from 30K feet

God's One Big Story

One of the things we want to teach our kids at Southside is seeing the Bible as God's One Big Story. We try to focus every lesson at every level on what God is doing in each Bible story.

Charlie Boyd, our directional leader, wrote a children's book called What God has Always Wanted.

   

Charlie's book gives a great picture of God's story at its basic level. You can easily read it with a child in one setting. This is clearly a story book and not a bible.

The illustration are wonderful too.

I am currently writing the curriculum we will use this summer in the 3rd and 4th grade. I have been using Sally Lloyd-Jones' book The Jesus Storybook Bible: Every Story Whispers His Name.

 I really like this book. It does a great job of telling the one big story, God's story. What I am really impressed with, is how Sally brings God's love for His children to the surface of the story.

This is more of a bible and less of a story book.

Refining the Vision on Volunteers

Our team has been talking a lot about volunteers as we look to staff through the summer and for the next Fall. Our conversations spurs ideas and values that will shape how we see and use volunteers. Here are a couple of those thoughts.

• Recruit people to ministry not a position - When you have big needs in certain areas it is easy to begin recruiting for a position. Example: we need a teacher in the 2 year old class during the 10:00 service. People are more likely to rule themselves out on this and it screams that something is wrong in this area. Instead we want to recruit people to reach into the lives of kids and then place them where we need them.

• Fill roles based on people's gifts AND your greatest need -I know we want to match people up with where they feel "called" and where they are gifted but it can create a self-serving volunteer base that never fills your greatest needs. If you are recruiting with the first point in mind then you will have people focused on where they can be used more than where they want to plug in.

• Recruit people who think ministry first / self second - This means you may have to pass on the person who says they can only serve the 4th Sunday of the month and only during the 10:00 service. The truth is people whose heart cries out, "use me where and whenever you need me" are much more valuable. This is the attitude we need to foster and encourage.

Summer Intern: Part 2

Playing off my previous post, I have put some more thought into this Summer Internship thing.

When you think of getting a summer intern, what comes to your mind?

• Someone to take over VBS this year.
• A new person to do the recruitting for the Fall.
• An able body to organize the registration for the new year.
• The intern can <fill in any job you don't want to do>

When I interviewed the potential intern... let's call Bethany the PI. When I interviewed the PI, I asked her if she wanted to learn about working in Children's Ministry or learn about leading it. Thankfully, she said she wanted to learn about leading it. (that just happens to be one of my favorite subjects) She said her goal was to learn about leading CM to help her discern if that might be a future direction God is calling her to.

Great reason!

Instead of seeing her as cheap motivated labor, I plan to invest in her as a future colleague and maybe even team member. The potential is endless and it will be very cool to see what God does with it.

Fellowship Kids Summer Internship

Interestingly, a few months ago I received an email from a college student that was interested in Children's Ministry. It happens often and many times nothing comes of it when I follow-up. However this time was different. The request in the email was interest in our summer internship. The interesting part is, we don't have a summer internship.

I really like the idea of a summer internship for several reasons:

• I think we are responsible as leaders to build into others who will ultimately be kingdom workers
• Teaching others helps us grow (ask anyone who has taught a Sunday School class or Bible Study)
• Summer interns can add some needed energy to your team
• It allows you to build into people who could be a part of your team in the future.

There are more reasons I could list and you probably have some too. So here is what I did, which is probably not the right order of how to handle it.

1. I brought the potential intern in for an interview to sit down and talk through what it might look like. Most of this was dreaming out loud for me plus casting vision which I do all the time. (in other words, I was making it up as I go along.)
2. After determining that she was very high quality and we were both on the same page, I approached my XP about the possibility of having a paid intern for the summer. I should have checked with him first but I wanted to be motivated when we sat down to talk about it.

I got the internship approved so starting in May, we will be having our first ever Fellowship Kids Intern! If you have lead an intern before please share with me some words of wisdom or best practices for maximizing this opportunity.