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I just got back form the hospital. I was there to visit Sarah. Sarah is a beautiful little three-year-old girl who has cancer. I’m not sure there’s much on the planet that makes less sense to me than that. Never the less, I went by to spend some time with Sarah and her Mom and try to offer some comfort. I’m not sure how much comfort I offered, I could barely hold it together. Please pray for Sarah and her family, they’ve got a long road ahead and they need our prayers.

In the midst of this sad situation there was something beautiful going on. You see, I wasn’t the only visitor there. When I got there one of our children’s ministry volunteers was already there. Her name is Donna. She told me, “I had the afternoon off so I decided to come by.”  That sounds pretty unassuming, right, but think it through. After a week of work Donna decided to take her afternoon off and spend it in the hospital caring for Sarah and her family. That’s amazing!!! What’s more amazing is that I bet Donna doesn’t think it’s amazing. It’s just what she does.

On my way home from the hospital a couple of things occurred to me.

First, I think this is the real role of a children’s ministry volunteer. Our kids need volunteers like Donna. As leader’s we’ve got to stop apologizing for asking people to give an hour a week and give them a vision for ministry that is so much bigger. Sunday should be just the tip of the iceberg. Our kid’s need leaders who are involved in their lives. Yes, they need to be there in the hospital, but they also need to be at the soccer game or the dance recital. They need to know what’s happening in kid’s lives and give them a call to say happy birthday or good luck on that big test.

The other thing that occurred to me is how over-rated being a pastor is. Even with all my “pastor” training and “pastor” experience I was the least important and least effective minister in that hospital room today. Donna was the one making the real impact. I really believe it’s our volunteers who have the greatest potential for ministry not us “professionals.” I think that’s why in Ephesians 4:11-12 church leaders are charged to equip the body for works of service. The best I can do is to create an environment where volunteers like Donna can thrive, then cheer them on as they do the real work of ministry and extend Jesus’ love to others.

I wonder if our volunteers realize how critically important they are, or do the think they are “just a volunteer?” How can we help them see their incredible importance and potential for ministry?

Incidentally, Donna volunteers in my daughters room at church.  I’m excited my daughter gets to learn from someone like her.

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Last week Kenny Conley wrote a series of posts about Parent/Child Dedications. You should check out what he wrote he’s got some great thoughts.

Here’s part of my response to his post.

First let me say that I have wonderful staff. Patti Jo Mackey and Jenni Bowman are the main reasons our dedications are successful. Here’s what they do. About a month before dedication we have a dedication class for parents. This class is required and I think it is the most essential ingredient in our process. At the class Patti Jo helps families understand the significance and meaning of dedication as well as helping them lay a strong spiritual foundation for their kids. Also in the class we introduce several elements that we will use in the dedication. We have parents choose a life verse and dedication sponsors for their child (just someone who is important to the family and commits to pray for the child). We also give them a template to write a letter to their child.

We hold our dedication as a special service on Sunday afternoon where participants can invite their family and friends. We have special music, I present a brief challenge to parents then we have the families come up. Rather than just a cattle call we have families come up one at a time with their sponsors. Their sponsors read the child’s life verse then the parents read a portion of the letter they have written to the child. (If they can without crying. Some have their sponsor read the letter.) After each family has been introduced and read their letter, we close with vows from the parents and the audience, and I pray over the families. After the service we have a photographer and a nice reception.

This format is great for us. We have time to build into families. It’s personal and meaningful, mainly because families have put thought into what their doing and they come prepared. This format is also practical. We’ve had dedications with as many as 20 children and the service lasts a little less than an hour.

Here are a few things about our dedication I wanted to highlight:

Parent Class

Let me say again, the dedication class is the key to a successful Parent/Child Dedication. It’s also one of the best opportunities you’ll ever have to build into the lives of parents. Parents are highly motivated when their children are young. You’ll have a much higher percentage of parents attend a dedication class than you will most other forms of parent classes. If you want minister to parents you’ve got to bring you “A” game to the dedication class.

Dedication Letter

One of the best elements in our dedications is the parent letter. I learned this from Walter Draughon, a pastor I served with at FBC in St. Petersburg Florida. As part of his wedding services he had the couple write letters to one another and then he used those letters in the service. He brought the same concept to the Parent/Child Dedication. Walter introduced me to this idea and I’ve been using it ever since. When my daughter was dedicated my wife and I both wrote a letter for her dedication, and for us, it was the most special and personal part of the dedication. I can’t tell you how many families feel the same way. At Brookwood, it’s been a key to help make our dedications personal instead of a just being a “dog and pony” show. Nothing expresses the spirit of child dedication better than the parents’ own words. Plus, after the dedication, parents have a tangible and poignant reminder of the commitment they made that they can share with their kids for years to come.

