terry Terry like help me so she's our kids director and man when you talk about having an in with families and connecting I just want to say that you have been a huge inspiration because people are getting to know me and they're you know oh hey cool Pastor Scott but when Terry's there everybody's like I just can chill out like everything's fine and and that impact in that voice with families is is incredible yeah so yeah let's open it up and anybody have any questions and online I think they can possibly text in too so so the question is how do we organize kids ministry from kindergarten through fourth grade our ministry also runs kindergarten through fourth grade as well but we break them down into age groups that are more appropriate for their connection pieces so kindergarten through second grade generally they group well together kindergarteners are just learning but you have the second graders who are also have learned a lot more and they can be an example for the younger kids so partnering them together helps them in a classroom and then third and fourth graders they can go deeper into more teaching so just having a space for them where they can have an opportunity to not have to connect with a kindergartener but be able to grow in different areas as well so just partnering them into different groups like that has been beneficial for our classrooms also partnering teachers that feel that they're equipped to be able to connect with kindergarteners or first graders that's been a huge point for us and we also have teachers who feel more equipped to go deeper with third and fourth graders so just making sure that we're equipping the classrooms with the teachers that are going to connect best with them and then separating them into age groups that connect best together I would say is how we generally do that and I think there have been times when we've had kindergarten on its own was that pre-covid we had kindergarten first and second and then third and fourth yeah so fifth grade is incorporated into junior high actually so what we have is we have an incredible incredible students team and so at our Sunday 11 a.m. service they have a junior high service that's fifth through seventh grade and it's modeled similar to more of a traditional service with with worship and a message and so yeah we we typically end at fourth grade and then fifth grade goes into junior high so I can say during COVID that has been a huge thing that we were digging into is how are we partnering with parents at home to disciple them because it felt like before COVID it fell on us as a ministry to be the ones that are discipling their kids but when when all this hit and they were in their homes it was it was a big eye-opening experience for them to say who's discipling my kids so we dug into that a little bit and we started creating online experiences for parents and we really took some of the the online experiences that we were creating and focusing it on it being family so I know even across the church when we were doing morning prayer noon prayer evening prayer like our entire church engaged in that and so I think that was a huge window for us to be able to say like this is in your home like this is your responsibility to come in like we can partner with you we can give you tools we can give you resources online so the curriculum that we were using provided resources for us we were putting them online we're using social media platforms to try to get parents to use those resources but I think really the biggest part was just that our entire church came alongside us for that and so just inviting kids in the morning and worship and in prayer time and telling their the kids like in parents like grab your kids bring them in for prayer so I think that was just like a big window and a big opportunity for us to say hey we're now partnering with you and like these are the tools that you need but it's gonna be your responsibility now and so I think like a lot of the families that have come back into re-engage in church services they are they're way they're way more equipped parents are asking way more questions and they want to know like what's more what's next so I think that's kind of the next step for us to is just looking at what's more and what's next and how now that they feel equipped how can we come alongside them and take them to that next level yes so yeah the question is ideas and suggestions for how to get more volunteers on your team so I think we get all we've been brainstorming hard and that's kind of like one of our main smart goals we've been working on because for the first few months that we opened back up it was in October and the the rate of volunteers coming back was about equal with the rate of families coming back but then about two or three months ago families went and our volunteers pretty much stayed the same and so we have it's been difficult because we've had to turn some families away at you know at the door to say I'm sorry you know the classroom is full you can bring it into the sanctuary but we we have to keep you know do these different standards which is heartbreaking imagine you know getting your kids in the car maybe your first time coming back to church in almost a year getting them through the door and then being told no like that's that's devastating and so we have been well really through personal relationship is how I've seen it especially with with Terry just being reaching out to people all through COVID but then we try to do things to to show that we care for people and appreciate so we have a Saturday night service and so our talking to our campus pastor we were saying you know a lot of volunteers come right from work and they don't have a chance to eat and so he said you know let's we can allocate some part of our budget let's bring in sandwiches every night to feed them and so we can you know don't have to worry about it you know come you can bring your family and we'll do dinner I know our worship team has been doing that and so I'm like let's bring that in for our kids team as well just to let people feel cared for and then we do man I guess we've done with these different special events we really try to show that we care especially through you know our seek services or maybe our Easter services or different special events we get you know maybe merch for everybody who helps out you know gift cards we you know maybe if there's a speaker who's who's sharing at a seek service we buy their book you know give it to all of our volunteers and just try to be generous and say we really really appreciate you and there's actually a dollar amount attached to that not as something transactional but as saying you know this is we can't do this without you partner with us and I think vision is a huge part of that too just to say hey kids are a vulnerable group of people who have been marginalized for a long long time and they are in danger of you know even New York Times different people like that are coming up with articles talking about you know potential help mental health crisis with kids who have just grown up for maybe half their life or around there being masked