Children’s Minister or Event Planner?
The first time my idealism as a new director of children’s ministry took a real hit was the moment I sank into my desk chair and realized that my whole to-do list consisted of event administration:
- Schedule Fellowship Hall for the Easter event
- Solicit dessert donations for the fundraiser
- Design invitations for the egg hunt
- Order take-home activities for Lent
The list of mundane details went on and on, and I could not help feeling that not much “ministry” was happening in the process. I was tired and bored, and the fire I felt for empowering families to be disciples and connecting with children in worship was dimming.
So, in a purely reactive move, I started canceling events. Without consulting anyone. My workdays turned into times of inspiration, meaningful conversations, and casting vision for the daily, weekly ministry opportunities that I loved. I was so happy!
Until families began accosting me outside the Sanctuary to ask where all the meaningful experiences they had looked forward to all year had gone? I saw true hurt and disappointment in their eyes when I gleefully told them I was focusing my energy on more important matters. In my distaste for details, I had completely missed the value that church events hold for families. I had swung the pendulum way too far the other way.
This is the eternal conflict of children’s ministry professionals—events like Jesus’ Birthday Party and Vacation Bible School and the annual overnight lock-in at the church hold real discipleship value for families, but at the same time, the hours, expense and brainpower they require of children’s ministry staff are overwhelming. I have wrestled with this problem repeatedly over the years, and I want to offer a few ideas for giving event-planning the attention it deserves…but not more than that.
Make Your Events Count
It is so, so easy for church leaders to let the calendar get out of control. Every children’s ministry event sounds like a great idea! Before we know it, we are leading events multiple times a week, and the stress is inescapable.
Demand that your calendar represents your goals. Rather than allowing every good idea to clog up your ministry docket, set your goals and vision for the year and insist that every event contributes toward that goal. If an event on the schedule does not align with your main mission, either re-work it or remove it.
Learn from my mistake—if you plan to cancel an event that has been done before or you’ve already announced, make sure to communicate first! Pull in your leadership team, lay out your concerns, and let them help decide how to handle the event. Communicate upfront with families, explaining what is being done to the event and why. Don’t pull the event in secrecy and hope for the best like I’ve been known to do.
Example: Along with your staff and volunteer leaders, you have set a goal for the year that every event will be evangelistic. Your goal is to invite and include people from the larger community and share the love of God with them, so everything you offer needs to be an inviting opportunity.
You then look at the calendar and realize that the annual 24-hour retreat for 4th-5th graders is historically an internal event, meaning that only the core group of regular attendees participate, and it is designed to build upon those existing friendships, making it a difficult event for an outsider to enjoy. Also, the same volunteers who show up for everything else are the only ones who participate.
You can redesign the event, making it more welcoming to newcomers and outsiders, with lots of icebreakers, lower participation fees, and games that prevent kids from teaming up with people they already know. In the process of making this event line up with your main goals, create lots of room for new leadership, refusing to assume responsibility for all these changes yourself. The redesign is an opportunity to bring in new leadership.
Or, you can remove the event entirely if you and your team agree it has reached its natural end. If it only seems to matter to the same people who are present for all the other discipleship opportunities and does not align with your mission, then communicate with the families who have participated in the past, and ask how the value this event offers could be incorporated into the other events and weekly ministries on the calendar. Or, ask if families would be willing to organize their own retreats in homes, sharing the food and activity responsibilities and making their own unofficial retreat. Ask your leadership team to present a united vision for the year’s goals and a willingness to sacrifice internal experiences for the good of those you seek to reach this year.
Recruit and Mentor Volunteer Event Planners
Some folks have the spiritual gift of event planning. They love details, they live by lists and spreadsheets, and they experience fulfillment in preparing snacks and sending e-mails.
Find these people. Make them your people.
Disciple your event planners. Pour into them! Take them to coffee, pray over them, send them thank you notes, affirm and appreciate them, and make them a priority. When they have an idea for an event that you never would have thought of, celebrate! Give them a budget and support and free rein. Tell them exactly what they can expect from you, and then give just exactly that.
There is no joy quite like the utter bliss of walking into a children’s ministry event that you did not plan. I wish for every children’s ministry professional to experience that feeling on a regular basis.
Keep Canceling an Option
This is a mentality we all need to adopt—if an event on the calendar is untouchable and non-negotiable, then we have lost sight of our true calling as a church. Every special event is eligible for the chopping block if it distracts us from our primary purpose.
This mindset can cause pain for church members who have cherished particular events over the years, so hold onto it with grace and empathy. For some of our people, events are synonymous with the Church, and removing a beloved event can cause a legitimate sense of loss and disillusionment. This is why communication is so important!
Communicate!
More than the decorations, the pageantry, or even the food, communication is the #1, biggest, most important aspect of all event planning. How often have we found ourselves in the throes of designing a gorgeous event, then realized we have neglected to tell everyone just how wonderful it is going to be? Marketing, explaining, conversing—the most important prep we can do is to communicate in advance to folks about the purpose and plan for the events on our calendar.
Getting people to the event itself is more important than making the experience perfect once they’ve arrived. Perfectionism in event planning leads to burnout. Often, the greatest discipleship value of an event is the togetherness it affords. No one cares if the cake is delivered ten minutes late or the kids forget all their lines in the Christmas pageant or the budget didn’t allow for the ornate centerpieces you wanted—the only real event failure is absence. If folks aren’t there, they miss out. Period. And if they are there, chances are they will be gracious about any shortcomings in the event itself, because they just experienced an evening of laughter, love and conversation with others in the church.
So, when you make your long event to-do list, spend 50% of your time on communication and the other half on all the other details. The invites, the website description, the phone calls, the e-mails, the posters—these are the things that get folks in the door. What happens when they’re actually there is community, that thing God made us for in the first place.
Be a ministry professional, not an event planner
In the end, it’s all about balance. Too many children’s ministry professionals look at their church calendar as if they must prove they’ve got what it takes, and they end up exhausted. God didn’t call any of us to model burnout for our people; God calls us to set boundaries. If your workdays are just a series of meetings, e-mails, and Oriental Trading orders for events, don’t be afraid to reassess. Imagine what God could do with the free time of church staff and families who are not constantly running from one engagement to the next?
Sarah Flannery is the author of the Children and Family Ministry Handbook. She has led ministries for children and families for the past 15 years, both as a church staff person and a volunteer. After graduating from Asbury University with an English degree, Sarah earned her master's degree in Family Sciences from the University of Kentucky. She currently serves as Assistant Pastor at First United Methodist Church in Lexington, KY, where she leads in children's ministry, supervises other ministry teams, and provides pastoral care to church members. She and her husband, John, parent two boys, Thomas and Jack, and live with an alpha cat named Annabelle and a goldendoodle with zero chill named Ripley. Sarah hopes anyone reading her books will find that in her stories of hit-or-miss ministry experiences, they also can discover new ways to live out their callings to serve and disciple families.
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