Posted on October 27, 2009 - by rfrank

A fresh look: 9 new trends in children’s ministry leadership

For the next two weeks, I am going to be sharing an article I wrote for the November/December issue of K! Magazine. The article is called “A Fresh Look: 9 New Trends in Children’s Ministry Leadership.” I shared these nine trends first with the Board of Directors at Awana a few months ago. I decided to develop it into an article for the magazine. Check back every few days and I will post a new trend. Feel free to share these posts with the leaders of your church, but do not  publish them (in print or electronically) without writtten permission. Here we go:

Children’s ministry is alive and thriving in the church today. It’s an exciting time to be involved in ministry to kids. To be your best, you need to keep up with the current trends in ministry. What follows is a report on the good, the bad, and the ugly. I’m not asking you to agree with every point but just hear the way I see it. Ready?

Trend #1: Children’s pastors are doing more with less

On March 3, 2009, Roger Fields, President of KidzBlitz, took a poll and asked the question, “Is the current economic situation impacting your children’s ministry?” Hundreds of churches responded. The results showed:

Not at all (17%)
Slightly (30%)
Somewhat (39%)
Massively (14%)

The analysis is this: over half of the churches we polled are being impacted significantly by the economy! Consequently, children’s ministry leaders are working with less.

Kimber Scott, Children’s Ministry Director at Mountainside Church of Christ, said, “I had to lower my budget for 2009 by $8,000! We’ve started so many new programs that involve prize-giving. So I went to Goodwill and other thrift stores and bought prizes for 10, 25 and 50 cents each. They’re new toys!”

Tonya Pinkerton, Children’s Pastor at Farmland Friends Church said, “Our church just built three new rooms for the kids … A couple weeks ago we had our big grand opening, but nothing on the walls. After seeing the large posters of kids at the GAP store in the mall, our pastor got creative and asked the store employees for the posters they were going to throw away. GAP not only gave us the posters, they gave us all kinds of neat pictures of kids and a container to hold them! We put them up all over our children’s ministry rooms and halls!”