Magnify Your Ministry

  The Children’s Pastor - Part 5 

“ I am speaking to you who are Gentiles. Inasmuch as I am an apostle of the Gentiles, I magnify my ministry,” Romans 11:13 NASB

A big part of your job as a CP is to recruit and train volunteers to minister to children. When I first started in children’s ministry I used to complain to my pastor that I didn’t have enough help. One day the Lord spoke to me “It’s not your pastor’s job to recruit your help. It’s your job.” Self-pity has never recruited one volunteer.

The best way to get people to follow you is to create a ministry that people want to be a part of. Paul said it like this “I magnify my ministry.” Paul was the apostle to the gentiles and sometimes the gentiles felt like second-class citizens. Peter and James saw the gentiles as a lesser ministry, but Paul did not see it that way.

There will always be people in the church who see children’s ministry as lesser ministry, but the only way for you to change that is for you to magnify your ministry. A church will judge the children’s ministry by how the children’s pastor represents it. If you don’t like how people view your ministry then you might need to change your self. People are looking for somewhere to hook up but they don’t want to get on a sinking ship. If you are passionate about children’s ministry your fire will run off on other people.

After thirty-two years in ministry I have only found two ways to effectively recruit volunteers.

1. Ask them. Jesus asked his disciples to follow him and you will need to follow his example. Most people need to be invited to join a ministry. You can ask them by email, text, telephone or face to face, but you are going to have to ask people to get involved. The good news is that once you get one excited volunteer he or she can help by asking their friends to get involved. It’s kind of like a giant multi-level marketing plan. You get more gold in heaven the more people you get involved in children’s ministry.
2. People will respond to vision. Ask your pastor if you can have ten minutes in the pulpit on a Sunday morning or maybe you can do a family service on a Wednesday night. If you get an opportunity to share in the pulpit do not beg for workers. Instead magnify your ministry.Talk about how important kids are to the Lord. Share testimonies about what God is doing in the kid’s lives. The Lord said it to me like this “Allow people to experience the anointing that is on your ministry and let me draw them to you.”

Next week we will talk about how to train all the new workers that you will be getting.

• What is a Children's Pastor Part 1
• What is a Children's Pastor Part 2
• What is a Children's Pastor Part 3
• What is a Children's Pastor Part 4

Helping Kids Make Friends at Church

The Children’s Pastor part 4

“Two are better off than one, for they can help each other succeed. If one person falls, the other can reach out and help. But someone who falls alone is in real trouble.” Ecclesiastes 4:9-10 NLT

One of the responsibilities of a CP is to help kids make friends at church. If kids do not make friends at church during their grade school years then they will not make the jump to youth ministry. Teenagers want to hang with their friends and if they don’t have friends at church they won’t hang out at church. One of the best ways to insure that 'your kids' will not fall away during their teen years is to help them make friends at church.

You cannot choose their friends for them, but you can create environments that will help them make friends. I do this in three ways:

1. Small groups. One of the hardest decisions I ever made was to take 30 minutes out of my preaching and dedicate it to small group ministry. The primary reason I did this was I noticed the bigger the church got, the less connected the kids were. Church is not just about the relationship between the pastor and his sheep. The glue that holds the church together is the love we have for one another.
2. Create opportunities for kids to serve in ministry. When kids get involved in a ministry they are spending time with other kids who love the Lord and want to give of their time to help others. The payback that my leadership kids get is the lifelong relationships they develop at worship rehearsal and drama practice.
3. Plan social activities for families. I try to plan one social activity for families with grade school age children. Most of these are not drop off events but opportunities where families can hang together. Here is a list of the activities I have done:

• Sledding party – January
• Lock IN – February
• Roller Skating Party - March
• Easter Egg Hunt – April
• Gym and Swim night at YMCA – May
• Vacation Family Adventure – June
• World’s Largest Squirt Gun Fight - July
• Summer Camp – July
• Zoo Trip – August
• 100 Foot Banana Split  - September
• Hay Ride and Apple Orchard - October
• Halloween Alternative – November
• Christmas Party and Gift Exchange -December

• What is a Children's Pastor Part 1
• What is a Children's Pastor Part 2
• What is a Children's Pastor Part 3

What is a Home Run to You?

Children's Pastor Part 3

What is a home run for you? Monica is a home run for me. Monica was eleven when she started leading worship in Super Church. Today Monica is 35 and she sings in the sanctuary.  She never left the church and she has always used her gift for the Lord.

