Childrens Ministry Online

Stupid hurts

Posted on 16. Mar, 2009 by Kenny.

I just read John Maxwell’s post about how he was recently arrested. That’s right, arrested. No, it’s not what you’re probably initially thinking (disappointing that we’ve been let down by Christian leaders in the past that our mind first goes to something much worse, huh?) No, it was a simple mistake, but a very stupid one at that. A stupid mistake that probably would have cost any one of us our jobs. I know that Mr. Maxwell is in a different boat from most of us, but there’s no doubt that this will have an effect on him. I think in the long run, this will prove to his advantage. It will provide a great illustration and teaching point. In addition, it reminds all of us that he really is a human being like the rest of us.

I cringed when I read this post. Yes, I felt horribly embarrassed for Mr. Maxwell. However, I saw how easily I could have gotten myself into a similar situation due to complete carelessness (although I can’t imagine I’d ever have taken a gun through security). Early in my ministry, I made some stupid and careless mistakes. Mistakes that have easily gotten me dismissed, especially if things had gone a different way. From these mistakes I learned valuable lessons, lessons on wisdom and lessons on making sound decisions.

This article challenges me to be ever villagent. Certainly the enemy would love to see me fail. However, I think carelessness can be my own worst enemy. It’s vital to keep my guard up and pay attention, we’re all just one stupid mistake from making a huge mess. Too much is resting on our leadership.

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Child Dedication: Dedication service

Posted on 16. Mar, 2009 by Kenny.

I thought I’d actually wrap up this series on Child Dedication this week. Last week (Saturday) we held our dedication service and I was more than pleased. To be honest, it was the best dedication I’d ever experienced. Sure, there are some things to tweak, but it won’t take much to make this whole experience stellar.

So, here is what the service looked like:

Since I used Fellowship One for registration, I had a list of kids who I expected to be there. Since I also used Fellowship One to register parents for the Prep for Dedication class, I didn’t publicly display the link for the dedication service. Once a parent attended the class, I emailed them the link to register for the dedication service. I had a volunteer check families in as they arrived. We dedicated 28 kids and probably had a crowd of 250 at the actual dedication.

We started promptly at 11:00 AM with the slide show I posted here. Cathy Harwick, my new elementary director welcomed everyone to the dedication and opened with a word of prayer. I had a praise and worship leader then lead us in two songs of worship. It wasn’t too long, but just right. Following the music, Cathy got up again and spoke for about 10 minutes on why we practice child dedication and what it means. Afterward, she introduced the three other pastors/leaders who would be praying over families. She would call up four families at a time. The families and friends would come to the front and meet the pastor/leader who would dedicate them. The pastor/leader would ask the parents, “What is your motivation for having your child dedicated today?” After the parents shared their thoughts, the pastor/leader would pray over the child, family and friends. It was a sweet and personable time, probably 6-7 minutes up at the front.

While the dedication was happening, the worship leader continued to play and sing while the slide show continued to play on the big screen. This prayer time lasted for about 25-30 minutes. After this was finished, Cathy closed the service in prayer and the families were dismissed. In the lobby, parents picked up certificates and dedication Bibles before they left.

I got to experience this dedication as a father and participant. I thoroughly enjoyed the expereince as a participant. I also really like the environment. I felt like we were really getting it right. So, like I said before, I was more than pleased.

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Neglecting the sabbath

Posted on 15. Mar, 2009 by Kenny.

Last month I wrote about my current dysfunction. Basically, I’ve been too busy for my own good. I’ve put ministry before God and my family. The source of this dysfunction comes a little from poor time management skills, some from failure to delegate effectively and mostly on a failure to create healthy boundaries.

Shortly after I wrote that post, I had a talk with my manager about my unhealthy pace. Together we set up a plan for success. I often find that there are too many distraction at the office. Sometimes I’ll get pulled into a meeting or a conversation that wasn’t planned. These aren’t bad things, but I end up getting way behind in email, phone calls or other projects. So, my new plan has me working from home on Mondays and Wednesdays until 1:00 PM. This allows me to catch up/get ahead on all “my” projects and tasks. This also ensures I won’t me working late on Sunday and Tuesday nights to get caught up, I’ll have time the following mornings. I also made a commitment to totally unplug from work two nights a week. For me that was Thursday and Friday nights.

I’m in a small group on Thursdays with some guys from work. In 2009 we’re reading through the Bible together. After reading through the law, each of us felt conviction about our neglect of the sabbath. We often stress honoring the tithe to our church, yet neglect the sabbath ourselves. As a group we decided to honor the sabbath Old Testament style. We start at sundown on Friday and finish at sundown on Saturday. That allows us to get back into work-mode on Saturday night yet still honor God and our families.

