A Guest Post by Anthony D. Coppedge from Worlds of Wow, Inc.
Inexpensive Ways To Improve Your Kids Area
Church children’s staff and leaders put untold hours into preparing for each child that will come to a church service or special event. When a little bit of effort goes into making the children’s area fun and bright, churches make the kids’ experience more engaging and enjoyable. This experience is not lost on visitors, who are typically hesitant about leaving their children with people they don’t know. However, their hesitation is instantly alleviated when they see when a church makes a statement with their facilities about how important those kids are.
Fun Colors!
While theming out a space is ideal, a little color goes a long way towards creating a bright and inviting place that belongs to kids. Brightly colored walls not only liven up a hallway or kids’ room, marketing psychologists advise that a lasting color impression is made within 90 seconds and accounts for 60 percent of the acceptance or rejection of an object, place, individual or circumstance.
Bold colors such as red and orange should be used as accents, as too much typically overwhelms children. Also, brown, black and gray are seldom chosen by children, except to create an outline.
High-quality signage – and lots of it!
It seems so simple, but churches don’t often put a lot of thought into the design, size, location and quantity of signs. These are critical for making it easy for new comers to find their way, allow kids to identify which area is “theirs” and provides a sense of belonging and ownership to kids. Small tips include making the fonts big and non-serifed and making sure that arrows point to the next direction step. Use as many signs as is necessary for waypoint finding. Simple and obvious is the key.
A great idea is to use double-sided, perpendicular signs for rooms, making it easy to see from both directions.
Make check-in fun & efficient
Kids check-in may be the most important part of your first impression for guests and visitors. Use lights, colors and signage to make check-in both obvious and fun! If you have the space, make a separate first-time check-in area that’s bright and inviting, staffed with super volunteers wearing T-shirts just for Children’s ministry!
When it comes to check-in, there’s just no two ways about it: electronic check-in makes all the difference in both security and efficiency. There are plenty of church management tools, such as Fellowship One and Church Community Builder, which offer robust check-in solutions, even for very small churches. In fact, systems like these include self check-in, which is about 500% faster than assisted check-in.
One easy tip here: use stanchions to create line queues, so that people never get into the “slow line”. With a queue, the next person in line gets the next open check-in station, eliminating being in the “wrong line”.
Think About Kids And Parents
These simple ideas and tips are practical and pretty simple, but the key to each of them is that they appeal to kids and impress parents. Creating spaces that the kids “own” makes them like it more and giving parents the confidence that you’re fun, intentional and prepared for their kiddos goes a long way to keeping first time visitors!
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Anthony Coppedge serves as the Director of Sales for Worlds of Wow. As they say on their website:
“WOW passionately believes that the church should be the coolest place for a child to want to go, giving them the desire to spend more time at church than anywhere else. It is our core to help the body of Christ to reach children with the gospel. Our desire is for children to want to come to church because of how much fun it is and how much they get out of it, making the destination for kids inside the church. Wow is the innovative leader in the industry with progressive solutions of unparalleled quality and creativity. We are spiritually focused and are blessed to be using our creative talents to further the ministry.”
