I have a very personal opinion that most children’s pastors who write their own curriculum should not be writing their own curriculum. I know that we’re very opinionated and we feel that we know what’s best for our kids, but just becasue we feel we’re good educators and teachers does not mean we know anything about curriculum paths, development progression and pushing out a comprehensive scope and sequence. For the most part, we should leave that to the curriculum publishers as many of them understand that better than us (not all of them though and that’s worth considering too).

Here’s the great thing you get from a publisher. They map out a multi-year scope and sequence that spans from birth through 5th grade (and often beyond). If a church sticks with that curriculum, that child will have a thorough experience. Most curriculum companies understand the process of teaching with the end in mind and they design their curriculum that way. They include various elements at different places so that kids progress through the material in an ordered and comprehensive way. Scope and sequence is good. It’s something we need.

However, here is the problem. Children’s Pastors don’t stick with any one curriculum for 10-15 years. At least none that I know. One publisher might have a great new product that addresses specific types of kids in a very relevant way, so we switch to that. Then another publisher comes out with something innovative that’s easier, so we switch to that. This isn’t bad, we want what’s best for our kids and it’s good when publishers create new and innovative products. However, every curriculum company has their own scope and sequence. When we jump around, ultimately our kids pay the price. Their curriculum experience is scattered and possibly incomplete.

Let me first preface. I personally believe that life change for our kids primarily takes place because of relationship. That’s the most important thing. However, curriculum does play and important part in directing the content of things discussed in that relationship. Therefore, curriculum is important.

My crazy thought would be that curriculum publishers could somehow work together and follow a predetermined set of standards. Certainly every publisher could agree on what a well rounded Christ-follower would look like and what concepts would need to be taught to point them in that direction. Curriculum companies already do this, but they just do it in their own way and and in their own time. I’m not talking about a total re-write of curriculum where every church is teaching the same thing ever Sunday, but what if there was an agreement that certain key concepts were taught to 4 and 5 year old children across the board. The same with 4th and 5th graders. Maybe it’s just 5-6 concepts that show up in the curriculum that cover these important foundations. That way as kids move and find themselves in a new church or when churches switch curriculum they don’t start all over. They merely pick up right where they left off.

Independent standards allow children to have consistent educational experiences regardless of what school they attend (usually). Independent standards allow consumers to know that they’ll be safe in their car regardless of which make and model they purchased. Independent standards allow patients to rest assured that the care they receive will be comparable regardless of what hospital they visit. Doesn’t this make sense? Doesn’t it seem like it would serve children and families if there was more collaboration (or at least predetermined standards) for the curriculum publishers?

Again, I know this one’s a crazy thought, but it’s been something I’ve wrestled around with for years. Tell me what you think? How am I wrong about this? How is this an impossible endeavor?

I really don’t think it’s enough to simply “add on” family stuff as if it were an after thought, but it needs to be highly developed and compelling. It could be the deciding factor for many children’s pastors making their selection. Some publishing companies have started developing some strong content for families, but there’s certainly room for more. Here are a few things to consider.

• Take home materials are dead. Most children’s pastors are trying to find creative ways to get parents to engage with take home papers, but most never make it to the home. If take home papers is a part of your family strategy, I’d seriously consider revising the strategy.
• Synchronize your family content with the kid’s content. I recently came across so family ministry curriculum that I was every excited about. It looked so good, I even considered what it would look like to switch curriculum. Then I realized that the family curriculum didn’t line up with the kids curriculum. No thanks. If I’m going to invest in this, I’m going to hit families with the same message from multiple.
• Make it affordable. I know, I’ll probably take some flack on this one. However, I feel that price is huge. As a church, I’ll supplement some of the cost, but if my parents aren’t leading their kids spiritually, it’s unlikely that they’ll elect to pay $15 a month for a resource to help them do something they weren’t already doing.

Anyone else have any ideas you’d like to see concerning family ministry content?