Well, I’ve been practicing this for three weeks now. I failed miserably one week (some special circumstances came up) but the other two weeks have been awesome. I’ve found that I’ve been significantly more productive and I’ve have better connection time with my family for sure. I am on the path to a healthy pace. As long as I keep these boundaries, I’ll jut need to continue to work on the delegation and time management skills.

The future looks bright!

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Is Ebay a little too optimistic?

Posted on 14. Mar, 2009 by Kenny.

A few months ago I published this post about your “point of view.” I’m an extreme optimist. It challenges me to shoot for the stars. Then my drive kicks in and I work my tail off to achieve my goals. But recently I saw this and just cracked up. Honestly, I think Ebay is a little overoptimistic here.

I’ve been using Ebay since April of 2000. For several years I was pretty active, buying stuff and selling stuff. For an Ebay hobbyist, I am quite proud of my 182 feedback rank. That makes me a blue start. But what cracks me up was this little banner on my account the other day. Ebay wanted to let me know that I was only 318 feedback points away from a purple star. ONLY 318! I’m not even half way there yet… and since I’ve been an active member since 2000, I should hit purple star status sometime around 2020.

I really want to admire their optimism, but I this this is a little ridiculous.

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Child Dedication slide shows

Posted on 09. Mar, 2009 by Kenny.

Okay, I intended to get these posted on Saturday, but this weekend was CRAZY!

Here are the two slide shows I used. Thanks for the suggestions on the music everyone, I went with two suggestions.

So, my initial plan was to have three different slide shows that would be running as people came in. However, after I finished the first one I totally changed my plan. It was too good to arbitrarily run while people were coming in. So, I planned to begin the service with the first slide show and then end the dedication with the second show. It was amazing. Check them out here (Oh, and I have password protected these videos. The password is “moistcookies”):

This first song you’ll probably recognize, it’s from the movie: Meet the Robinsons.

Dedication Video 1 from Kenny Conley on Vimeo.

The second song is from Aaron Roughton, a very talented musician who attends our church. If you’re interested in Aaron’s music, you can listen to all of his music here and pick up his album at iTunes. I used his song, “This Very Moment.” Seriously, his whole album is great, but at the very least you should pick up this song.

Dedication Video 2 from Kenny Conley on Vimeo.

Amazing, huh? It was by far the best slide show I’ve ever made and one the best I’ve seen. Creating it was easy. I used Animoto. Click here to sign up for your account.

I paid $25 for a one year account where I could make full lenght shows (the free default is 30 seconds). Because I was showing these on the big screen, I pain an additional $5 per video to get a DVD quality file. Let me tell you, it looked spectacular. Some people sent me low resolution images, but they all turned out great.

I wrote about Animoto a long time ago, but I’m serious, if you dont’ have it or aren’t using it, you really should. Click here to sign up!

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Child Dedication: Prep for Child Dedication Class

Posted on 05. Mar, 2009 by Kenny.

In the past ten day’s I’ve taught this class three times.

I wrote it out on a Saturday afternoon and taught it the next morning at our South Campus. I felt the information was good, but it came off a little flat. I had just one discussion question for people to interact with. After the first class, I added four more discussion questions, one after each of the four “essential parenting skills.” I also added some personal stories to add a little humor and liven things up. The second class was phenomenally better. This is the one I recorded in the video below. The discussion time was fairly active, but not as much as I woudl have liked. I finally taught the class one last time a week later. There were 21 parents present and the energy in the room was amazing. I was much more comfortable with the material and I had to cut the discussions short to keep us on track. It was by far the best child dedication class I’ve ever experienced. I’m looking forward to doing it again.

The video below is password protected. I told the parents in the video that I wouldn’t freely push this video all over You Tube. So, it’s locked down. however, if you’re reading it on this site, the password is: moistcookies

Prep for Child Dedication Class from Kenny Conley on Vimeo.

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Child Dedication: Handouts and teaching notes

Posted on 05. Mar, 2009 by Kenny.

Attached are the notes I used to teach and for parents to follow along and take notes.

Child Dedication Teaching Notes
Child Dedication Handout

When holding classes like these, I usually want to provide amble informaiotn for my paretns. My hope is that parents will go home and continue conversations about their child’s spiritual formation. Giving them notes will hopefully help them continue these vital conversations.

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Child Dedication: Tweaking what’s working

Posted on 04. Mar, 2009 by Kenny.

So, now I had one Child Dedication under my belt doing it a way that was much better than anything I’d ever done. Now it was time to tweak it.

I love the required Prep for Child Dedication Class concept, I just didn’t like the content from my first time. So, I needed to re-write. You do know that there is nothing new under the sun, right? I used some statistics that were already in the class. I took some additional statistics from a video my friend Sam posted a long time ago on his site. I then watched a video of a child dedication class Gina did and she totally gave me the idea of what I wanted to do for the meat of my class. Oh, and I totally stole two of her main points. With all this new material, I felt I had a solid class that parents would certainly value.

