Childrens Ministry Online

Big Announcement: Illuminate is coming to Nashville

Posted on 15. Sep, 2011 by Kenny.

With two Illuminate Conferences under my belt, one thing is sure… Illuminate is like no other conference. At both Austin (2010) and Birmingham (2011) I heard the same thing over and over.

Amazing!

Incredible!

Inspiring!

Encouraging!

That’s what kidmin volunteers from Texas, Alabama and Georgia all had to say about their Illuminate experience. So, the only logical thing to do is more events, right? That’s what I thought too.

On Saturday, February 18th, 2012… Illuminate comes to the great city of Nashville, TN! Details are still coming together (like speakers and breakouts) but we do have a handful of great communicators already lined up.

• Jim Wideman (General Sessions and Leader Q & A)
• Jonathan Cliff
• Amy Fenton Lee
• I’ll be there too… plus a few others

For more information about Illuminate, check out illuminateconference.tv. For more information about the Nashville event, visit nashville.illuminateconference.tv.

Continue Reading

Why Illuminate was a Success

Posted on 29. Aug, 2011 by Kenny.

On Saturday we knocked out our first Illuminate of the 2011-12 year. It was a huge hit! Not only was it super successful, I learned so many things about hosting a conference, especially in a city where you don’t live. One of the biggest things I learned is that starting a conference in distant location is a lot harder than you would think. The Austin event came together incredibly well with seemingly little effort, but the Birmingham event required a lot more work to get the word out. Like I said though, I learned a lot from this first event which I hope to put to work in future events.

However, this last saturday was almost 100% void of stress. I had an immense amount of peace and I remember walking around at times thinking, “should I be running around or fixing an emergency of some sort?” Let me share with you two reasons why the Birmingham event was so successful (there are several other reasons as well, but these may be the biggest).

Cathy Harwick and Corey Schwarz. Period.

Cathy Harwick and Corey Schwarz work for me at Gateway and are also good friends to me and my family. Having them in Birmingham was strategic since we’ll be putting on a nearly identical conference in Austin in a little more than two months. Most of the work that we were scrambling to get done right before the event last year is already done now that Birmingham is behind up. I’m just so grateful that they were willing to come. There is no way that I would have been able to pull off what I did without their help. Cathy took care of all the details around registration, customer service and speaker care. Corey took care of all the details around the production, audio/video recordings and technical aspects. That left me with little more to do than just walk around, shake hands and welcome people to Illuminate. This is probably why I didn’t experience any stress at Birmingham. I just had fun.

I’m not sure if I’ve said much about these two team members here at Gateway. I hired Cathy Harwick as my McNeil campus Children’s Pastor about 2.5 years ago. After looking for a Children’s Pastor for nearly 9 months, Cathy sought me out. She came to Gateway with incredible experience leading a larger Children’s Ministry at a larger church. I’ve met very few people who have the ability to recruit, lead and care for volunteers like she does. Because of her gifting, I have her operating in two roles. In addition to being the Children’s Pastor at our largest campus, she also oversees the process for recruiting, leading and caring for all volunteers to kids at Gateway.

I hired Corey just a little over two years ago to be the Children’s Pastor over the Children’s
Ministry at our South Campus. He’s a total rock star. For several years he had been the children’s pastor at a smaller church in the area. When he joined our team, he was able to use his gifts as a part of a larger kidmin team, not having to do everything himself. Corey has a big passion for large group ministry, so he also operates in two roles. In addition to being the Children’s Pastor at our South Campus, he oversees production, environments and curriculum for all of the Children’s Ministry at Gateway.

I thought I’d just brag a little on Cathy and Corey. They were significant in Illuminate’s success and they are significant to me, very much like family.

Continue Reading

Illuminate Birmingham is less than 10 days away!!!

Posted on 18. Aug, 2011 by Kenny.

Wow! One week from today, I’ll be flying out to Birmingham, AL to start getting everything ready for the first Illuminate of the 2011/2012 season. I’m really excited. I’ll admit it, there have been days where I thought I’d bit off more than I could chew, but God has been faithful and things have come together beautifully. I’ve got so many things to share, but I can’t until after this first event is over. Ha!