Monica is just one example. Seth is my assistant in Super Church. Kelly is one of our youth pastors. Krista and Ginger teach in our Christian school. Jacob owns his own business and he is one of my best teachers in Super Church. Adrian is the producer of a TV show at a church in Georgia. These people were all kids at one time who started out on the puppet team or the worship team or AV team and they are still in ministry today.

Jesus told us to go into all the world and make disciples. According to Young’s concordance a disciple is a “taught or trained one.”  The heart of a pastor is discipleship.  A pastor gives people and opportunity to do things.  If you are a one-man team you are not making disciples.

 I have observed that people that get involved in ministry at a young age will stay in the church. Stop complaining that you don’t have enough help and start using the people that are right under your nose. Train them up in the way they should go and they will always be faithful to you.

They say that 20% of the people in our churches do 80% of the work. Why is that? Maybe it is because we tell them when they are children that they can’t do anything in the church and they continue to believe that, when they become adults. 

So, what are some things that kids can do in church? I’m glad you asked that question. Here is a list of things that kids can do.

• Take up the offering
• Pass Buckets
• Help new kids find a seat
• Write out name tags
• Run power point presentations
• Create power point presentations
• Pray for the sick
• Teach an object lesson
• Puppetry
• Drama
• Sing
• Play the piano
• Lead Worship
• Run a Camera
• Pray with kids for salvation
• Pray with kids to receive the Holy Spirit
• Intercessory prayer

In short, kids can do whatever you will take the time to train them to do. What are you waiting for? Pick one child and get started.

• What is a Children's Pastor Part 1
• What is a Children's Pastor Part 2

Can Kids Hear From God?

Does God speak to kids? Emphatically, yes! God spoke to kids in the Bible and He still speaks to kids today. When kids get saved and filled with the Spirit. The Holy Sprit lives inside of kids just like He lives inside of their parents. Many times kids are more sensitive to the voice of God than adults are


Think about Samuel and Eli. God spoke to young Samuel because Eli had consistently disobeyed the Lord. God used a young King Josiah to turn Israel back to God, after his father had led the nation into idol worship.


God speaks to us through our spirit. There are three parts of man: spirit, soul and body (1 Thessalonians 5:23). The Holy Spirit does not live in your mind or your body. The Holy Spirit lives inside of your spirit man.


God speaks to us through the inward witness. In fact, the most frequent way thatGod talks to us is through the inward witness. The inward witness is not a voice, it is an inward sense. The Bible says it like this, “the Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit.” It is like this, you may be thinking about doing something and it just doesn’t seem right or it may even seem wrong. It is kind of like an inward stoplight. You start to make a decision and you get a red light on the inside. What is that? That is the inward witness. Kids don’t need to wait until they grow up to get the inward witness. They have it right now. Many times kids are asking their parents to do something and they already know they shouldn’t do it, but they are just hoping mom and dad will say yes.


Learn to listen to the inward witness, because the Holy Spirit lead you through the inward witness.


Taken from Holy Spirit lesson #2


Other Simaler Blog posts:
Does God Speak to Kids?
Does God Speak to Kids Part 2?
Does God Speak to Kids Part 3

Forgive and Forget

Ephesians 4:32, “…forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake has forgiven you...” (KJV)

Bad things happen to everybody. God doesn’t cause bad things to happen, they are a part of life. Sometimes strangers will be mean to us. Sometimes people we love will say or do hurtful things. Sometimes bad things just happen.

If somebody hurts us or sins against us we need to forgive them just like Father God has forgiven us. This can be really hard, but we need to remember that Jesus died for those people that sinned against us. When I think about it, Jesus already paid the price for their sin, then I don’t want to make them pay for their sin against me.

We need to forget the past. The Apostle Paul said, “But this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before.” Don’t let other people’s sin slow you down. Forget about the past, pick yourself up and keep running your race.

It helps us when we forgive others. God tells us to forgive others because unforgiveness will mess up your life.

• Unforgiveness will hinder your prayer life (Mark 11:25-26)
• It’s difficult to receive forgiveness for your sins when you are flowing in unforgiveness. (Matthew 18:23-35)
• Unforgiveness is a sin that will slow you down. 

The Holy Spirit will help you to forgive others. Admittedly forgiving others can be hard to do, especially if somebody hurt you that you trusted and loved. The good news is that you don’t have to do it by yourself. Even if it seems impossible, the Holy Spirit will help you forgive others.

When does Anger Turn into Sin?

How I met my good friend, Jim Wideman

The Importance of Networking with other Leaders

Part 3

*Jim Wideman, Roger Fields, and Myself at
Uncensored 2008 in Minneapolis.

