CentriKid

Organization

How Do You Get the Most BANG from Your Limited Budget Bucks

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Ministry opportunities are unlimited, but we all need help stretching our limited budget for ministry.  Here are 4 children’s ministry leaders who share from their experience on how to get the most out of their budget.  You’ll see common themes of sharing and wise shopping, so here we go!

  • Buy in bulk and save for the next year…this helps on budget needs for the next fiscal year. – Lisa, Preschool/Children’s Ministry Director from Georgia.

  • I always try to find out what other churches are doing the same VBS and schedule around other dates is possible, so that we can share decorations and leftover supplies.  Also, we have a couple of big churches close by who own lots of inflatables. I ask to “rent” from them at discount instead of paying top dollar from rental companies. – Tammy, a Children’s Minister from South Carolina.

  • We share and borrow props/specialty items with local churches in our area. We shop AMAZON and EBAY to save cost on production events. We also involve our congregation in our ministry events, for example, we served over 2000 people last year in our “Back to school Bash”, handing out school supplies and giving free haircuts. – Kathy, Director of Children’s Ministry from Tennessee.

  • I am a huge fan of networking, and thankfully our local Baptist association provides many opportunities for local children’s ministers to regularly meet together. During those times, we all talk about our ministries and discuss ways we can help each other, and share resources.  For example, last week one of the local children’s ministers found some decorations in her church that she didn’t need, but matched my VBS theme perfectly, so she called to see if I wanted them.  If you don’t already have a network of ministry friends, start calling local children’s ministers and try to get something going. It will take time for something to get started, but it is well worth the effort. I have literally saved thousands of dollars over the years, through sharing resources with local children’s ministers and gained invaluable amounts of great advice and encouragement from them.  – Peter – a children’s minister from Georgia, and former CentriKid staffer.

 

Special Thanks to each of these guys for sharing their insights with us!  What else would you share from your experience?  How do you stretch your limited ministry budget dollars? Share in the comments section below and we can continue to add to create a great collection of ideas!

Make Fun a Part of your Culture

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I cannot write this post without giving credit to the history of office fun at LifeWay Kids. Plenty have come before me to create a “make it fun” culture. One way my cube mate, Ellie Doom, and I try to “make it fun” is by posting a Joke of the Day. If you are ever on Twitter or Instagram check out #ckjokeoftheday to find some great jokes. We will post them on our social media every once and a while. However, this daily activity is primarily for our coworkers.

We give everyone at LifeWay Kids an opportunity to guess the joke and we reveal the winner at 3 pm central standard time. The guesses can be found on a whiteboard on our office cubes. The winner walks away with candy. It is really simple, but we are consistent. We see value in our office spending a few moments of their day laughing and working together to figure out the daily joke. We can build a better community by enjoying fun together.

The joke is a means to facilitate fun. There is nothing magic or ingenious about the joke of the day. There are many ways you can enjoy fun in your work culture and it does not matter what you do. However, it is necessary you take initiative to make fun a part of how your organization operates. At CentriKid Camp we make fun who we are with kid friendly programming. However, beyond that we try to make every mundane or arduous task our staff is asked to complete full of excitement. Whenever we make name tags before campers arrive we have a name tag party and blast music while we work together. Loading and unloading our trucks throughout the summer is no easy task, but we compete with ourselves to race our best load in and load out times.

What can your organization do to make fun a part of your culture? Also, can you figure out today’s joke?

Why didn’t the shrimp share his treasure? Comment with your guesses.

7 Tips for ‘Wearing Many Hats’ and Managing Responsibilites

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Wearing many hats, that is having lots of different work responsibilities, is not new, and in an even smaller work force it is only going to grow. As a kidmin leader or volunteer, you wear all kinds of hats (teacher, director, boo-boo cleaner, plumber, organizer, etc). Here are some tips to help:

  1. Become a morning person – Benjamin Franklin was right, “early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise”. So, that is a slight exaggeration but it does make you more productive. Getting up before the world gets moving helps you focus and keeps distractions away. Get on a schedule that gets you moving in the morning. The most productive hours in the day are before 9:00 am and not after 9:00 pm.
  2. Get organized – There are lots of great programs, apps, and systems to help you get organized and almost all are “in the clouds” and function across multiple devises. The key isn’t having a system it is using one. My wife makes fun of my Saturday to do list but I accomplish so much more when I get up early and make my list. There is also something energizing about checking things off your list.
  3. Plan your week – I use Sunday evening as a time to look at my calendar for the week and begin to think big picture, remind myself of meetings to prepare for, and deadlines that loom. I also use that time to email important reminders for the upcoming week.
  4. Plan your day – If you are wearing a lot of hats you are going to feel pulled in a million directions. Schedule time for email, phone calls, and blocks of time for those things most important and or time sensitive.
  5. Schedule time off – For me Sunday afternoons are for watching football, enjoying a good movie or an unexpected cat nap. Everyone needs some down time.
  6. Build a team – Realize you can’t do it all and begin to build a team around you that you trust and love. Invest in them, train them well, and you can accomplish more than you could ever imagine.
  7. Lean not on your own understanding – Christ told us He would not give us more than we can handle so trust in Him. When things get most difficult and I just don’t know how I can get it all done is when I lean most on Him.