That reminds me of when I was at a previous church and we were locked into a a check-in software that was absolute junk. When moving to this software, we were told that it would do everything we needed, including being a great solution for multi-site check-in. For the 18 months we used this software, it caused me nothing but headaches. Hours and hours of my life were sucked into the vortex of this software never to be salvaged. I went around and around with customer support offering suggestion after suggestion. Most of what I said fell on deaf ears.

The problem? This software company had very little of the mainstream and mega church market. The small to medium sized traditional church was their bread and butter. The big churches really didn’t pay much more for their services, so this company had little motivation to meet our needs. If it hadn’t been for the tens of thousands of bucks we’d sunk in to go with this company, we would have ditched them right away. Wow, I wish I hadn’t brought all of that up.

So here’s the main point. Many of us are being considered the noisy 5%. We want more, but publishers are reluctant to give us what we want due to financial risks if what we want doesn’t become profitable. It’s an understandable quandary. However, there’s got to be some middle ground somewhere, right? Meeting the needs of this noisy 5%, doesn’t meet starting a new line of curriculum from scratch, does it? Isn’t there room to modify, expand or tweak something that already exists? To some degree I’d think I’d say that there’s plenty of great material out there already, it’s just getting it in a form that more fitting for the noisy 5% is what’s needed.

Thoughts?

Children’s pastors are tweakers. We tweak everything. Rarely will we ever pull anything out of a box and do it. It’s got to be tweaked for our kids and our church. Also, children’s pastors who are in the midst of ministry often times see things differently than a publisher does. What would happen if a publishing company could leverage the community of hundreds of children’s ministry leaders around the country to develop curriculum that offers dozens of options, extra ideas for every imaginable situation?

Sounds complicated, huh? Too difficult to pull off, right?

Five years ago maybe, but not today. With the social web, the power of creative community is waiting for the first publisher to leverage it. There have been many times where I wasn’t happy with the small group activity my publisher suggested. In those times, I’ve blogged about it and have gotten ideas from my readers. Unfortunately, not everyone has a blog where they can ask like-minded people. However, what would happen if a curriculum publisher provided a place for client churches to visit, download curriculum and videos, but also upload their ideas, their graphics and their videos? My friend Dan Scott shares his custom created graphics for 252 Basics monthly virtues on a flickr thread. I know that dozens of churches are using his graphics. My friend Sam Luce has tweaked take home papers and others have borrowed them. I know others tweak their curriculum for various reason, but there’s no place for them to share their changes. It’s likely that others are in the same situation. Why should we re-invent the wheel.

You see, I feel a publisher that’s really forward thinking isn’t only creating curriculum, but allowing their clients to tweak, morph and modify into something more complete, maybe even better. We all want options. We want more choices. Curriculum publishers have limited resources, so why not leverage the time and creativity of the masses to offer more. In the midst of this, you create community, encouragement and resources that go well beyond just offering curriculum.

One of the greatest advances in curriculum in the last decade was that of video curriculum or at least video components to supplement curriculum. We minister to a sight and sound generation and most churches don’t have the resources to pull off a compelling production that captures the imagination of every child or gifted and skilled communicator where kids hang on their every work. The video stuff helps and every year it gets better and better.

Actually, the early pioneers of this was Church on the Move with their Kids on The Move curriculum. You could get very high quality video curriculum on VHS to show on Sunday mornings. After 2000, curriculum began showing up on DVD’s and the idea was, “it’s so simple to operate. Put it in the DVD player, press play and you’re good to go. If you can operate a DVD player, you can use this curriculum.” This is great! So many churches highly appreciate this. However, technology has moved forward and most curriculum publishers are still stuck in the last decade.

Many churches have moved toward using software like Sunday Plus, Pro Presenter and other presentation software like this. Some are still using using PowerPoint. If you haven’t noticed, Blockbuster is failing. People are streaming their media online. Web savvy customers are purchasing movies and television over iTunes and Amazon and downloading directly to their computers. The DVD era is coming to an end and it’s time to move on.