In 1978 I was attending Bible School in Tulsa, OK. One of my teachers was a man named Willie George. Today Pastor Willie is Senior Pastor of one of the largest churches in America, (Church on the Move) but in 1978 Willie was Children’s Pastor at a local church in Tulsa. Pastor Willie taught a class on “Ministering to Children” that totally changed my life. One day in class I asked Pastor Willie if I could get involved in his children’s ministry. I went through the Pastor Willie’s training and taught in the 3-5 year old class for one year.

After graduating from Bible School I returned to Michigan where I served faithfully as a children’s pastor for four years. I loved what I was doing but I was not making money to live on. One day I called Pastor Willie to seek some counsel and he told me about a new church in Tulsa (Family Worship Center) that was looking to hire a children’s pastor. I met with the senior pastor, Dr. Ken Stewart and on Willie’s recommendation he hired me to be his Children’s Pastor. I was doing what I loved to do and I was making four times what I was making at the church in Michigan.

In 1986 I took a new position as Children’s Pastor at Living Word in Minneapolis. (Pastor Willie helped me get that job too.) One day I received a package in the mail from this guy named Jim Wideman. (Jim was Children’s Pastor at Evangel Assembly in Montgomery at this time.) I opened up the box and there were a slew of Brother Jim’s Puppet Trax tapes. I gave Jim a call to thank him for the free tapes. (Jim has always been a giver) I got some free tapes for children’s church and I made a new children’s pastor friend.

Four years later (1990) Pastor Willie gave me a call. He was starting a Bible School for Children’s Ministry and he was looking for somebody to head up the school. I gave Pastor Willie Jim’s name and phone number. Pastor Willie originally hired Jim to start the Bible School, but eventually Brother Jim became Children’s Pastor at Church on the Move.

Let’s think about what happened here:

• I helped Pastor Willie by serving in his pre-school class as a volunteer.
• In that one year I learned a lot by watching Pastor Willie and serving in a class.
• Pastor Willie helped me get two children’s pastor jobs.
• I got some free tapes and a good friend for life!
• Jim got to be part of a really great church.
• Pastor Willie got the services of one of the best children’s pastors in the nation.
• Bother Jim helped Pastor Willie grow the church from 1,000 people to 17,000 people.

Here’s my point: God works through relationships. When networking is done right everybody wins.

Check out Part One and Part two of The Importance of Networking with Other Leaders

Part One, It's all about who you know

Part Two, How do I get started?

Feed YOUR Volunteers

Feed your volunteers. I’m not talking about coffee and donuts. I’m talking about ministering to your volunteers. Jesus told us “to go into all the world and make disciples of all nations.” The word “disciple” means “a taught or trained one.”

We can’t only train volunteers. We have to feed our volunteers the Word of God. If children’s pastors would pour themselves into their volunteers with the same passion they pour themselves into their kids, then people would know that the leader cares about them personally and we wouldn’t have any recruiting problems. You have a responsibility to minister to your volunteers not just your kids. Your job is more than putting names on a schedule or getting someone to help do a skit. You are to pastor or feed your volunteers.

The spiritual growth of your kids is limited to the spiritual growth of those volunteers that are ministering to them.

Other "entrees" on the menu about pastoring your volunteers:

• Ready To Quit Before Getting Started
• Reversing The Domino Effect
• Fighting For Time
• Digging For Gold

Are you teaching your kids to be leaders?

In June of 1986, I witnessed one of the most powerful services I have ever been in. A friend of mine, Bill Bush, was the speaker at our summer kids camp. Right after praise and worship on the second night, I introduced Bill. Bill didn’t do a puppet skit or drama skit. He just stood up at the front of the chapel with a rock in his hand.

“Boy’s and girls,” Bill said. “Tonight the Lord spoke to me to stop and pick up this rock. He told me to tell you that some of you are like this rock. You have a hard heart.”

“Some of you don’t think you can have a hard heart unless you’re lost, but you can have a hard heart toward God. How do you know if you have hardened your heart toward God? Do you have a hard time going to church? Do you have a hard time lifting your hands during worship? If that is you, you have hardened your heart toward God. I want you to come down to the front, repent and ask God to forgive you."

For about five or ten seconds nothing happened. It was very quiet. You could hear a pin drop. I thought to myself, “Maybe Bill missed it. That was kind of a hard word."

Chris was a twelve-year-old boy who was the class clown. He never took God or church very seriously, but he was well liked, popular and a peer leader. Chris suddenly stood up from the back row and ran to the altar. When Chris ran to the alter something swept into the room. A spirit of prayer and repentance fell on the chapel. Everyone, adults and children alike, began to weep and repent for having a hard heart.

Now, here is my question for you, was Chris leading or following?