The ten essentials of a Children’s Minister by James Summers

joshadsit — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 21:22:46 +0000

The Ten Essentials of a Children’s Minister by James Summers.

1.Ministry is not a one-man show.
::::Delegate

2.Fun loving personality.

::::An outgoing personality like a kid.

3.Someone who is patient and isn’t overwhelmed with chaos.

4.Recruiting volunteers.
::::Play to your strengths, empower your weaknesses
::::Look for volunteers who are strong where I’m weak.
::::Constantly creating new opportunities for new volunteers

5.Training volunteers
:::::Yes, there is a big difference from recruiting and training

6. Creativity
:::::This is huge. Creativity and thinking outside the box makes church fun and attracting to kids. As a minister, being

creative or having someone on your team that’s creative will leave kids begging their parents to come back to church.

7. Building Relationships

::::Kids-as a friend, not just a pastor

::::With parents

8. Communication
::::Parents and students
::::Website, email, phone, facebook… etc.
::::Staff
::::Promotional ideas

9. Personal discipleship

10. Invest in and develop students so they will serve throughout their life

the Gospel according to Pixar

joshadsit — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 20:37:42 +0000

I spent the last couple weeks reading “The Pixar Touch,” a compelling book which chronicles the entire history of pixar up until 2007. The church can learn a lot from Pixar about a lot of things.

::Pixar began as a group of guys living and working in community.

::Their vision was clear: we want to make feature films.

::Before making their first film, they spent 15 years developing hardware and software; this caused some people who were impatient in accomplishing their dreams to leave.

::Pixar won an academy award before making a feature length film for “Tin Toy” later to become “Toy Story.”

::Pixar needed Disney to help establish their name.

::Disney shut production down on “Toy Story” because they felt it wasn’t a compelling story.

::Pixar and Disney spent 20 million dollars on production of “Toy Story” but spent 145 million on marketing “Toy Story.”

::Once invited to the Academy Awards, creative genius of Pixar John Lassetter shows up in the Oscar Meyer Weinermobile.

::In a Disneyland parade, a CEO notices that no characters in the parade were Disney-created characters except for Pixar’s characters.

::Disney realized they could no longer “recycle the ideas of its past and capitalize on its founders fame,” so they bought Pixar for 6.5 Billion dollars.

252 Video projects

joshadsit — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 15:59:20 +0000

One thing that God has taught me recently is the importance of working together with other ministers….

In doing so, we have began to make supplementary videos for our 252 stuff… Take a look at our first one, use it, share it, give us feedback…

visit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jG06hSPrn1E

Leadership according to Pixar’s film Up

joshadsit — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 18:34:52 +0000

Recently, my wife and son decided to go to the drive-in and see ‘Up.’ It has become a family ritual every summer to see Pixar’s newest creation. While we were watching I couldn’t help but notice how much information on leadership was being presented.

Leadership lessons from pixar’s Up-

1. you can covey a lot without any words.

2. Some people try and take away what’s most important to you.

3. There is a war between the ‘I don’t want any help’ people and ‘all I want to do is help’ people.

4. Everyone WANTS to get to paradise falls.

5. You will have to throw some things out of the window if you want to fly.

6. There are people who feel like their purpose is to bust your balloons because they’ve forgotten how to fly.

7. Music is REALLY important.

8. Never underestimate how much it means to kids when you just show up.

9. Your adventure will include people you wouldn’t normally invite.

10. Alot of time and money is spent on details.

A spring break in the inner city

joshadsit — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 18:54:20 +0000

Spring break: inner city kids don’t go on vacation.

A few weeks ago was a week that mostly everyone in ministry looks forward to; maybe because we get to be a bit more laid back than normal.

One day of laid back was enough for me. I realized I should go and visit our kids homes since they were out of school. At first I thought to myself ‘I bet most kids are at grandma’s or walt disney world’ and neither turned out to be the case. It turns out that staying in the office would’ve been the worst thing in the world to do.

