Ministry is all about relationships, and while systems might feel more administrative than personal, solid systems can help you improve the connections in your ministry.
Systems help you organize and automate important tasks, which might sound counterintuitive to relationship-building. But when your ministry includes more than 3 families, systems help you better serve and connect with those families, without letting anything (or anyone) fall through the cracks.
Here are 3 systems to help you connect with the people in your ministry (plus a bonus one!):
1. System for Connecting with Kids: Crew Cards
How do you connect with the children in your ministry throughout the week? One way we did this was by asking each volunteer to take just a couple minutes after Sunday service to write a postcard to a child. We provide postcards and pens in Crew Card Folders, they pull out a pre-addressed postcard, jot down a quick note, and then stick it right back in the folder. We mail the postcard for them on Monday morning, and kids are PUMPED to receive mail from their leaders at church. Crew Cards take some time to set up on the front end, but the rewards and the happy smiles from kids are so worth it. Find even more details about Crew Cards here and download the system for free here!
2. System for Connecting with Volunteers: Volunteer Feedback System
Ever wish you could gather feedback from your volunteers on a regular basis that would also train them with key leadership skills at the same time? Set up a system or procedure as part of their clean-up process. Before volunteers leave on Sunday mornings, ask them to take 2 minutes to complete a few quick questions, whether on a written card, via a QR code that leads to a Google form, or even just in a small notebook. Be intentional with the questions you ask and go beyond “how was the morning?” The questions you ask not only help you evaluate the effectiveness of your ministry, but they can also provide a way to train your volunteers on what to do, look for, or count as a successful ministry day. Want a ready-made Volunteer Feedback system with questions, cards, and more tips for setting it up? Find it here.
3. System for Connecting with Parents: Parent Council
Your ministry team isn’t complete without these important players: the parents. Whether they’re your favorite or your least favorite family (don’t lie, we all have favorites), having parents on your ministry team as more than just volunteers is important. To help give parents a voice in the ministry, better partner with them in discipling their children, and help build trusting relationships, I set up a Parent Council in my 2nd year of ministry and it was one of the best decisions I ever made as a kidmin leader. A Parent Council is a group of 8-10 parents of your choosing that meet regularly to provide feedback, guidance, and input on the ministry. This is a sounding board for you as you plan, as well as an extra team to rely on for getting the word out, getting feedback on events, and helping you guide the ministry so you aren’t doing things alone. Creating a Parent Council helps parents feel involved in your ministry, and you can be more in touch with what’s going on in the lives of your families. A Parent Council also keeps you humble (honest feedback is not always positive feedback) and helps you avoid organizing events no one will attend. A Parent Council is your instant school and community calendar and setting one up also communicates to parents that it’s OK to talk to you about both the good and the bad. Ready to set one up? Follow the steps here. And if you really want to get intentional and strategic about your partnership with parents, join this online workshop on September 11!
BONUS System To Help Volunteers and Kids Connect Better with Each Other: SLLRP Behavior Management System
The SLLRP (pronounced “slurp”) Behavior Management System is a free resource for our DKM Subscribers! These “I Can” Statements help kids remember how we should behave at church so we can get the best out of our time each Sunday morning and learn all about what God wants to teach us. They allow kids to take ownership of their time at church each week and to empower them to CHOOSE to do the right thing. Rather than describe all that the kids CAN’T do, these statements describe everything the kids CAN do, and they clearly set out the behavior expectations we have at church. The acronym to help us remember our 5 I Cans is SLLRP (pronounced “slurp”), and DKM Subscribers can check them out here, and there’s a full lesson to help you implement this system here.
Reality check: You probably won’t be able to implement all 3 of these systems right away. That’s OK! Choose 1 and dive in. Then once it’s established, choose another one and move forward. Which one will you start with first?
Want other resources that create the backbone of your ministry and help you celebrate the transition back to school? Find more administrative resources here, and find all our back-to-school resources here.
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