Dedication Book

In preparation for the dedication we ask parents to: provide a picture of their child and a family picture, chose a life verse for their child, select dedication sponsors and write a letter to their child. It’s a lot to do but the parents’ preparation for the dedication is one of the most important ingredients in making the dedication significant. To help parents prepare, we created a dedication book that’s kind of like a memory book. We give parents the book during the dedication class and it walks them through dedication preparation. The book has a duel benefit. It’s a great keepsake for parents and it’s great for helping us get all the info and elements we need for the dedication in a timelier manner. Here’s a .pdf of the dedication book if you’re interested.

Hope this has been helpful for you and thanks again to Kenny for opening the dialog.

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So, you’re thinking about starting a blog? Do you know about: hosting, urls, domain names, plugins, permalinks, php, .htaccess, apachee, index.php, seo, site redirects, mod_rewrites, widgets, ftp, chmod or the difference between 0644 and 0777 (besides 133 ☺) Well, I do, but I’d suggest that you not. Here’s the thing I started this blog a few weeks ago on a whim. Problem is, I hadn’t taken a lot of time to learn the basics. I just bought a domain name slapped it in an old web-host and got going. Fast forward a few weeks, and I’ve spent more hours trying to fix things on the blog than I have witting.

First, I didn’t have a good web host. Then I installed my blog in a sub-domain. This led to a site redirect. So when I tried to improve my seo (search engine optimization) I realized my permalinks were “ugly” but I couldn’t change them ☹ because my .htacces file was in the sub-domain not the root and then…. Sorry about that, I’ll get to the point.

If you want to start blogging, take your time and start right. Spend a little time researching the process. There’s a lot of good information out there and if you take a couple of days to check it out you might save yourself several weeks of heaches and a lot of details you’ll wish you never knew.

BTW… Isn’t this that why children’s ministry is so important. If we can help kids get started right, with a strong spiritual foundation. We can save them from years of frustration and confusion. Then, maybe, they can spend more time living for Jesus instead of fixing problems caused by careless mistakes.

Just a thought ☺

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I was blessed to grow up with VBS and it was always a highlight of my summers. So, about 15 years ago when I began children’s ministry it was a natural part of my ministry plan. Over the years I’ve been a part of some incredible VBS programs. Kids loved coming, they brought their friends and we had a great opportunity to share Jesus with kids in a creative way. But several years ago I began to see a shift. Even though the quality of our VBS program was getting better and better, and kids and parents loved what we were doing, attendance began to drop off.

As I began to talk to parents and volunteers and ask questions I discovered the problem. The two main VBS formats don’t work well for today’s families. (I believe they are working well in places but not overall) The most popular format has been a 9 am to noon program. As our culture shifts the number of single-parent homes and dual-income families is on the rise. A morning program is impractical for these families and they now make up a majority of our target audience.

Many churches have moved to an evening program to allow these families to attend. It also makes recruiting easier. And I expect the latter is the main reason for the rise of evening VBS programs. At face value this sounds like a good solution. The drawback is that with an evening program most of the people who come are already committed to your church. After a day of work, picking up the kids, fixing dinner and cleaning up, most families don’t want to get back out. And the evidence is that they don’t.

When I started at Brookwood a couple of years ago we had a choice to make. We could either ditch summer programming and pass up an opportunity or find a new way to do VBS. As you can probably guess from the title of this post, we decided to reinvent VBS.

In our reinvention we began with the need. Most families need some type of daytime childcare in the summer. So whatever we did would need to have a full day option. The core of VBS; the large group program, Bible teaching, crafts, recreation, etc… were still very viable, so we decided to keep that. In order to make it feasible and have enough help we would need a combination of volunteer and paid leaders. Finally, for a program of this scale to be affordable for a church there would have to be a cost to the participant.


What we ended up with was “Adventure Week.” Here’s how it works

Schedule
We decided to offer the best of both worlds. Our base program runs from 9 am to 2 pm. This portion of the day looks a lot like a seriously amped up VBS with extended large group programming, sites that run 30 minutes instead of 20 minutes and the addition of a hot lunch. We also have an outside program come in for one of our sites. Last year we had “Mad Science” this year we’ve invited “Wildlife Wonders.” For those who need a full day option we offer early and after care. Early care runs from 7:30 am to 9 am and after care runs from 2 pm to 6 pm. Early and after care have their own programming that is an extension of the main program, though they are more laid back.

Leadership
Our children’s ministry team and volunteers lead the 9-2 portion of Adventure Week. I was worried at first that the additional two hours would be a hindrance to volunteers, but we didn’t experience that. Early and after care are led by paid staff. For us, many of these guys were part of our childcare staff augmented with older teens.

Cost
Everyone attends the 9-2 portion of Adventure Week for a cost of $50. Early care is an additional $25 and after care is additional $50. So, if a child attends the full day the cost is $125. In our area that’s $10 less than YMCA day camp. We give most of our volunteers a 25% discount. Other volunteers with a larger role get a 50% or 100% discount. We don’t make any money from Adventure Week. Registration covers about 75% of our cost with the remaining 25% coming from our children’s ministry budget.

