Never Go Back!

/by

I’ve noticed that with the on-set of the Coronavirus (Covid-19), we begun to change the way we do ministry – especially ministry to kids. More churches than ever before are looking for ways to continue to minister to the kids even when they are not in the building.

Only a handful of churches were offering a live-streaming service for their kids ministry. Brian Dollar and First North Little Rock come to mind. Several other ministries have offered some online tools for families each week. But now that we have all been (self) quarantined in an effort to conform to the standards of our culture, most churches are looking for ways to continue to minister to the children.

Many churches have been offering live-streaming for their adult services. But the urgency has changed for KidMin. My opinion is… We have missed it in the past, but now that we’ve begun this style of ministry, we should NEVER GO BACK!

Understanding that the average child only attends church once every three weeks, most kids are not learning the same lessons every week. But we have begun finding ways to put God’s word in the hands of our people weekly, even though they aren’t in the building. Maybe we should have been doing this all along. Maybe we should have been sending links to the weekly lesson and a short video of the teaching that has happened on any given Sunday.

I know that I for one did not do enough to follow up with kids who were absent on even just one Sunday. I did, however, have a plan in place to follow up with kids who had missed for 3 weeks in a row. But, was that enough? I venture to say it wasn’t!

How can we make this happen each week? For starters…
1. Make it a priority
2. Plan ahead
3. Downloadable take home papers/activities
4. Family emails, social media, text messages
5. Attendance database (kept up to date)

I’ll be researching some ministries and websites that have begun do a great job of this. I’ll write another blogpost that will give you sites to look at and get ideas.

Thank you everyone, and remember – Aim for the Mark every time, because if we aim at nothing, we’ll hit it every time!