However, as a dad who “knows his stuff pretty well,” I’ve come to realize how much help I really do need. Four years into unpacking the Orange strategy, this stuff has hit home in a new way was my four an a half year old boy has come to an age where what I say and do has significant consequences. I’ve “accidentally” fallen into some really cool “God moment” conversations and it made me realize that I really need to be far more intentional at this age. Because of my experience and role in ministry, I have a bevy or resources at my fingertips, but I find myself in situations often where I honestly don’t know what to do next. It doesn’t take too long to figure out what resources or what conversations to focus on, but I’ve become keenly aware of the fact that as a parent, I need help. I have been able to lean on the experience and resources from others as well as my own ability to do a little research, but it makes me realize that if I feel a great need for personal help, how much more must other parents need a little help.

In addition to being another spiritual influence int he lives of kids, the church really does need to develop a resource list and path for families. Even if we can can convince parents that they can and should be the primary voice in their kid’s lives, they’ll become quickly frustrated if we don’t help them take the lead. In the next six months, I’m developing a resource/experience guide for parents, especially in the kidmin years. I’d be curious to see what others have already assembled or who might be interested in collaborating on such a project.

Last week I came across this article I found in someone’s facebook feed. America’s largest church is facing a 10+ million dollar lawsuit because of something that happened (or didn’t happen) in their children’s ministry. Who knows what is going to happen, but this whole thing probably could have been prevented. The article states:

The lawsuit accuses the church of negligence in its investigation, in reporting the alleged incident to police and in lacking surveillance that could have saved Guzman from being wrongfully accused of a crime. The church also is accused of failing to adequately train security and failing to take corrective action after similar previous events, the lawsuit states.

If this article doesn’t scare the poop out of you, then there is a good chance you’ve gotten too comfortable with your policies and procedures around the prevention and reporting of inappropriate actions toward children within your ministry. Our first priority should always be to protect the kids. Secondly, we need to prioritize protecting the volunteers who serve in our ministries. In addition, we need to prioritize the protection of our church. A lawsuit like this could mean the end of your church as well as your career in children’s ministry.

Obviously, this lawsuit is too new to know what really happened, but it appears that a child was not molested. However, potentially poor training/reporting didn’t protect a volunteer. This ex-volunteer who was arrested and endured a trial by grand jury will never be the same, and depending on what happens with the lawsuit, it may cost the church dearly.

Honestly, we don’t really know what happened. Only time will tell. However, I think that most of us can see how a situation like this could easily play out in our ministry due to a lack of training or the failure of just one volunteer to follow procedure. Let this be a sober reminder to get your policies in writing, train every volunteer in how to handle similar situations and have them sign off on this aspect of their training. Lastly, follow these procedures “BY THE BOOK!” We can not afford to slack in this area.

I’ve learned that most kid’s pastors I’ve met are highly resourceful. They’re always looking for great new resources and the cheaper it is, the better. If it’s free, well that’s incredible.

So, I figured that all the resourceful kidmin peeps who read this blog would be interested in this great free resource. Are you ready for this?

Really?

Here goes….

It’s called following #kidmin on twitter.

Wait a second, before you bail on this blog post, hear me out. Some of you have refused to get on twitter because you’ve not seen it’s relevance to your life or you don’t need another social media element in your life. I totally get that. However, you don’t have to sell your soul to Zuckerberg to get a twitter account (yes, I know Zuckerberg is with facebook, not twitter) and signing up for an account doesn’t mean you have to use it an the traditional way. Whatever resistance you might have toward getting on twitter is keeping you from joining the most active and relevant conversation in kid’s ministry today. Every day hundreds of kidmin leader join in the conversation. Many are just being conversational, while others ask questions and seek answers. Some are selling a product or resource and dozens of others are linking to relevant and current articles on their blogs. It’s a wealth of information right at your fingertips, and it’s free and effortless.

If you subscribe to a ministry magazine or enjoy reading and experiencing new ministry ideas, then following #kidmin on twitter is perfect for you.

So, here’s how you do it.

1. Go to twitter.com and create an account.
2. Don’t forget your username and passord, otherwise you won’t be able to long in and follow your twitter feed.
3. In the top right corner of the page, you will see a search bar. Just type in #kidmin

That’s it. That’s all there is to it. You’ll see a never ending list of tweets starting with the most current. Click on links to read posts, visit site or whatever they send you to. Experience and learn. Who knows, maybe you’ll decide at some point to interact.

