Hey friends! It’s been a long, long time since I’ve posted here. So much has happened over the past few months and I have not shared in this space as much as I would’ve liked. I’ve missed you!
I wanted to bring you up to speed on what’s going on in my world and share about some new things I’m working on.
Ministry/Staff Changes
My church has done some staff restructuring over the past few months, affecting many departments, including Children’s Ministry. Because of these significant changes, I have restructured and streamlined Children’s Ministry as a whole. This has meant realigning ministry areas, rewriting job descriptions, making our curriculum more cohesive, and raising up new team leaders. In some areas, it has meant adopting new ways of doing ministry. This has been a ton of work and continues to be, but my goal is sustainable, healthy ministry practices. I’ll keep you posted.
New Ministry Programming
Typically, during times of transition, new programs aren’t added. However, in the midst of restructuring our Children’s Ministry and working toward more sustainable, healthy practices, I have tuned in to some felt needs that we, as a ministry, needed to focus on. Here are a few things we heard and how we are working on them.
Preschool parents are looking to connect with other preschool families. Our church is blessed with an awesome weekday preschool and many of our families are connected through that. However, there was a lack of connection for other preschool families. One solution for this is to offer four (4) Preschool Family Experiences this ministry year. The goal for these events is simply to provide an on-ramp for families to have faith conversations as well as connect with other preschool families. Our preschool curriculum is ah-mazing and provides these experiences to us with our curriculum subscription. All I had to do was invite a group of gifted ladies to hear my vision about what I desired. They then took the material, ran with it and knocked it out of the park. We hosted our first Preschool FX last month and welcomed 41 families (60+ preschoolers) – it was phenomenal. I can’t wait for our next one, which will take place in January.
Elementary parents want resources to have faith conversations with their kids. A good number of our parents did not grow up in Christian homes and many are new believers themselves and don’t know how to have faith conversations with their children. So, we plan to resource parents by offering START HERE, a resource provided by Orange. We will customize the content to fit into a 30-minute parent meeting (on a Sunday morning, between services), to put materials in their hands and answer questions. I am excited to teach this class next Sunday!
Outside Projects
Over the past few months, I’ve also had the privilege of doing some freelance writing for various groups as well as teach a workshop based on my book at KidMin Mega Con in Nashville last week. (If you follow me on Instagram or Facebook, you’ve seen the pics!) I also recorded a podcast with Stuff You Can Use: A Children’s Ministry Community.
So, lots has been keeping me busy, but most of it is fun busy! On that note, that’s a great intro for me to share two new projects I have been working on.
The Expert Interviews: All About Family Ministry
Earlier this year, a new ministry friend (Keith Ferrin), invited me to be part of a family ministry resource project that he was working on. Well, I’m thrilled to announce The Expert Interviews: All About Family Ministry, a collaborative project with 20 leading voices in family ministry. I am honored to have shared ways for new family ministry leaders to lay a solid foundation. This newly-released book can be found here.
Get Certified in Children’s Ministry! 
The other project that I’m excited to share with you is that I – I can’t believe it! – will be an online instructor for beadisciple.com. The Children’s Ministry certification track has been redeveloped and relaunched and I look forward to participating as an online instructor! This is one of those ‘never in a million years would I ever do THAT’ opportunities – it certainly wasn’t on my radar of bucket list items – but God had other plans. This rookie instructor will be developing my course content from scratch. Wow. I’ll be teaching a six-week class next spring on teaching theology topics to children in age-appropriate, engaging ways. Registration opens next week. Come learn with me! You can find out more here.
Well folks, that’s a peek into what I’ve been up to lately! I’ll keep you posted along the way. In the meantime, drop me a line in the comments, on social media or via email and let me know what you’re up to – I’d love to connect with you!
Blessings!
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