Okay, I never intended this series to jump into a third week. Sorry, my week last week got a little busy.
I just thought I’d wrap it up with a few closing thoughts.
Here’s what we explored:
- Defining Roles
- Curriculum Distribution
- Video Curriculum
- Leveraging Creative Collaboration
- Family Content
- Video Access
- Independent Standards
There were some great conversations on some of these posts. If you missed any, be sure to check them out.
There seemed to be a lot of agreement from other Children’s Pastors in response to these posts. I expected as much since I wrote these based on personal frustrations as well as hearing first hand what others have been frustrated about. However, the point of this series wasn’t to complain to publishers. We have a symbiotic relationship with publishers and if we don’t tell them what we want, they won’t produce what we want. I know of at least three publishers who were reading this series, so hopefully the conversations happening around these topics have given them things to consider.
Most importantly of all, communicate with your publisher. Tell them what you like and what you don’t like, it’s the only way your publishers will have the feedback necessary to build your dream curriculum.
I have been waiting to throw this thought out, and decided this is probably the best place. A lot of discussion has been had about the noisy 5%. I want to say something from the 95. I think more of us WANT change and more of us recognize the NEED for change, but we aren’t in positions to make that known. Sure, there are some that want to do it the old way, but a much larger percent of us just go with the flow because we don’t always realize there is another way. Until Bible college, I DIDN’T EVEN KNOW OTHER CURRICULUMS EXISTED! I was never exposed to any other methods! We also don’t have blogs, can’t attend conferences, and don’t have friends in the business of curriculum. We may only represent 10-15 kids. Why would anyone care about our opinion?
I say this because I know publishers think it will be a risk to shake things up for only 5% who want it, but I say, please shake it up because it will help all of us! If there are those that don’t like the change, they can have the curriculum all of us CPs have in the storage closet from 1965 (come on, you know you do). Most of us are ready to move forward and we need publishers who will help get us there. Our churches, pastors, and volunteer staff (what’s that) probably aren’t pushing to go that direction, so a little prod from our publishers might be the one thing that gets us there.