Second, I needed to tweak the dedication. Now we have a permanent Sunday afternoon service, so the auditorium wasn’t really available for the dedication on Sunday afternoons. After talking with several parents, I decided that Child Dedications would now take place on Saturday mornings (11:00 AM). This way family could still come in from out of town and it’s just before lunch, so families can go out afterward. Doing this on Saturday morning also assured me that this would be anything but a dog and pony show now that it was no where near a Sunday service (I really don’t mean to offend anyone by calling it that, it’s just what it had become at every church I’d been a part of. I know some churches that do individual dedications for families each week making it very special for that family. Unfortunately, that just doesn’t fit with our church and our time frame, so we have to do something different).

So, here is the plan from hear on out:

• Prep for Dedication Classes will be posted on the website. A parent can register for one of these classes at any time. The class is mandatory for your child to be dedicated.
• You can choose how and when you want your child dedicated. A) In your small group B) In a private setting C) At a church Child Dedication

In your small group

The children’s ministry will provide materials for small group leaders to conduct a child dedication. Basically it would be some notes and a video to watch. This is a great setting for a child dedication as it allows the child to be dedicated by those who are doing life with the parents. For the couple who doesn’t have any family in town and has close connections with their small group, this is an ideal solution.

In a private setting

In the last few months, I’ve done two dedication in people’s homes. Because we had not scheduled a dedication yet, I had two families request me to come to their house to dedicate their child. Both families held a big party for family and friends to celebrate. I arrived, hung out for a little while, did the dedication and then went home. Although it isn’t very convenient, it’s a great place to have a dedication, among family and friends inside the home. Both times I got a nice little $50 tip. I wasn’t expecting this, but it was a nice gift. I’ll probably make this as a suggestion to families going this route since it would pull me or my staff away on their day off. However, I know some of my staff would love to do this.

At a church Child Dedication

This is the standard Child Dedication we do right now. We’ll offer these three times a year on Saturday mornings. This provides that nice environment at the church in the comfortable setting where you can bring a few friends or an entire crowd.

So, this is what we’re going to do here at Gateway. There’s a required class to engage parents and make sure they understand what Child Dedication is and that they understand the role scriptures call them to as parents. We would also love to see this Prep for Child Dedication class be an opportunity to spawn new small groups. The class is discussion heavy, so if there are some connections, we can possibly spin off a new class. Tomorrow I’ll wrap up this Child Dedication series and share my notes and a video of a recent Prep for Child Dedication Class.

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Child Dedication: A New Plan

Posted on 04. Mar, 2009 by Kenny.

Just before arriving at Gateway I decided I wanted to figure out a new way to do Child Dedication, a very Orangy way. I wanted to engage the parents. At previous churches, parents signed up for Child Dedication and then just showed up on that day. I knew I wanted to have a pre-dedication meeting or class. Fortunately when I got to Gateway, I discovered that this class already existed. It was required. In addition, the dedication was held an hour before our once a month Sunday evening service. So, we had a special service for dedication where each family received individual attention as one of five or six pastors prayed over them. Then at the 180 service, the families/babies were recognized and the whole church prayed over them. I really liked this compared to anything I’ve done in the past.

I held my first class in September. It was okay. I primarily used the notes and material from the guy who was there before me. It wasn’t that his stuff wasn’t good, it just wasn’t me. The class was really informative. A few weeks later we held the dedication and it went pretty good too. There were a few hitches, but nothing I couldn’t fix by the next dedication. Again, it was my first one at Gateway. However, I was now positioned to take what Gateway already had to the next level. Stay tuned… more on this later today.

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Child Dedication: Idealistic thoughts

Posted on 03. Mar, 2009 by Kenny.

Nope, I’m not telling you what we’re actually doing… yet. That will come tomorrow. Before we arrived with the idea of what we’re doing right now, I had many thought of what I would like it to me.

Primary thought: Do child dedication exclusively in small groups. Want to eliminate the dog and pony show aspect of child dedication? Take away the audience. So, if child dedication is really about parents making a commitment in front of people they are doing life with, why not do child dedication exclusively within small groups. Group leaders can be equipped to do this or someone from the kids team can help lead the occasion. If we’re a church that really believes that small groups are the way people are going to grow, then why not let his happen exclusively in small groups. My friend Gina has been creating the tools to do this at her church.

However, this isn’t the silver bullet. What about those families where the dad is in a mens group and the mom is in a women’s group? Or the couples who are temporarily taking a break. Yeah, in those cases, small group exclusives don’t work either. So, how do you eliminate the “dog and pony” feel, connect hear to heart with parents about their responsibility to lead their kids spiritually and help parents connect with those doing life around them? I’ll share with you our response to this question tomorrow.

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