being at home only so to be able to say hey we have a unique time in history where we can actually affect real change in families and to be able to bring healing and hope to that why don't you come and partner with us and and we would love to do that and just to be able to have that vision to say we're going for it and and you know building it around his presence too it's not a show it's not childcare it's we're just going for it and and be a part of that is huge for us yeah just one piece I want to add to that and it is part of the family connection but the biggest thing is to ask you don't know unless you ask you can analyze somebody's situation you can say they're too busy they don't want to get involved but you never know it's usually the person who's the busiest that has time that they can make for discipling kids so if it's on their heart and the Holy Spirit has spoke it to them they may not have they might be questioning that like did I really hear that did I really feel that but if you don't ask they're not gonna necessarily just come out and be like I want to be part of kids ministry so those family connections and just the ask I think are two big pieces too I wanted to add also I'm not a big mic talker but putting that connection also on your current volunteers having them pray about who they know that would be great in kids ministry and then having them make that connection is also super helpful I think what one of the practicals from that is that as we've just been talking is we don't want to burn out our current volunteers but the I guess the language that we used is to put the pressure on families not on our volunteers so if we have standards to say okay you know this room we can have you know X amount of kids and when it's full it's full and we have to communicate that and it's it's difficult but to be able to even that's a way to let parents know hey there's actually a need here because if there's no need and we just you know bring them on in you know shovel them in there is space they're gonna think oh look at that kids ministry is doing great there's no need but to be able to actually have people feel it and not put that on your volunteers where there's your pack and 60 kids into our room this size but to say no we're gonna actually give you margin and respect what you're doing and we're gonna actually put some of that pressure on the congregation we've seen a lot of parents actually say you know one guy he's a he's a doctor over at Bronson and you know he's not able to serve a lot but he's actually he one of his kids wasn't able to get into a classroom and so he was like instead of just complaining why don't I join the team and help and so he actually came all the way through the process and it's so cool just like Terry said the people you least expect you maybe say no for them don't do that put the pressure maybe on the congregation instead of burning out your your good and faithful volunteers yeah yeah yeah we do all staff you know coming on full background check and we do we have one online course called protect my ministry that's something that we re-up is it every year every other year every okay so it's all about sexual harassment that that whole thing that you've required to to complete routinely and then we actually go an extra step we have a separate kids team application apart from you know we we call them team radiant who everybody who serves they go through our class and but we actually have a separate application that requires them to list three or four references and so we send out reference checks and we need to get those back and those have been really good at certain times not many but one or two have been giving us a red flag to say well you know what you know maybe we'll find a different place for you so and there's anybody like to add more in yeah yeah okay so yes so for an elementary service typically we come in service starts and we have about a 15 minute window to have kids check in you know families who are coming late and so we've got you know game tables and different activities and then we gather them up and we go through we typically do an intro game something like that and then we go through our values it's kind of like a rallying point all the kids come up and we have the values on the screen and then we do offering and that's been actually another cool part Pastor Lee was talking about our building a radiant city and in that initiative we challenged the kids to do it as well we gave out these treasure boxes and said hey we're gonna we are doing something and we're doing something that God is calling us to in this next season and the kids raised money for five weeks as we were talking about each of our five core values and at the end we had a big commitment night where it was you know fun and cool lesson and stuff but the kids raised I mean I think it was over $300 or something and for yeah I mean kids they were so excited they had their treasure box that we gave them these little jewels they could stick on it and it was so so cool and not to make it overly you know cheesy or anything like that but to have that they rallied and they jumped on it so having offering and then we have our worship you know typically two to three worship songs and our Bible lesson and then we wrap up with a couple typically group activities either we work on our monthly memory verse we do it we do them by month we typically use orange curriculum for our pre-k and elementary and you know no curriculum is perfect and not like we're in love with it or anything but it has you pick out the gold from it and so then we wrap up with a couple activities or crafts that this kind of application for the lesson and then kind of for the end there's you know free you know playtables or craft tables or things will parents come pick up yeah yep so I just want to cover a little bit what it looks like for our early childhood area we follow the same schedule that the elementary classrooms do as well as far as our teaching space but we actually use our classrooms as activity rooms so they come in and they have open playtime and then about 10 minutes into the service we actually go down to what we call the praise place and it is just a devoted space that has zero toys they start their time off with an activity that they do together so it's fun for them to go down there they're super excited to go down there but we follow the same schedule they do values they do worship they do their offering their their entire lesson time and then we break into small groups and do prayer time with the kids and I think it's so it's been huge for us to be able to have a distraction free space for them to go to and it does open up an opportunity for them to pray with the kids that are their peers and with adults as well we use our kids crew to also lead those groups so having them discipled so that they're comfortable leading other little kids in prayer has been beneficial but just them sharing prayer requests I had an in a counter with some kids we were sitting in a group and I was leading prayer with them and it was a group of three four and five year olds and the one little one had