This week I plan to write a little about how Kidmin is organized. Ultimately, I’ll speak from my own personal experience as well as my thoughts and opinions. However, during this week, I would love to see and hear how you organize your ministry. I’ve found that sometimes looking at another ministry’s organizational chart gives me ideas for they way I see my team.

I think I’ll start by describing the standard organization which I call the departmental organization. It seems to be the default organization for most Children’s Ministries and if you have more than 1-2 staff on your team, you are probably organized this way. What am I talking about? Let me explain.

If there are two to three people on a Kidmin staff, usually one of them is the Pastor/Director and the other one is Early Childhood Director. If there are three, usually it consists of the Pastor/Director, the Early Childhood Director and then an Elementary Director. Why is this structure so common? Here’s what I think.

Most churches start off with a Children’s Pastor/Director who has to oversee the whole ministry. When the church is small, this is pretty manageable. However, once the ministry gets big enough to hire another person (full or part time), nine times out of ten the next hire is an Early Childhood Director. I think this is the case because running an Early Childhood department can be pretty taxing and very detail heavy. So, if I’m a Children’s Pastor, I’m looking for someone to partner with me and take the weight of that ministry so I can focus on just elementary and the ministry as a whole. Occasionally I see a church hire an Elementary Director first, but that may be because the Children’s Pastor/Director has strengths/passion for Early Childhood. Once the ministry gets even bigger, the next hire is usually the Elementary Director. Once a church has gotten there, you have a pretty standard departmental model made up of Elementary and Early Childhood where the Children’s Pastor/Director can oversee it all and circulate among the ministry areas.

I don’t think that the departmental model is bad. I’ve operated using this model at 3 different churches for nearly a decade. However, I’m no longer convinced that it’s terribly efficient. I think there might be better ways to organize your ministry that might get you more bang for your buck. Tomorrow I’ll write about the inefficiencies that I saw in my departmental model and why they have led me to reorganize the Kids Ministry here at Gateway.