Those of us who don’t use a DVD player in our churches are very frustrated with your DVD curriculum. We are forced to rip the video off the DVD’s, which is a gray area of legality. It takes a lot of time and the quality is often significantly lowered because we can only get the video in a format that’s quickly becoming “old school.” There are some publishers that offer video curriculum in video files, but you’ve only provided it in one file format… either a mac friendly format or a PC friendly format. I’ve wasted HOURS of my life converting the files to the format I needed. It was a great guesture to provide the files, but short-sighted and narrow-minded. In the end, hours were wasted and quality often suffers.

Here’s all I’m asking. When you burn your curriculum DVD’s, you’ve already got the original video files. Just give us those. Put them on a separate “data” DVD and send that as well as the actual DVD. Or better yet, put the files on your website and give us access to download. Shoot, don’t even send a DVD. Put an .iso file on the site and let us download it and burn our own DVD. I know. There’s that chance that a church is going to burn 5 DVD’s and if you were going to send them physical DVD’s, you’d sell each DVD for additional money. I believe that if you find a price point that’s fair, we’ll pay for it. If someone’s going to lie and cheat, they’re likely just buying one DVD anyway and making copies.

So, what we’re asking for isn’t much at all. It’s not a total retooling of the way you produce videos. It’s just supplying the video files before you put them all on a DVD. It’s more options and it serves the church well.

Eight or nine years ago, when ordering curriculum for Sunday School teachers, I had to order a curriculum book for every teacher. That usually cost me $20 a pop. Now we live in a digital world. Everything is different. You as the publisher have given me great material, but don’t be offended if I don’t have my teachers teach it the way you wrote it. I may do it in a different order. I might even leave out half and add in something of my own that fits what we’re doing as a church as a whole. When I ordered curriculum books from you, I had to type up a guide for the teachers of what to teach, what not to teach, how to change the order and all those instructions. It became a complicated mess of teachers referencing my instructions while looking at the material they’re supposed to teach.

Now in the digital age, this has all changed. I haven’t bought a physical CD in more than 6 years. Sometimes when someone gives me a physical DC… I don’t know what to do with it. In the same way, I don’t want to buy your curriculum books anymore. If I get the curriculum in a digital format, I can cut, paste, edit, re-arrange and reword. My volunteers get what they need in their email or download from a volunteer website where they can grab what they need. If my volunteers weren’t that savvy, I can print it out and give it to them a month at a time so they can be full prepared. It’s more efficient. It saves me money. It serves my ministry best.

I know that most curriculum publishers haven’t gone digital like this yet? Why not? And sending me a CD in the mail doesn’t count. CD’s get lost. I understand that there is profit to be made on every curriculum book sold, but if digital media is better, why not offer it as well? I imagine that the costs would be the same to layout the material digitally as it would for printing a book. Actually, it seems that it would be cheaper. It doesn’t need to look fancy and perfect becasue we’re just going to cut it up, edit it and move stuff around.

I know of at least one publisher that electronically distributes curriculum via “locked” pdf files. I have one question. Why? Why do you even think that’s okay? By locking your PDF, you restrict me from even copying text from the pdf to a word doc so I can custom build the material for my church? I’m not going to use your curriculum they way you think I should use it, so don’t make me waste time searching for ways to freaking copy the text out of your locked PDF. You’re not serving the churches purchasing your materials by doing that.

I know the reasons behind lots of this stuff. It’s intellectual property. By having editable files delivered across the web, you risk having curriculum “stolen.” It’s a valid concern. The music industry fought this same issue for the last decade. They eventually lost. MP3′s are not distributed unlocked through the web becasue it’s what people want. Don’t fight it. Let’s be creative? We’re willing to pay for the resources you develop. We need it. We need creative materials that haven’t yet been developed and you’re the ones who are poised to create it. Let’s be creative. Let us have the materials in a way that serves the church best.

Any thoughts?

Before we jump into the nitty-gritty of resources and practices, can we clearly define our roles? I think it will help provide a framework and context to talk about issues.