a prayer request and said that his dad was in in jail and I it broke my heart to think that one he was his dad was in jail but it also was very enlightening to me that he was comfortable to share that his dad was in jail and that he needed prayer for that but then the thing that was the most powerful for me was the little girl that was sitting beside him said so is my dad and so there was just a peace that like the Lord opened up for them and so I think just like expectation and encounter if they're three four five they still have the Holy Spirit there is no junior Holy Spirit so create those spaces just see what works for for your church but yeah it was pretty impactful for me goldfish we use goldfish crackers but we also we have a lot of kids that have food allergies so we have food allergy lists that are in our classrooms and we do provide alternative snacks for them as well and we provide a list of all the snacks that we provide and the allergies that go along with it at the very end so yeah but they have an expectation that snack is happening so we just put the expectation that like we have Bible lesson and worship first and so that comes at the end of our service yeah that's a good question so a question about our onboarding is what do we do when somebody comes to us and says they want to be involved and then how often do we get together all as a big group and celebrate good question so what we typically do is if somebody hears about us a word of mouth they come to us or if someone takes our be radiant class typically happen every other month or so we are one of the areas where they can they can come and serve so we get their information down and so we first schedule usually a pastoral follow-up interview where we actually meet with them you know either in person or over zoom or something for about a half hour just get to know some of their background you know why you interested in serving in kids you know just some some questions like that to get to know them and then we send them our our kids team application and that has a waiver with it that we can run a background check it has a also a link for that protect my ministry online training and references as well so we get that back sometimes it takes a while you know people don't like to check their emails sometimes but we do a background check we we get their references and then we schedule a orientation class in person before our Saturday night service so our services at 6 and so we have everybody come usually at 4 o'clock we come into one of our classrooms and give kind of a presentation about some of the nuts and bolts you know our policies procedures but also some of our vision you know what we're about and where we're going and then we do a tour of the area and show them you know here's for a kid who might have a food allergy you know here's how we have with an EpiPen or we have safety locks on our doors how to use those you know radios just some of those procedures and then we have them observe in a classroom that night so go to the class you know have dinner and then observe in a classroom where they're able to ask questions to the leader and not interact with any of the kids but just to kind of observe what's going on and then we follow up with them after that hey how was your experience what did you think what did you like didn't like and then from there we either let them observe in a different age group or can let them plug into a team because they've been background checked they have their references they've been observed by us in person you know at least a couple times and in their their classroom and then if they still want to go for it then we'd plug them into our our serving rotation from there yeah so it is kind of a long process yes yes and then as the second part of that question how often do we celebrate wins we sounds like in the past we have done about two a year and so that was before I stepped on personally actually would you so I'll share what we're kind of doing this year is in about a month at the end of May we are doing one with our with both campuses Portage and Richland together and we are getting some new kids t-shirts made we're getting some really good food catered we're gonna just really celebrate right here in in the Richland lobby actually and have one of our pastors Pastor Tim Matthews who is actually acting as the emcee for the conference come and speak and he's got two kids in kids ministry and he's just I just want them to be inspired to feel appreciated to feel cared for celebrate our wins so after COVID we're trying to feel it out you know something good in person sounds like it'll be one this year and I think at least a baseline of one but I'm interested how did it feel when we were doing two or more kind of pre-covid so pre-covid we did two big events for our kids team so we rented out airway lanes which was an entire facility and we did a family focused because not only are the volunteers kind of sacrificing their time but so are their families so we really wanted to pour into their entire family so we did a family focused piece where we rented out the entire airway lanes families came and just had a really good time together we did have breakout sessions in there as well where they could sign up to go to a couple of classes we asked that they attended at least one of the classes so there the kids were pretty much with their spouse while they attended one of the events they weren't super long or time-consuming but we wanted them to feel like they were getting something out of it more than just an event that would draw them there and then the other one we did we rented space at Galmetto farms and we did that just for our volunteers not so much the entire family for that one and it was really we didn't do any teaching for that it was just a time for them to come and enjoy the space enjoy having time with other volunteers that they've connected with meeting people across other campuses so really just times that are fun has been our biggest thing for connecting with them yeah and I I we will answer your question I did just get the word that we're wrapping up in the next minute or so here for the online session just join me in prayer briefly and if you have any more questions we're here to answer them dear Lord Jesus father God Holy Spirit we thank you so much for what you are doing in kids ministry God you care about the local church but even more you care about these kids you care about the family and so I just pray a blessing over every single person here in this room every single person watching online that you would give them a special grace that you would invade their churches with your Holy Spirit that they would incorporate maybe some of these things and be encouraged today to challenge these kids to be touched by the Holy Spirit and to have their life changed for a moment we thank you that you have you really have anointed each person in this room and we give you glory for it God we want to stand back and watch where you are going and see what you do we want to ride the wave of the Spirit God we give you glory we thank you for this time in the name of Jesus amen