The majority of our kids live in goverment owned housing. Most weekends, when you drive through the complex, kids are every where with no parents anywhere. These kids take care of one another. The most simple things in life: ice cream, baskettballs, high fives, organized sports, hannah montana dolls and teenage mutant ninja turtles, all things that most kids enjoy, these kids go without the simple things.

We met justice when he was in preschool. A bright eyed boy with blonde hair with endless energy, justice was always able to find a way to escape his class. Week after week, justice began to open up and allow our workers to love him and teach him about God’s love.

When we were walking through the complex we began to hear screaming sirens from on coming police cruisers. They pulled up infront of the house of our little justice. I knew something was wrong when the special forces truck showed up. Shortly after the apartment was surrounded, two officers kicked the door in, moments later carrying out justice, who was asleep at the time. The police seized his parents because they were making meth. Ironically, the police brought justice and took justice that day.

I’m glad I didn’t stay on the couch that day.

Story 2

Spring break: a 52 year prayer answered.

Grandma Louis is a hero.

Grandma louis served as a missionary in south africa for over twenty years. When she found out that her first grandbaby was being born came home. Since her daughter was homeless Grandma Louis asked her daughter and brand new baby Makenzie to move in with her. Shortly after Baby Makenzie and mom moved in, the mother spiraled back into a former addiction to meth. Now 52, the mother looks like she is 75, all her teeth are gone, has survived 2 strokes and tried her best to be a good mom. She hit rock bottom the night before we showed up.

It’s normal for us to be in a house for an hour at a time but not three hours at a time. Realizing that this was God’s way of using us, we asked her if she would accept Jesus and be baptized. She resisted at first but then precious little Makenzie who is now 10, said that she wanted to also. We drove down to the church and baptized both the mother and the daughter. I happened to peek down into Grandma Louis’ eyes: she was so full of joy. Since everyone in heaven was having a party, we decided that we would too. We ordered pizza’s and had them delivered to their house.

The couch was a pulpit and then turned into a pizza parlor.

what is the couch?

summersjames — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 15:00:19 +0000

couch

- noun

1. a piece of furniture for seating from two to four people, typically in the form of a bench with a back, sometimes having an armrest at one or each end, and partly or wholly upholstered and often fitted with springs, tailored cushions, skirts, etc.; sofa.

2. a place to rest one’s hind parts

3. a place of relaxation; a lounge; any place used for repose.

4. Has been know to be a thief: remote controls, loose change, cheetos, hair scrunchies, car keys, and diamond rings.

5. The source of sleep for one on a ‘marital retreat’.

Congregation on the couch

- blog

1. a collaborative blog of Children’s Ministry thinking

2. a place for Children’s Pastors to pen their thoughts, stories and day dreams.

3. a blog that brings Children’s Pastors from churches of all shapes and sizes together.

4. a place you can always turn to for a good laugh or a great idea

Still wondering “What the heck is the Congregation on the Couch”? The congregation on the couch is a collaboration of children’s ministers who share a living room together. Well… maybe not a living room, but a blog.

Our aim is to create a new type of blog, a community blog where Children’s Pastors can share stories, ideas and insights. If you already have a blog, we’d still love to have you contribute/guest blog and will provide a link to your site on our blogroll. We want this to be a blog that Children’s Ministry leaders can visit that will connect them to a “plethora” of other blogs and ministry resources. If you’ve never blogged a day in your life, we’d love to hear from you because that means you’ve got a lot of good stuff saved up. The blog is still in it’s infancy stages, but we’ve got some good stuff coming soon. We’d love to have you take a seat on the Couch with us.

If you’re interested in partnering with us, shoot us an email at congregationonthecouch@gmail.com

Giving up something good to become GREAT

acrathbone — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 04:38:03 +0000

I love preteens, they are my favorite age to work with. So when my boss at the time, suggested we launch a event for preteens I was pumped. However, at the time in 2001, there weren’t many events at churches for that students that age. And we weren’t really sure what it would look like and how people would respond. So we put together a program and invited some churches not knowing what to expect.

