What is the process of getting new volunteers into your ministry? Assimilating them effectively can be a huge part of accomplishing your vision.
For more on assimilating volunteers, check out 4 Steps to Assimilating New Volunteers in Children’s Ministry.
Teaching Standards
Do you equip your teachers to maintain certain standards in teaching? If not, you will have inconsistent teaching which will reflect the way each individual teacher was taught. And, most likely, it will be teaching which is pretty boring. And guess what? Kids who are bored are not engaged, and kids who are not engaged aren’t learning, and kids who are not learning are highly unlikely to ever own their own faith.
So do teaching standards matter? You bet they do!
Here is an example of a simple set of standards you can equip your team with:
- Our teaching will always be:
- Engaging – we will involve children in the learning process and allow them to explore and experience the lesson for themselves;
- Child-centered – everything about our teaching and teaching environment will be appropriate for the group of children we are teaching;
- Relational – knowing that the deeper the relationship, the better the teaching, we will create an environment that promotes and encourages relationships, and build our teaching around those relationships;
- Focused – we will focus on a single objective in our lesson, with all activities, games, stories and other components all reinforcing that single objective;
- Applicable – every teaching will include a practical application which the children can practice and use during the coming week.
The teaching in your ministry contains the very message that you are hoping children will understand. Ensure their engagement by defining and equipping your team with effective teaching standards.
Facility Standards
This can be a difficult one for Children’s Ministry Leaders because we often have little control over the facilities we are assigned. It may include rooms shared with other ministries or schools. It may be that we are meeting in a school with little ability to change the room around. It could be that we simply have no budget for maintaining the standards that we ought to maintain.
I’ve been in each of these situations, and they can be frustrating. But here’s what I’ve learned and encourage others to do when it comes to facilities: First, make sure that the environment is safe. Second, do whatever you can within your means to make it attractive and inviting to the children you are serving.
I also learned that when I created a team focused on facilities (most of whom could not or would not serve in a classroom), I rarely had to worry about it again. People loved the idea of contributing to the safety of the kids, and others loved getting creative in whatever situation we were in to make the facility and environment attractive and inviting.