Of course, when we introduced a cost nobody complained. (and if you’ll buy that… ) Truth is, we had some complaints (oddly enough someone from another church who had no intention of attending Adventure Week called to “set us straight.”) but most people realized that the cost was a bargain for what they were getting. My experience has been, that it’s usually only “church people” who expect to get stuff for free. Most of our community expects to pay for things.

Result
Our first year of Adventure Week was an incredible success. We planned to start small without much promotion and registration still sold out. We had plenty of leaders and the program was incredible. The feedback from parents and volunteers was overwhelmingly positive. About 25% of our attendees took advantage of our full day option. This year we’re increasing our capacity by 50%. We’d do more but we don’t want to outpace our volunteer leadership. Registration opened last week and it appears we’ll sell out again this year.

I realize that this is not groundbreaking, but it’s working for us. I know there are lots of other successful summer ministry ideas out there. I’d love to hear what’s working for you. So, take a minute and leave a comment to let us know how you’re reaching kids over the summer.

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I just finished watching the movie “Enchanted” with my daughter Brindley. I’ve probably watched this movie with her a dozen or more times. At the risk of cashing in one of my few remaining “man cards,” as well as my dignity, I have to admit, I love this movie!

I really do, especially the big musical number in the middle of the movie. I usually rewind the movie and watch this scene twice. The song is called “That’s How You Know” and it centers around the optimistic and naive heroine of the movie asking a very serious New York divorce lawyer if he’s doing enough to show his intended fiancé that he really loves her. Besides just being fun, the song always makes me consider, am I going out of my way to let my wife know that I love her? I love my wife more than I could ever express, but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t do everything I can (and then some) to try to show her how much I love her. How about you? Are you going out of your way to express love to those you care about?

This little song also reminded me of something we’re planning to teach our kids at Brookwood over Easter. We’re writing a series called “More Than A Story.” The basic idea is that the reason we find some stories so compelling, is that they capture or express an element of spiritual truth.

If you stop and think about it our God is the greatest lover of all, and He is the master of continually showing us how much He loves us. Maybe it’s a favorite song that stirs your soul, or a particularly amazing sunset that seems to be painted just for you. It could be a place that inspires you or holding your child in your arms. It often overwhelms me that God created such a vast and expansive world that still uniquely speaks His love to me as an individual. And, that’s how I know He loves me.

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A couple of weeks ago I began blogging with great enthusiasm and anticipation. I loaded up my blog, tweaked my theme and I was ready to go, right? Wrong… as anyone who has visited this site before now already knows, nedgable.com was agonizingly slow. I tried all the recommended Wordpress fixes. I deactivated plugins, tried less graphic intensive themes, and reloaded my site, all for naught. After about a week of trying everything I could think of I finally discovered the problem. It was my web host. I’ve used dreamhost for years with other websites and church blogs and have had very few problems. Unfortunately, it seems they’ve been the victim of several web-attacks and hardware failures lately. Problem is, they can’t seem to get the issues fixed and that leaves their service unreliable at best. So after giving dreamhost some time to resolve their issues, I decided to make a move. After a lot of  blood, sweat and tears, I’ve moved my web hosting and rebuilt my site. Nedgable.com should now back up and running, hopefully with a little less frustration. Special thanks to all of you (or maybe both of you is more appropriate ☺) who put up with the slowness and visited my blog anyway.

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Greenville, South Carolina has just recovered from a rare March blizzard. Ok, so it was just a few inches of snow, but it was still enough to shut down the city and knock out power to my house. So, I got to spend an impromptu day off at home with no electricity, no TV, no computer, no Internet, no… well you get the picture. It turned out to be a great day and it got me thinking that a snow day without power is probably a lot like what God intended the Sabbath to be. I’m not talking about some legalistic-based version of Sabbath but a day to just “unplug” and rest.

Here’s how the day went. I woke up early and spent a couple of hours reading while my wife and daughter slept in. (b.t.w. Ragamuffin Gospel  = great book) Later that morning I played in the snow with my daughter. After playing in the snow for a while we decided to walk around the block and we got to chat with lots of our neighbors who were also out. When we got back I read some more, hung out with my wife and actually had time to take a nap. At the end of the day I felt rested, recharged and closer to God and my family.

To contrast, here’s how I probably would have spent the day with the power on. Wake up check my email and blog stats, (WooHoo three visits… thanks for reading mom) then a couple hours catching up on blogs, twitter, and facebook. After this I’d turn on the TV and probably end up watching re-runs of cooking shows, Mythbusters, How It’s Made, maybe some sports (if it’s fall, who actually watches basketball ☺) or whatever else was on. Before long the day would be over and I’d be left wondering where my “day off” went.

It’s always interesting to me how God finds new ways to get our attention. For me, it took a forced day off to show me what I was missing and I’m looking forward to building a lot more “unplugged” time into my life.

I’d love to hear from you. What does Sabbath look like for you and how do you “unplug?”

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