So, if you’re within driving distance of Birmingham, AL, please come on by and spend the day with us. It’s going to be amazing! It’s not too late to register. Click here for more info!

Continue Reading

Come to Austin for Illuminate!

Posted on 17. May, 2011 by Kenny.

Almost a month ago, I announced the second year for the Illuminate Conference and with the special announcement of an event in Birmingham, AL. Today I announce that registration for the Austin event is now open! Woo hoo!

In case you missed it, Illuminate is the premier #kidmin conference targeted toward volunteers. It’s an affordable and local conference that you can bring your whole team to. Oh, and your volunteers will be treated well as they get to learn from some of the top #kidmin leaders in the country. Check out the lineup for the Austin event.

• Jim Wideman
• Gina McClain
• Dan Scott
• Matt McKee
• Jonathan Cliff
• Sam Luce
• Amy Fenton Lee
• Michael Chanley
• And more to be announced…

Yeah, this is huge. If you live anywhere near Austin (or not… we had a handful of people travel 6 hours or more), make plans to attend this year’s conference! Click here for more info!

Continue Reading

Big Announcement: Illuminate 2011

Posted on 20. Apr, 2011 by Kenny.

Last year my team and I created a new volunteer conference called Illuminate. You can read about what we did here, here and here. Essentially, the idea was to create an incredible experience for our volunteers at Gateway. Many times I’ve walked out of an incredible breakout at a national conference and said, “Wow! I wish all my volunteers had experienced that!” Unfortunately, most churches can’t provide a “national conference” experience for all the volunteers… unless that church brought the national conference to their volunteers. That’s what Illuminate is.

On Saturday, November 12, 2011, Gateway Church in Austin, TX will host Illuminate for the second time. I’m expecting 600-800 kidmin volunteers/staff for this incredible experience. The breakout and speaker lineup is amazing!

But wait… there’s more!

Last year when doing Illuminate in Austin, I had a thought. Illuminate is a huge blessing for kidmin volunteers in Central Texas. Why limit it to just Central Texas? Once all the content and program is developed, doing it again in a new location isn’t really that much work, right?

So on Saturday, August 27, 2011, Westwood Church in Birmingham, AL will host the first Illuminate Conference outside the great state of Texas. How exciting is that? We’ll pack in the same great stuff that made Illuminate successful in Texas, but serve it up Southern Style.

But wait… there’s even more!

Last year I recorded every session and breakout of Illuminate. I intend to record every session and breakout from Birmingham and Austin in 2011 as well. So, what am I going to do with all this great video content? You guessed it. Illuminate is going online. I don’t have specific dates and details yet, but plans are underway and concrete dates will be set this summer. I truly believe in what is happening with Illuminate. I don’t know of any other experience of this magnitude focused at equipping volunteers. Not everyone can get to Austin or Birmingham… but this video content can help anyone, regardless of where they’re coming from.

This year for Illuminate, I’ve gathered some of the greatest minds in Kidmin: Jim Wideman, Sam Luce, Jonathan Cliff, Gina McClain, Dan Scott, Matt McKee, Amy Fenton Lee, Michael Chanley and more to be announced. That’s a Kidmin Powerhouse!

So, whether you live in Texas or Alabama (or within a couple ours of the locations) or whether you have a computer with high speed internet, plan to connect with Illuminate this Fall. It could be exactly what you’re volunteers need most. Stay tuned for more details soon.

Don’t hesitate. Click here to visit the illuminateconference.tv

Click here to follow Illuminate on twitter
Click here to visit Illuminate on facebook

Continue Reading

Orange Tour 2011 Notes: Discipleship

Posted on 07. Feb, 2011 by Kenny.

So a few weeks ago I took about 11 staff/volunteers up to Dallas to experience the Orange Tour. POWERFUL! SIGNIFICANT! IMPACT!

Those are all words I’d use to describe the day. I’m so glad I was able to take my team to this experience and bummed that I couldn’t take everyone.

So, this week I’m going to share some of my notes, but not in the way I usually do. Typically when I’m at a conference, I’ll literally download all my notes from the conference onto this blog. This time I want to craft posts specifically dealing with something I heard that resonated with me. I want to blog more about that idea and possibly even strike up a conversation to explore it further. So, let’s get started.