You can also download the twitter app for iPhone or android. It’s free and you can search #kidmin there as well.

Another year gone by already.

Last year I wrote this post a few days after the #kidmin twitter hashtag turned two. Apparently no one celebrated the first birthday either. What a shame.

So, being the infamous creator of #kidmin (I say this tongue in cheek only because I feel it was more of a group effort) I put this date on my calendar so that we won’t forget again. February 3rd. That means that this Friday, February 3rd… #Kidmin turns 3.

So, here’s how we celebrate. Sometime between now and February 3rd, write a post on your blog explaining how #kidmin has affected your life or ministry. (No, I’m not talking about kids ministry in general, but the twitter search term). Tell a story about someone you connected with, a blog post that revolutionized your ministry or the introduction of a new resource or event as a result of the #kidmin community on twitter. Once your post is live, link back to this post or even put a link in the comments. If you don’t have a blog, just write your story in the comments. On Friday, I’ll compose a post with links/portions of everyone’s tributes toward #kidmin celebrating the actual day.

No idea what I’m talking about? Never used twitter? Never searched #kidmin on twitter? Well, you’re in luck. This week I’ll be sharing more about the fusion of Children’s Ministry and Twitter into what we know today as #kidmin. Stay tuned!

Next Thursday I’m heading up to Dallas-Forth Worth for a day to connect with Children’s Pastors and leaders from several large ministries. I’m really excited to partner with Greg Baird and speak, lead some conversations and learn from others on the subject of leadership within the context of leading in large churches.

The brains behind Worlds of Wow have put together a unique event at Gateway Church in Southlake, TX and I’m pretty pumped. It’s not too often when you’re in a room with other leaders who all lead at the same capacity or greater than you. I’m humbled because although I’ll be sharing the stage with Greg, I feel there’s probably much I could learn from those in the room. The thing I’ve found though is that this kind of stuff keeps you sharp. As I’ve been preparing for this event, I’ve been reminded of leadership gems I’ve gotten rusty on or simply stopped doing. Speaking and leading discussions like this sure keeps you honest… and focused.

I’m sure I’ll post more about this next week along with some information I’ve been preparing… hopefully to keep you sharp as well!

Last night I had the opportunity to speak to the High School group here at Gateway. It was my second time ever to speak to High School students, my first time in about 9 years. It went well, despite my apprehension speaking to High School students. However, as I’ve been very involved in our student ministry this past year, I’ve been concerned about the lack of information that we have on our students. Last year as we needed to quickly promote our student ministry camp, I found that we literally had no contact information for our High School students. Since most of their parents don’t attend Gateway, we really had nothing.

This year I’ve been plotting ways that we can better care of these students even in an administrative context. How do we track their attendance and know how to get in touch with them when they’re here? I decided that last night while speaking to them, I’d try an experiment and see if I could start the process of collecting their information. First, I figured that if I had email addresses, cell numbers, schools and grades, that would be a great starting place. So I created a little game to play that also tied into what I spoke about… a texting trivia game. I had several iTunes gift cards and put up random trivia questions with a google voice number. The first person to text the answer to the number won a giftcard. It was fun and we had significant participation.

After the last question, I posed one more challenge. I explained that we wanted to better know who they were and how to contact them for things like camp and such. So, we asked them to text their first and last name, their email address, their school and grade the the same number. We said that we’d award iTunes cards to the 1st, 20th, 40th and 60th person to respond. Of the 70-80 people to attend, we capture this data on almost 60 of them. Because it all went to a Google Voice number, I could simple cut and paste the data to a spreadsheet. Later this week I’ll have a volunteer cut and paste the data to individual cells, probably only an hour or so of work.

So, if you ever need to collect a lot of data from a crowd in a short amount of time, consider using a Google Voice number and have people text in their responses. Participation is high and the work to get the data is easy.

This Orange Tour was different for me. I was a little nervous. This was the first time I’ve ever taken student ministry volunteers. In the past I’ve brought my student pastor, but the team as a whole had never really been represented. They were very excited to have been invited and showed up in force. The Orange strategy is certainly something I believe in and I was more nervous that the student ministry volunteers would not connect with it or that it would somehow be a miss for them. Every year the Orange Tour has been one of the best conferences/seminars I attend and for no real reason, I was just nervous that it wouldn’t be as good as it had in the past.

Well, the day didn’t disappoint. If one year’s tour could be better than the previous one, this one was… but I must say that each of them stand out equally on their own. I learned so much, I was reminded of so much and I was inspired with so many new ideas. It was amazing and initial reaction from most of the student leaders was incredibly positive. I think there is still a lot to process with them, but overall, it was a great experience.