To our overwhelming response we he had 170ish preteens attend this event. I was hooked, so the next year I took on the task of making this event bigger and better, and we brought in 300. Over the next few years we continually tried to improve on reaching this largely untapped group and before long we grew to 500. Church groups were coming from all 4 states surrounding us!

We had begun bringing in speakers and bands from CIY, and they took notice of what we were doing and got excited about the opportunity to reach preteens. They asked if we would partner with them the next year as a test launch for beginning a nationwide preteen event. At first I was so excited! But then it hit me. If they do this what happens to “our event”. No longer would our team be the ones planning and hosting the event. We would have to give up “our baby” so to speak. And several on my team were reluctant, a few to the point of flat out saying we shouldn’t do it.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that it wasn’t about what we had accomplished, it was about reaching preteens for Christ. I realized that by not partnering with an organization such as CIY, we would be going against the very vision we set out to accomplish. That first year it was really tough to sit “on the sidelines” and watch the event. They did things different than us, and some on my team were still telling me this was a bad idea. However, I knew in my heart that God was going to bless this ministry.

The next year they launched what is now known as Superstart in multiple cities all over the U.S. And when I saw what Patrick Snow and his team at Superstart had accomplished it blew me away. It brought tears to my eyes as I watched the promo video on the web from the first site they launched. Then at the first Superstart Tulsa more than 650 preteens poured into our building, and I got to see firsthand how the team at CIY had taken something good and made it into something GREAT.

The ministry at Superstart is still growing and expanding and every year they blow my mind with their creativity. They have taken preteen ministry to a level that I could have never imagined 8 years ago. It has now grown to 13 sites across the U.S. Superstart Tulsa is next week and there are over 930 preregistered as of last week! So I guess the moral of this story is, don’t be to proud to let something good become something great. Realize that YOU are not the only one who can make something succesful, and that you could actually hinder the growth of a God sized vision.

For more information about Superstart! Check out www.superstart456.com

my first trip as a children’s pastor: true story….

joshadsit — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 16:46:13 +0000

My first real trip as a Children’s Minister was coming up and I was stoked! The leaders at my church decided that I needed to go to the best conference available and after talking to my mentor, I decided that the Orange Conference was where I needed to go. I booked our flights, hotel and rental car three months in advance to save us a little bit of money. The leadership was also allowing me to bring my Children’s Ministry leader with me. We really didn’t know each other very well yet so I was really excited about the trip. I booked our flights around 1:00p.m. on a Sunday so we had to skip out of church a bit early. Once we arrived at the airport, my ministry leader bought me a vanilla bean frap from Starbucks and it was amazing! We then boarded the plain and headed to Atlanta. After we arrived, we got our rental car and cruised down to our hotel! We were so pumped. We kept saying “this week is going to change our lives.” Once we arrived to our hotel, we plopped our lugged down and I proceeded to jump up and down on the bed. I felt like Kevin McCallister on Home Alone when he checked into the Plaza Hotel. About the time I ran out of gas from jumping, my cell phone rang. I looked at the caller ID and noticed that it was my senior pastor calling. I thought he was being nice and checking in on us.

Senior Pastor: “Josh?”

Joshua: “Yes”

Senior Pastor: “You guys haven’t left yet have you?”

Joshua: in a very excited voice, “Yeah, we just got to the hotel”

Senior Pastor: “I don’t know how to tell you this but…Josh…you guys are a week early!

WHAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So here I am in Atlanta with my ministry leader who has absolutely no idea what’s going on. Once I get off the phone he was like, “So what’s wrong?” I was like, “lets go find a place to get some ice cream” because in my mind I figured that it was impossible for anyone to be upset while eating ice cream.