A few days I got an email from a friend in TN asking me some questions about how and when we promote. I’m really glad he asked because it reminded me of some questions I wanted to revisit and some frustrations I’ve run into for the past two years. He wanted to know what other churches do, so I figured I’d ask all of you. First, let me explain what we do here at Gateway, why we do it this way and what I’ve been frustrated about.
For the past two summers, we promoted in August, the week kids start their new classes in school. Actually, I’ve promoted the week school started every year I’ve been in ministry except for one I think. I’ve always preferred promoting at the end of the summer for several reasons:
- It gives those Kindergarteners promoting into 1st grade an extra 2-3 months to mature and get ready for the older environment.
- It allows our 5th graders one more summer to participate in Kids Camp as Middle School Camp might be too much for them and if they haven’t promoted yet, there won’t be any confusion on what camp to attend (If I’m being perfectly honest, it’s probably my desire to hang on to the 5th graders just a little bit longer).
- Promotion Sunday is always a highly attended Sunday as families are all back in town, so it’s easy to communicate their promotion since most everyone is there. At the end of the school year, attendance is down and it’s harder to create the same buzz.
Those are my reason for doing it when I do. However I have one reason against and it really frustrates me like crazy!
When a kid finishes the 4th grade, the last day of school in his eyes, he considers himself a 5th grader. I remember being this way as well when I was a kid. So in their minds, they’ve already promoted, but at church they’re being held back. It’s confusing as we have to put up signs telling parents that they’re still in the same grade groups and classes as last year and not to promote because if they do, then once we do a system wide promotion, all the kids will bump up to grades they aren’t supposed to be in.
Bottom line, we’re fighting everyone and in reality, it seems to create more confusion. Personally, I feel that if you have to put up a sign explaining something that isn’t exactly natural, maybe you’re going about it the wrong way.
So, what do you do and why? What are your thoughts about my situation? I’d appreciate your feedback greatly!
Interesting Perspective.
I have always thought the same thing about holding kids back when it comes to promotion. What a way to end the school year by promoting rather than playing the waiting game.
Not only that, but you could put so much more time into your experience on what is now “Promotion Sunday”. Seems like a cool kickoff with less of Logistical Nightmare.
I typically do my promoting at the end of the school year. This allows for the 5th graders to experience “youth group” for the summer. It gives them time to get used to a new system and not have to worry about the stress of starting middle school. They get to meet kids that go to their middle school and possible form friendships before the craziness of middle school happens. The same with the kindergartens who are entering 1st grade. They are given the summer to interact with the bigger kids, that way when they go to school in the fall they dont have to be scared of the “big kids”
I’ve been on the fence about this too. We have an all church Fall Kick off BBQ on our promo. Sunday. It is a logistical nightmare, as our kidmin room is a “multi use” room. So, not only are we promoting, but we can’t even be in our regular room which creates so many problems. I have considered promoting at the end of the school year, but I’m in the same boat as Kenny, not wanting to lose the 5th graders too soon, and not wanting to promote the K’s too early. Ugh.
We promote the week before school starts. That way our core kiddos know their new groups and leaders before the back-to-school masses return During the summer we just refer to each grade as “completed 5th” or “completed 2nd”. Our completed 5th graders do have the option of going to student ministry stuff on Wednesday nights but they hang with us on Sundays until promotion.
There are obviously several ways to do this that all have merit.
Whichever way it’s done, it requires A LOT of advanced communication directed at the parents.
At my previous church (i just changed this month) we promoted K-5th on the Sunday following our VBS – which turned out to be the last Sunday of June. Our kids going into middle school had one last hurrah with VBS and the student ministries team did/does a fun 5th to 6th event that week. Makes it all fun and exciting and focused on one week.
We promoted the preschoolers the first Sunday in September after the holiday weekend. (An added benefit from this is that we didn’t have a Kindergarten class in July and August since they promote end of June and the kids going into Kinder don’t promote ’til September when they actually start Kinder. Makes staffing just a touch easier during the summer.)
We also gave the kids promoting to MS the option of hanging with us until September if they were slow to jump into MS. Usually was just a few kids.
I’ll say it again: it takes a lot of communication and signs to direct parents. I think that’s the case no matter when the promo happens.
For several years I promotes at the end of the school year. We gave graduated 5th graders the option choosing kids camp one more time or youth camp. We encouraged parents to make a wise choice based upon their kids.
This approach had it’s challenges but far less compared to what I experienced last summer in my new setting. At Faith Promise we promote in the fall. We struggled to keep graduated 3rd graders engaged in our K-3rd space, graduated 5th graders engaged in the 4th/5th grade environment and our kids in ‘year round’ school technically were promoted to their next grade and starting their new school year one month prior to our promotion.
I’m a fan of promoting in May.
I’m a August promoter, right before school starts. We’ve always tweaked our summer programming quite a bit, so we can specifically avoid the dog days of kids wanting to move up. I’ll never change my promotion month for one simple reason…it gives me momentum heading into the busiest, most exciting time of our Kidmin. New kids, new environments, school starting, new things all around. Promoting kids at church at this same time has always just fit for us.
Of course there are exceptions from time to time with some families…
For the last two years I’ve promoted the first weekend after school gets out for summer break. Usually the first weekend of June is our “Up-Grade” weekend. I love doing it this way for two reasons.
First is that as Kenny suggested, kids see themselves as what ever grade they are going in to. It is very hard to communicate that summer events are for the grade you just graduated. So I believe communication for summer events has been simpler and better with this method.
Secondly I’ve actually liked the age break downs for my various summer events better this way. The excitement of moving up into an event I think helps get kids want to be there. Ultimately I get kids into our summer events a year earlier by doing this. I think that’s a HUGE plus in our model. I like the summer momentum of promoting and I haven’t noticed any drop off in our fall momentum by not having a promotion weekend then.
I switched our promotion (for many of the very reasons that you list here) to the end of summer a few years back. Over the period of two years, I heard more complaints about that change of promotion date than anything else we did!
I decided that it wasn’t a hill worth dying on shortly thereafter and switched back to promoting kids at the beginning of the summer!
We promote the first Sunday in September for a few main reasons. The summer is our worst attended quarter of the year with vacations, etc., and we have fantastic Bible classes with amazing teachers, and we’d rather wane, so to speak, at the end of the time in a particular class, rather than at the beginning. Promoting in September, rather than August, gives everyone time to celebrate their school promotion then look forward with great anticipation to their Bible class promotion. Our curriculum planning is based on September promotions, and because we combine some grade levels in certain classes, not all students in those classes promote. We really like September promotions!