This week I’m not as much going to regurgitate my notes for you, but more or less share about what impacted me the most and what I plan to do with such thoughts. So, stay tuned for my Orange Tour Gleanings!

Today I ate a burger (Number 15 burger in Texas) at one of the funniest restaurants I’ve ever been too. I kept cracking up at all the signs. Most of them would not have been appropriate in a church setting, but there were a few that would be tempting to install. Everyone enjoys a little slick humor in the form of a sign, but I’m not sure I’ve really noticed such signs in kidmin… or in most churches for that matter. I guess that many of these signs tend to border on the side of inappropriate, but that’s not always the case. So I’m curious, have you seen or do you have such signage in your church/kidmin? These would be signs that deliver smiles to adults and even has a disarming affect for those who are tense about their first church experience. Church should be fun, right?

I was really bummed that I missed out on CPC this year. I had the opportunity to watch a video of a session where Michael Chanley interviewed Matt McKee, Sam Luce and Jonathan Cliff about the “networking group” Gina McClain and I share with those guys. I say “networking group” lightly because now it’s more like a strong group of friends that give and receive so much life from each other far beyond conversations about ministry. I think that “our story” was a glimpse of what great networking and community can look like in the world of kidmin.

However, right now I’m experiencing kidmin community right now in an entirely different level and I’m really excited about it. Last week I wrote this post and tweeted several times about starting an official Kidmin Biggest Loser group. Well, today was the first official “weigh in” and there are 16 kidmin folks from all over the country participating. Here’s what I love about this group.

• One person is a kidmin volunteer at my church (she saw all my tweets and wanted to join)
• One person attended one of my breakouts at Kidmin Conference in Chicago and started following my blog
• One person did Infuse with me for two years
• Two people I met through my Illuminate events
• Several people I’ve known for years through twitter and blogs
• A handful of people I’d never met or connected with until this competition
• Almost half of the participants, I’ve not yet met in person

Already I’m seeing great encouragement happening among a group of people who share a common passion, yet why we banded together has little to do with our primary passion. I think that over the next 13 weeks, some great relationships are going to develop and grow.

So, should I ask the question? What does networking in Kidmin look like in your life and ministry. Have you connected with others who know you, speak into your life and encourage you as a person as well as your ministry? If your answer is no… then what are you waiting for?

On Tuesday, the IRS opens for another business year… collecting your money! So, what does this have to do with Kidmin? Well, nothing, but over the years I’ve been committed to sharing resources to those who serve in ministry. So, here’s one of those ways.

Over the years I’ve learned that most people I know in ministry have one of a few tax arrangements:

• They attempt to do their own taxes
• They pay a CPA
• They’ve got their own sweet hook up

The truth is that if you’re in ministry, your taxes are not straight-forward. Clergy tax is unique and the average H&R Block employee is not going to have any idea how to file your taxes (they may attempt it but there’s no telling if it done right). Unless you have a tax and accounting background, you’re probably not knowledgable enough to do it right and the amount of time you’ll spend staying up to date on clergy tax law probably isn’t worth the time you’ll spend on it. Finding a CPA who actually is up to date on clergy tax will cost you, probably $300 or more. That’s probably a reasonable price, but there are a lot of things I’d rather do with $300. Plus, just because you have a CPA doing your taxes doesn’t mean they’re up to date on clergy tax.

So, I’m suggesting a better option for you. TC Tax Service out of Valdosta, GA. They’ve been doing my taxes for more than a decade and I’ve always been pleased with the job they’ve done. I’m also amazed by the level of service that they provide. Not only do they do an incredible job on my taxes, but they’ve even watched my kids while Sara and I went out on a date and they’ve fed us many meals. Yes, they’ve done all those things for me, but probably not because I’m a great client, but because I’m also their son.

All jokes aside, I’ve sent many co-workers and others in ministry from all over the US their way and I always get BIG thanked for the recommendations. My mom loves giving back to those who give of their lives and she absolutely loves helping people who know me. So, the deal she offers ministers is $100. Typically with the time she puts into it, she’s not making any money, but she loves it. Last year I sent her 10-12 new kidmin people. So, be sure to check out TC Tax. Even if you’re happy with where you’re at, she’d be glad to answer your questions or take a look at past returns to make sure they were done right.

So, check out their website and contact them from there. Remember, tell them that Kenny sent you! You can read more about what they offer here.