The role of the church

As Bill Hybles so beautifully says, “The Church is the hope of the world.” It’s true. There was a time when there was no such thing as curriculum. The church would read the letters of the Apostles, they’d encourage each other, share meals together and tell their neighbors about who Christ was. There were no publishing companies back then. There will come a day when Christ comes back for his church and all need for curriculum will be gone as well will fully know and be known. The church is eternal, curriculum is temporal. Curriculum is nothing without the church. Curriculum serves an important function, but precious few people will be encouraged, grow or will come to faith by curriculum alone.

The role of curriculum

Curriculum is a valuable resource. So much of the work of the church today is being done my part-time staff and lay volunteers. With people with limited time, their time is best spent loving and pastoring people, not designing lesson plans, object lessons and skits. Publishers provide such a valuable role by committing biblical experts and creative communicators who spend 40 + hours a week developing resources that the church can use. It really is an efficient model. The church needs good curriculum. It helps us at the church maximize our time and better equip our leaders and volunteers while still giving us time to serve the needs of our community.

I don’t know a lot about publishing companies and the world they live in. Although most are non-profit like our churches, they’re trying to be profitable. Not profitable to pad their salaries, but profitable so that they can continue to offer more and better resources for the church. I’m sure there is a bottom line and business decisions to be made. I understand that. I also have spoken to several who run and/or work for publishing companies. I’m almost always so impressed with their heart and passion for the church. Most are very involved in their own churches and are very much connected to the reality of what the real focus is.

Here’s the bottom line. Although the church needs good curriculum, publishing companies exist to serve and equip the church. If churches are frustrated with the resources provided by one publisher, they’ll leave that publisher and pick another. Unfortunately, the bigger problem that I’ve experienced is that I’ve come to realize that there is no perfect curriculum. There may be aspects of one that I love where certain components are sorely lacking. We could switch to another publisher and the things we love and the things we hate would just get switched around. So here’s the truth. Many churches feel trapped. There are some great resources out there and great publishers doing awesome things, but I’ve not yet found a publisher that totally satisfies. I know that it’s impossible to please everyone, but I do think that it’s possible to raise the level of what you’re already doing in every area to keep your fan base committed for the long haul.

One other thing and I’ll end this post. Take more chances for the churches that are doing the same. I know that there are bazillions of churches that are doing the same thing they were 10 years ago and they’re mostly happy with the resources you’re providing. However, sometimes a movement begins in the church and things begin to shift and it seems that curriculum publishers are too slow to accommodate churches that are pushing the boundaries of what’s been done before. I remember a time when children’s ministry was primarily a 90 minute kids church. When the strategy began to change to both kids church with small group breakouts, very few companies were developing material to do this. Churches had to write small group breakout questions to go along with the large group format. Now it seems every publisher has large group/small group curriculum. Maybe it’s a money thing? Maybe now that there is a big enough client base to support the development of that kind of curriculum. However, I’m not convinced that publishing companies can’t take more risk and develop experimental resources to equip churches that are pushing the limits in reaching families for Christ.

Tomorrow we’ll dive into another subject.

This little series of posts have been stirring in my brain for the last few months and I’m going to attempt to get them out this week. These posts are written specifically for those in the Chidlren’s Ministry curriculum publishing business. I know there are a a few who read this blog, so hopefully you’re reading this. Let me add a disclaimer. I’m not mad or frustrated (usually). I’m grateful. When I got into ministry to kids 12+ years ago, there was precious little in the form of curriculum and most of what was available was LAME! I’m grateful to those who are publishing great curriculum as now I have options. Thank you so much!

Also, I know that there are many publishers already doing some of the things I’ll be posting about, but I’m not sure I know of any that are doing all of them. So, not everything is going to apply to everyone.

However, I hope that this little series will serve as a platform to share some ideas about what we really need. I hope some of this will push you to go further and do things that seem unconventional. In addition, I hope that other children’s pastors and leaders will also voice their ideas, thoughts and opinions. I imagine that this can get very opinionated and possibly heated. Publishers are passionate about their resources. Chidlren’s Pastors are passionate about our kids. Ultimately though, aren’t we all on the same team? In the end, don’t we want to see the same thing happen?

So, let’s get started…