Discipleship. I’m going to use this word lightly as there are many different thoughts and ideas about this word and how it is carried out. That’s not what this post is about… so don’t go after me about what discipleship is or isn’t.

Here’s what was said:

“You may put a child in a room and teach them truth. However, you’re not discipling them unless its the same voice every week.”

At Gateway we like to say that discipleship is life-on-life.

“Studies are showing that kids growing up in church with a consistent voice are more likely to remain in the faith.”

I haven’t actually seen these studies, but it is common sense, right? If a kid comes every week, every other week or once a month, aren’t we going to be a million times more effective leading that kid if it’s the same volunteer leading that kid every time he or she shows up? I’m not talking about the guy from the stage either, I’m talking small group. The leader that knows his or her name. The leader that knows what it takes to get him or her in line. The leader that knows what’s going on at home.

Let’s take it another step. What if that leader is in that kid’s life for three or four years? How about five or six? Isn’t it logical to expect that this leader (assuming the leader does more than just “shows up”) would have significant influence in the child’s life? Maybe that’s a little subjective. At least it would be logical to expect that this leader would have significantly more influence than the leader who is with a group of boys or girls every other week for a year.

If this is the case, why in the world would we not do everything possible to create this kind of environment for the kids we lead?

I know the excuses. I’ve said them. If you’re church only holds one service, you’re going to be hard pressed to find these kinds of volunteers. My only suggestion, beg your pastor to move to two services! I’ve done the one service model and I had leaders who served once a month as well as every other week. It worked, but it wasn’t best for the kids. You know it isn’t either, don’t you?

When that church went to two services, I immediately transitioned every volunteer to every other week scheduled. I was a little nervous about it. I was afraid that I’d have tons of volunteers bail. In the end, I lost two or three. Crazy. My fears were my own and didn’t justify me not asking for a greater commitment.

Then a few years ago I decided to take the next step and begin asking volunteers to make an every week commitment. I didn’t really have many volunteers to begin with, so I was recruiting mostly new volunteers to an every week commitment. Again, I was nervous. What if it was too much? In the end I was surprised again. Most people didn’t balk at the idea of serving every week. When I explained why, they “got it.” Last fall I did a huge recruiting push where we were only recruiting for every week workers. The result? We recruited more volunteers than we ever had before.

I’ve found that the thing usually stopping us from making the transition to every week volunteers is fear. We’re afraid to communicate such a big change to our current volunteers. We’re afraid that all our volunteers will quit. We’re just afraid. Truth is, most of the volunteers really don’t care. Give them a good enough reason and they’ll do just about anything. The quotes at the top of this post are two very good reasons to volunteer every week.

So, what’s keeping you for switching? What’s your story of transitioning to every week volunteers?

Continue Reading

Subs in your Children’s Ministry

Posted on 30. Jan, 2011 by Kenny.

Substitutes. Subs. We’ve all got them. However, how you view them and utilize them makes all the difference in the world. I’d venture to bet that subs in most kidmin situations looks pretty similar. It’s that place where volunteers go when we don’t really know what to do with them anymore. We have ideal and ideals of what a sub list really could be, but often times, it’s not really like that at all.

In my experience, the sublist is usually where people go when they quit volunteering. They usually get to the sub list by one of two methods.

1. The volunteer tells you that they can’t really commit anymore and they’d prefer to be on some kind of sub list.
2. The volunteer tells you that they want to quit and in an effort to keep them, we ask them if we can put them on the sub list and they almost always say, “sure.”

But we know what the sub list is really, don’t we? It’s a place where volunteers go to die (figuratively speaking). You know what, it doesn’t have to be that at all. Really, it just takes a little initiative and ownership.

First of all, when dealing with volunteers who feel like they need to take a break it is important to actually be direct with them. Don’t let the sub list be a way to be passive. They’re saying they want a sub list, but they really don’t have any intention to serve anymore. Don’t let it become that. Describe to them what the sub list is and that they’ll be contacted on a regular basis to come in and serve and if they don’t respond, then you’ll need to follow up with them about the expectations of being a part of the ministry. In many ways, you’re recruiting them to the sub list, not letting them default to it.

