BUILDING YOUR TEAMS
Building a great team is vital to building a great ministry with kids. This post is part of a series of posts exploring tangible ways to build a great children’s ministry team. The last post was about key roles you’ll need on your team. This post is about additional teams that are helpful to have within your larger ministry.
TEAMS
Some teams are vital to your ministry with kids. Some teams are just really helpful. Build them out as you can. Some people may even be on multiple teams.
Small Group Leaders – This team consists of all your small group leaders. They are the primary spiritual caregivers for your kids. They must really hone their skills for relating to kids, facilitating discussions with kids, leading various activities and crafts, and having individual conversations with them. They have to be able to help the kids apply the biblical teaching to their lives. This team needs to make a weekly commitment to being present with their group as well as keeping in touch with them outside the weekly program. Because they’ll also encounter a variety of difficult issues, they’ll need to meet on a regular basis (I suggest monthly) for training and should receive ongoing resourcing through emails, facebook posts, etc.
Story Tellers/Communicators – This team (however small or large it may be) is responsible for communicating the biblical story and message in a way that relates well to kids and is easy to understand. They’ll need to work together to work the curriculum and scope and sequence in a way that fits your ministries calendar and theirs. They may choose to rotate various weeks of the month, take on specific days of the week (e.g., Sundays, Wednesdays) or even specific services or programs (1st service, 2nd service, etc.). They’ll need to meet together periodically for planning.
Coaches – This team is responsible for providing care and support for all your small group leaders. You might split up their assignments by age group so they can develop their expertise in early childhood, early elementary, or late elementary. Or, you might assign them to a grouping of leaders to follow them as they progress up through the grades. They’ll need to meet together periodically for brainstorming, processing, and resourcing.
Welcomers – This team is responsible for a consistent approach to welcoming people, especially guests and new families, across all programs and services. They may rotate by week, by day of the week, or by service. They should meet together periodically for training and brainstorming.
Safety – This team is responsible for the safety of your children across all programs and services. They’ll need to be know what to watch for to identify suspicious individuals and must be familiar with all the protocol for responding to various emergencies and crisis situations. They may choose to rotate or assign weeks, days, or services according to whatever schedule they need.
Environment – This team is responsible for what the room looks like. We like to change the theme of the room to match the theme of our curriculum each month. They’ll need to be creative and resourceful. They’ll need to meet together to brainstorm ideas and put time into gathering supplies and resources and putting it all together.
Events – This team is responsible for planning and executing the various events you might have over the year such as VBS, Family Nights, Outreach Events (perhaps at Halloween, Christmas, Easter, etc.), Kickoff (first day/night of the program year) , Finale (last day/night of the program year), and so on. It’s helpful to have a separate group of people planning these events because they need to be very organized, task driven, resourceful, and able to network and recruit people to fill the roles involved with the event. This team might actually be made up of several different teams, each focusing on one specific event that occurs each year.
