Monday, February 21, 2011

A Winning Strategy

I recently heard a teacher of church consultants who seemed to me to be saying that older, established congregations are doomed. They will cease to exist within the next fifteen to twenty years, because they are aging and becoming irrelevant to the next generation. I agree that many churches are on this track, but I don’t think their doom is a foregone conclusion. I think some of these churches can refocus and begin reaching the next generation. I know for sure that there is at least one path that can return a church to relevance, lower its average age, and help it to grow.

Children’s ministry in itself is a vital part of the church’s arsenal of weapons to win the world. Most people who choose to follow Christ do so before the age of 13 (estimated at 75%). Effort, dollars, and imagination that are invested in children guarantee future benefits for the Kingdom of God. In addition, the effects of children’s ministry can be more immediate. If a church is willing and prepared to take advantage of the opportunities that come from an effective children’s ministry, the kids’ ministry can lead them to refocus and to grow, spiritually and numerically.

Visit established churches today and you will find lot of gray hair and very few children. There are often rooms set aside for children. Many of them are furnished, some even decorated for Sunday school classes that don’t really exist. It’s eerie and sad. These churches don’t have young adult classes either. People have said things like, “Why don’t younger people come and bring their children to church. I used to make my kids sit right with me and behave, too.” The answer I give is, “If you have an excellent children’s ministry, then the kids will bring their parents.”
It’s true: If you love kids consistently and seek to do excellent children’s ministry the kids will get their folks to come. Can a church that has few or no children do this? I’ll give you a simple answer. The simple answer is; yes, it can be done. There are seven steps that a church will need to take. You may find some of these steps not so simple. To do it a church must be committed to doing whatever it takes to share the message of God’s love, hope, and salvation with the next generation.


Some steps:

1. Find some people who love kids and want to share Jesus with them. Start them praying and planning.

2. Identify someone to be the leader. This should be a person, not designated to do the ministry, but to lead a team to do the ministry.

3. Get some training. There are a lot of very good children’s ministry training opportunities available.
a.) You can spend a lot of money, send your leader, and maybe some of the other interested people to INCM’s Children’s Pastor’s Conference, the Orange Conference, D6 or a host of others.
b.) Better yet, you can find a trainer (perhaps someone who teaches at one of those big events) and have her/him come to you church to train everyone from your church who is interested for the cost of one person going to a big event.
c.) Or you could take a group to a training event in your area.
(For full disclosure, my wife, Tina, is a great children’s ministry trainer. There are others, but in my biased opinion, she’s the best.)

4. Plan some special events for kids in your community. Many times churches have special events for the kids of their members, but if you want to grow, you must put the emphasis on kids in the area. Whatever you do, do it so well that kids will want to come. For example: Vacation Bible School is not a new idea, but it can make a splash in your community if you make it excellent. To impact community kids, have it in the morning, so you don’t have to compete with Little League in the evening. Use your imagination, and make it fun. Go over the top with your decorations. If you use a VBS that comes in the box, be creative and don’t limit yourself to what’s in the box.
Other Special Events:
Christmas Craft Making Day
Trunk or Treat
Easter Egg Hunt
Sports Camp or Clinic

5. Keep careful records of everyone who comes. (Tip: offer a door prize so that you can get everyone’s information.) Get the name of the parent or guardian they live with, their address, phone number and e-mail address. Send the kids a thank you for showing up and with some information about the next special event, as well as the ongoing stuff at church. Add their parents to the regular mailing or e-mailing list. This is critical. Follow-up, follow-up, follow-up. Kids may come to several special events before they ever show up on Sunday, so be persistent. That first special event plants the seed, the follow-up waters, the next special event fertilizes, then eventually the fruit of seeing them in church will blossom.

6. Make children’s church excellent. Give the kids that come to the special event something super to participate in at church on Sunday morning. A good way to do it is encourage the kids to sit with their parents in adult worship until the message; then, dismiss them for children’s church. The workers will have them about 30 to 45 minutes, and they should make it exciting. Teaching kids at church is different than teaching them at school. At school they have to come back the next time,; at church, if they don’t like it, they don’t have to return. Make them excited about coming.

6. Develop your Sunday school so kids will want to come to see what else is going on. When you do this, make sure you are ready to start a new class for their parents. Get their class started with a subject that is important to them, i.e. parenting, marriage, or a beginning Bible study.

7. The church needs to expect young families to come and design the church to make them feel comfortable enough to not only become members, but also invite their friends. This will mean looking at the décor, the worship style, and the preaching topics. You will probably have to make changes, perhaps some major changes. Changes are not comfortable, but so what? Is the purpose of your church to make you comfortable, or to win people to Christ? Do you really want to reach the next generation, or do you just want to complain because the world is going to hell? I am much more uncomfortable about the fact that young families don’t know the love of Jesus than I am that I will have to learn to like a different kind of music, or a different church schedule, or that the building may be used a different way.

If you do these steps you will not only have an effective children’s ministry, you’ll find that your church has become more relevant to the current culture. You’ll not only win whole families to Christ, but you’ll find entrances to parts of the community that you never before imagined.


Check out Tina Houser’s web site: tinahouser.net


For a full step-by-step description of how to build or rebuild a children’s ministry, see her book "Building Children’s Ministry". (available at the website)