Second of all, you need to change your perspective of what the sub list is. I like to call it the farm team. I’m not a fan of baseball, but work with me here. The farm team (the minor leagues) is simply a temporary place where the intended output is to put players back in the major league. So, your sub list might be where a volunteer needs to play for a little while because life got crazy. It might be a place where a new recruit goes because they simply can’t meet the requirements of being a full-fledged volunteer, but they’re working towards that. If you create a vision around your sub list, you’ll have a backup team of people who can dependably fill it and even be developed to be future volunteers.

Last of all, this means your sub list needs to be tended to. Too often the sub list is “out of sight, out of mind.” Maybe you have a volunteer leader who tends to the people on the list, keeps in touch with them and invites them to serve and fill in on a regular basis. Whatever you do, make them feel valuable and keep asking them about being involved and stepping up.

Continue Reading

Anyone in Kidmin using Planning Center?

Posted on 25. Jan, 2011 by Kenny.

Okay, before you say yes, let me narrow it down. I’m looking for people using Planning Center for scheduling volunteer outside of just programing and production stuff. Is anyone using it to schedule nursery volunteers, check-in volunteers and elementary small group leaders? The whole thing?

Several years ago I looked into Planning Center Online and even had one of my campus Childlren’s Pastors give it a try and it just wasn’t a good experience. This wasn’t because it’s not good software, but because it seemed geared mostly toward the program and production side of ministry where those volunteers typically fill a roll for all services on a given weekend where a chidlren’s ministry will usually have different volunteers for every service. It seemed workable, but not worth the hassle.

However, last week I spent some time with Bent Tree Bible in Dallas and someone from their kidmin programing team showed us planning center. Although they’re using it primarily as a tool to plan out services, it looks like they’ve developed it further to schedule all your volunteers and for multiple services. We’re totally pumped.

However, as it most things, there is more than one way to skin a cat. Rather than try this and try that, I’d like to talk to some people who are using it the way we’re looking to use it. So, if you’re using it to schedule volunteers in multiple areas (beyond just program and production) and you run multiple services, please let me know. Comment below and I’ll get in touch with you!

Continue Reading

When your volunteers truly get it

Posted on 17. Jan, 2011 by Kenny.

Working with volunteers can be a very frustrating experience as well as a very rewarding experience it. The frustrating parts are when there just aren’t enough, when they don’t pull through like you hoped that they would or when they just don’t care as much as you do. On the other side, it’s rewarding when they do care as much (or more) than you do and when you have a literally army of people doing great work because of a common vision. What is really rewarding is when put to the test, they do what they’ve been trained to do even when it would be easier not to or even easier to create an exemption to the rule.

Yesterday was one of those moments. Cathy Harwick, one of the Children’s Pastors here at Gateway is a stickler for safety and I know she trains and communicates our policies thoroughly to our volunteers. Near the end of the day, on of the teaching pastors came up to me to tell me about an experience he had that morning. He teaches fromt he stage 1-2 times a month, so everyone who attends our church knows who he is. He came to tell me than when going to pick up his son in one of our elementary environments, he had lost his parent pick-up tag. He didn’t realize that he’d lost the tag until he got to the door. The volunteer at the door kindly asked him to go to the check-in area where a staff member/ministry leader could confirm his ID and issue him a new pick-up tag. As he told me this, he had a smile on his face. It wasn’t a major inconvenience, but many people in his situation could have gotten frustrated. He was grateful because this volunteer illustrated the level of safety and security we value. I’ll probably share this story at a future training meeting when I’m going over that value (safety and security). It would have been so easy for that volunteer to say, “I know who you are and I know who your son is, no worries, you’re fine.” I’m proud of what Cathy’s done with her team and I’m proud of that volunteer. I have confidence that they get it.

Continue Reading

Illuminate: Review

Posted on 10. Nov, 2010 by Kenny.

As I said the other day, Illuminate was a total success. Since Saturday, I’ve been in pure recovery mode. I’m just now getting back to somewhat of a normal schedule, but I hope to be back to full steam next week.

