Articles Zone

Looking for ideas about recruiting, training, and keeping volunteers? Here are ten great ways you can be an attractive children's ministry to potential volunteers!

A few keys to incorparating a healthy family ministry into your church.

Great ideas for fun summer family activities.

Here are 7 ways that you can make the most of any Children's Ministry Conference!

Financially speaking, margin is having some money left over after meeting all your obligations. Today, we look at the benefits of margin in your spiritual life.

An logical and necessary discussion for allowing men to serve in children's ministry.

As leaders in children’s and family ministry, we all work with a wide variety of groups. The overall message we must communicate is our vision for guiding kids toward a heart for Christ. What is the one single message that each group that we serve needs to hear, and more importantly, really understand?

Here are 10 principles to help us engage our guests - Mickey's Guide to a Successful Children's Ministry.

How do you plan for staff meetings? Keep your meetings meaningful by following a meeting agenda similiar to this one!

What To Do When You Fail to Accomplish Your Children’s Ministry Goals

Everyone needs a good laugh! It’s time for you to have a few of them. Take a look at this report and see how no one would be truly ready to serve God in ministry, except for God’s grace.

What does shopping for underwear and a toybox full of toys teach us about ministry and welcoming people? 

Call a tech helpdesk and one of the first questions asked is “Is it plugged in?” Duh, yes. But, oh wait, let me make sure ...

When your kids say they're bored, maybe you should let them be. 

What is worship? How do we worship on Sunday mornings? Should we show outward expressions to what we feel?

This is a skit that demonstrates how important Mothers are, and how we can help them! Editor's Note: The skit is dated but can be updated by substituting an iPad and videoconferencing for the phone call.

Learning to imitate the charecter of Christ and leading others to do the same.

Almost every teacher in a church's children's ministry is looking for help to manage the classroom. Pastor Trisha Peach shares her best and time-tested discipline ideas. Part 2 of Pastor Trisha's articles on Discipline.

Kids travel through four different rooms to meet important people in Jesus' life and to experience the reality of what Easter is really about.

It’s time to talk about Mother’s Day! Make moms feel special by incorporating these ideas into your ministry time.

A skit about the best gift you can give Mom for Mother's Day!

Realizing the importance of patience when serving kids who struggle with profound difficulties.

Read these short reviews on some newer apps that can help you take control of your life.

How do you address God the Father?

The longer I am a children’s pastor, the more I realize that we won’t impact a generation by pointing to our size.

Every parent makes mistakes. Every parent feels like a failure at times. Here are some helpful tips to improve the way you communicate with and raise your kids. 

Honestly and openly help kids deal with the fallout of the pandemic we face. 

When the time comes for a program to end, you should end it. However, there may be a program that is faltering that still has life in it and could still be effective for the kingdom. Here are some things that can be done to breath new life into a program that might be struggling.

See this vast study of church partnership with missions organizations and get practical ideas that you can apply in your ministry.

In these challenging economic times, children’s ministry budgets often get cut, sometimes eliminated. I read often online about ideas for fund raising and saving money. I’d like to take a different approach on this topic – while I AM sympathetic to leaders facing budget cuts and the challenges of ministering with less money, I’d like to pose a sincere question you are welcome to answer in the comments below -  my question is simply, “What do you need money FOR?”

Why I will NEVER make time for my family ever again!

Whether you love Mondays or dread them, here are ways to make the first workday of the week work for you. 

Should you expect respect from all kids? What about kids who have been through trauma? 

A nighttime ark walk that will have kids glowing with excitement.

It is not about what we do for God but about what God has done for us through Jesus.

This object lesson uses dice to demonstrate how we need Jesus in order to get to heaven!

When you look at a strong-willed child, do you ever think, "That's great leadership potential! All you have to do is nurture it!"

Don't let your props take the place of your message.

What is an object lesson? Here are several basic instructions that you need to know for giving one!

This review is considers the work of an Anglican writer, mining insights which might be helpful in other theological contexts, particularly in the evangelical setting.

You may be offended by this, but every Halloween, the same silly thing happens. This is the only night of the entire year when most of your neighbors and mine are going to come knocking on our doors. The only night.

Is your church caring for the single parents in your community?

Keep your class actively participating with these simple tips. 

Without clear boundaries, a pastor and their family suffer “boundary ambiguity” and become completely enmeshed in their parishioner’s lives and problems.

A book review of Out of the Basement: A Holistic Approach to Children’s Ministry by Diane C. Olson.

Last year I began a new initiative in my church which developed into a form of parent coaching. It is very loosely based on Karl Bastian’s VIP strategy, which can be found in the Leadership Lab 4, Partnering with Parents. This post suggests one possible scenario which can lead a family toward participating in parent coaching. Although it is fictitious and the names are not meant to represent any real person, I believe it is a plausible situation. In future posts I will explore in more detail the possible opportunities of parent coaching, as well as potential pitfalls.

Here's a great idea for a mother-daughter event that you can host at your church. 

This is a great Gospel Illusion and Object Lesson for Easter to show how Jesus was killed and rose three days later! It uses a paper and pen to visually demonstrate this important truth.

In this episode, Sean Sweet talks about 2 different things that can give anxiety when it comes to preteen ministry. First he talks about how to have percent meetings, and then he talks about Technology and how we can help parents understand what their kids are dealing with.

Do your kids understand the relentlessness of God?