Categories: Leadership

Every kids ministry has seasons. Sometimes you’re swimming in 4th graders. Sometimes everyone moves up to the youth group at once. And sometimes, like at Trinity Church in Larchmont, NY, your nursery suddenly becomes the most crowded room in the building. I chatted with Kathleen Jaoudi, a DKM Vendor (find all Kathleen's resources here) and the Children’s Pastor at Trinity Church, about the baby boom they experienced over the last year. “We average 35 to 45 kids on a Sunday,” she told me. “Those stats have flipped in the last year from mostly 1st to 5th graders to mostly 0 to 4 year olds.” When Kathleen returned from maternity leave, she started hearing pregnancy announcements. Then more. Then she and her team started counting. “We realized we would have 8 babies born between February and June 2025, including a set of twins,”...

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text css=""]When you turn learning into an intentional habit, your leadership grows. Podcasts are one of the simplest ways to keep growing and learning as a leader without adding more to your plate or using any of your budget. Podcasts are also great tools to use with an intern! Here are some of my favorite podcasts for kidmin leaders in 2026:[/vc_column_text][vc_btn title="Download Printable Version here!" align="center" css="" link="url:https%3A%2F%2Fdeeperkidmin.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2026%2F04%2FDKM-Podcasts-every-kidmin-leader-should-listen-to-.pdf|target:_blank"][vc_column_text css=""] KidMin-Specific Podcasts: Kids Ministry Circle with Lauren Jackson The KidMin Huddle Podcast with Amber Pike The Lead Ministry Podcast with Josh Denhart Stained Glass Kids with Yancy The KidzMatter...

What if the secret to better Sunday mornings was hiding in a stack of printed articles on a Wednesday afternoon? My friends joke that research is one of my spiritual gifts, and one of them claims that research is my parenting style (they're not wrong). So when I heard about a kidmin leader who does intentional research as a weekly habit, I knew I had to learn more. Meet Andrae Jones. Andrae is the Kids Pastor at One Community Church in Plano, TX, a multisite church with six campuses, where he oversees nursery through 4th grade. He'll tell you he's working with a lean team but that they have some of the most amazing volunteers ever. Andrae is also doing something that not enough kidmin leaders are doing. He's learning and researching. Consistently. Intentionally. Every single week. And it's changing how he leads. How It Started Andrae has always...

Easter weekend is over. You did it! The volunteers showed up (mostly), the kids were energetic, the lesson landed, and you survived the holiday chaos with your sanity roughly intact. So now what? Here's the thing nobody tells you: what you do in the week after Easter matters just as much as everything you did to prepare for it. So here is the post-Easter to-do list I think every kidmin leader needs. 1. Rest - I know, I know. You are already thinking about what's next (VBS and summer programming anyone?). But listen: your body and your brain just ran a sprint, and they need a minute to catch up (plus, we'll get to summer in a minute). Rest is not laziness. It is faithfulness to the calling you can't sustain on empty. Take a real day off. Sleep in. Take a nap. Go for a walk in the sunshine. Read a book just for fun. Spend time with your people. Do...

Ministry has a way of tugging us in a hundred directions at once. Some days you’re dreaming big, praying big, and planning big. Other days, you’re digging through the weeds just trying to pull the details, supplies, and volunteers together for Sunday. And most days? You’re doing both at the exact same time. Both the big picture and the details matter. Both are valuable. Both are part of how God wired you to lead. But living in the tension between the two can leave you feeling stretched thin, scattered, or stuck in survival mode. So how can we balance both? Here are 3 steps to start with: Evaluate and rearrange your time. Take a hard look at where your time is actually going each week. Are you spending most of it reacting to urgent tasks, or are you carving out space for the things that matter most in the long run? Shifting your schedule to...

For better or worse, social media is one of the main places today's parents spend their time. That means it is also one of the biggest opportunities children’s ministry leaders have to support, equip, and partner with families beyond Sunday morning. The goal of kids ministry social media is not to entertain kids or keep up with trends, or even to go viral and grow your reach. It is to come alongside parents and remind them they are not alone in the work of discipling their children. When used intentionally, social media can build trust, offer encouragement, and create meaningful community with the families you serve. So when thinking about your children's ministry social media, keep these 3 goals in mind: 1. Connect: build trust, clarity, and understanding Remember that your audience on social media is the parents in your ministry, not...

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text css=""]Ministry leadership is a balancing act. It’s about holding two very different kinds of work at the same time. In one hand, we carry vision: the big picture, the dreaming, the long-term planning, the God-sized thinking. In the other, we carry action: the details, tasks, supply bins, emails, and logistics that make ministry happen week after week. (Sunday is always coming, right?) And most of the time, you’re living in the tension between the two. There’s the pressure to make things happen right now and the responsibility to think about what’s coming 6 weeks and 6 months down the road. The need to meet expectations today and the desire to create something healthy for tomorrow. It feels like a tug-of-war sometimes, but that tension is actually a gift. Think about it like this: A tightrope only...