However, I did want to reflect on what went well and what didn’t.

First of all, let me tell you what we did. We had about 215 people attend Illuminate. About 65 of them were my volunteers and 150 of them from other churches. Craig Jutila delivered two keynote talks and Michael Chanley, Sam Luce and Jonathan Cliff each led two breakouts. I charged other churches $25 per person to attend. Each conference participant got a conference notebook (padfolio) which included conference cards (information about the conference, Gateway Church, the speakers as well as promotional items from our sponsors) and a shiny new illuminateconference.tv pen. Woo hoo! Lunch was provided by Chipotle. We started at 9:00 AM and finished just a little after 3:15 PM. All Gateway volunteers came for fee and if they needed it, we provided childcare  for their kids. The idea behind all of this was to provide a phenomenal conference experience for our volunteers at little to no cost by allowing other churches to participate in this very affordable event.

The cons:

• The food was a little messy and confusing – We didn’t think through this fully. We’ll probably use Chipotle again, but we’ll just think though the chips, sides and plates and napkins a little more thoroughly. I’ll also bring on a volunteer person who totally owns food so it’s not something someone else has to juggle along with everything else.
• Some of the breakouts need to be better clarified – No doubt about it, I had top notch breakout speakers and I got overwhelmingly positive feedback for all of them. However, one or two sessions probably could have been better defined so it was more clear what people were attending. Also, my second breakout was supposed to be a Q & A driven session and I think the experience varied. I’m not sure if it was because some people expected something different than what we delivered or what. We’ll fix this next year in working out the bugs and also having the content, titles and speakers well developed long before the actual conference.
• Registration was a little confusing for some – We used our web registration through Fellowship One to register churches. Once a church registered, they had to fill out a second form where they put the names of the people they paid for as well as their breakout and food choices. I honestly don’t think that it was all that confusing, but because things were on such a short time-frame, people got a little confused.
• The stage programing was not as well rehearsed as I would have liked – This was the result of the rushed nature of Illuminate. At 2:00 AM the day of Illuminate, we were just finishing the ProPresenter slides and at 6:00 AM, my team and I were rehearsing introductions and transitions… all things I wanted to do the week before. As a result, we did what we could in the time we had to plan and all of us were just plain tired.

The pros

• Significant response from the community and beyond – Although we really only began promoting Illuminate three weeks before the conference began, we still managed to register 150 people from outside Gateway. We had multiple churches say that they would have brought dozens if they had only had a little more time. Probably one third to one half of the attendees came from over an hour away. This tells me that there is a true need for an event like this and Illuminate met that need.
• Illuminate was highly organized – I’m really proud of this one. From the notebooks to food and lanyards to quick check-in processes, people told us over and over again that things seemed well organized. We had very few questions like “where am I supposed to go?” or “How do I find this breakout?” because everything was clearly communicated either from the stage, from their breakouts or in printed form in their notebooks.
• Content was amazing – This is easy when you have the likes of Luce, Cliff, Jutila and Chanley on the speaking roster. I had many volunteers say that they totally were not expecting Illuminate to be what it was. I’m so glad we’re changing their expectations. I had one volunteers confess later that she was planning to leave after lunch, but was getting so much out of the event that she didn’t want to miss anything.
• Incredible Partnerships – I was totally blessed to have three amazing conference partners. Orange, Group Publishing and Yancy all saw the vision for what we were trying to do here through Illuminate and invested in those who attended. I’m grateful for the relationships I have with them but even more grateful that they were willing to take a chance with Illuminate. Especially since so much of it was last minute dealings as well. We were specific in who we asked to partner with us and I heard from more than one attendee that they were glad to learn about products and programs offered by the sponsors.

So, Illuminate was a success. I’m so proud of what my team pulled off. The biggest lesson we all learned though is that time is of the essence. We have already booked November 12, 2011 as the next Illuminate Conference in Austin, TX. Jim Wideman is the keynote speaker and I have verbal commitments from several breakout speakers that are going to knock it out of the park. Having all of this planned out months and months in advance will help us tremendously!

Here are some pics of the Conference Notebooks and materials included.

Continue Reading