Wearing lots of hats is a balancing act. I have the responsibility of caring for my mother, wife and two kids. I also wear a number of hats for work. Recently my mother’s house flooded, we were refinancing our house, and I could not get our loan officer to return phone calls or emails. I desperately needed to get work done on my back yard, so my mom’s house would not flood again. At work I had a new boss, we were deep into budgeting, and training for camp was around the corner, to name a few of the hats I was wearing. I knew I wasn’t doing everything as well as I could but I was working 12 hour days at the office and going home to another 2 or 3 hours for things needed there. Somehow I have kept my nose above the water but I will admit there were days I felt the press of work and family all needing more than I could find time to give. However, God is good. There are days people don’t get all the attention from me they need or want but somehow God takes care of me and them.

5 Ways I Get Things Done

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Everybody seems to be doing more with less.  More work with people, more deadlines with less time, more productivity with less help.  Folks at church, in business, and even families are having to figure out how to get things done quicker and easier so they can spend time on other things.

Image: Anusorn P nachol / FreeDigitalPhotos.net


Here are 6 ways I get things done in my work day & home life:

 

GTD – A few years ago, I was introduced to the book “Getting Things Done” by David Allen.  It really helped me think about how I think.  It sounds crazy to read a book about organization, but it really helped.  The biggest principle I’ve taken away is the importance of getting things out of my head and tracking to-do items in a trusted system. PRICE about $10.

GMail / Google Docs / GCal – These are simply the best at email, sharing documents, and calendaring because it all happens online and syncs in the cloud.  I’ve got access to my email from my computer, phone, or any other device.  My calendar is always up-to-date so I’m always able to check my availability.  The Google tools work well because they all communicate with each other too.  Price FREE.

Evernote – This is best reference tool because everything is searchable, everything can be tagged, and it allows you to upload pretty much any type of file or document.  This is my one-stop source for all reference material that I want to hang on to.  Price FREE.

Omnifocus – Keeping track of projects and deadlines has traditionally been something I just keep in my head, but after reading GTD, I’ve tried out a few different software solutions.  Omnifocus is my current (and favorite) solution for this because of the level of detail it allows you to add to a project, it has an iPhone app for capturing to-do’s anywhere, and a nifty feature is the “start on” date in addition to the “due” date.  Unfortunately it is only available for Mac computers and devices.  Price $100 for Mac & iPhone version.  NOTE: Prior to using Omnifocus, I worked in Remember the Milk which is web-based and free!  RTM is a super solution that allows you to keep up with lots of lists.

Quiet Space – Not every solution for getting things done is a piece of software.  My best times of productivity have been getting away for 2 hours while the baby naps on Sunday afternoons and cranking out work projects, home projects, or just reading at the local Panera.  Too many times, the quiet space in our lives is filled with TV, facebook, or just running around … but carving out a couple of hours in the course of a week has really helped me stay on top of my workload.  Price FREE!

Jeremy Echols leads our camp team and always challenges us to add new tools to our toolbox whether in leadership or tech skills.  JE has written before about Tech Tools You Can Use in #Kidmin.  Connect with JE on twitter & comment on our Facebook page to share how you get things done.

5 Reasons to Have a To Do List

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I am a compulsive list maker. I make lists for everything: packing, work to-dos, personal to-dos, groceries… Every Monday morning, I take a few minutes to write out the things I need to complete on each day of the week. You don’t have to create lists for the majority of your life like I do, but here are 5 reasons why starting a to-do list will help you.

  1. When you know what you need to get completed, you can more efficiently budget your time.
    Those small items on the list don’t grow to take up your whole day when you view them in perspective of all the many things you need to complete. As a children’s minister or someone in a people-related job, interruptions are inevitable. A to do list can alleviate that nervous feeling of “what else should I be doing right now” that you have when someone stops by the office.
  2. A to-do list doubles as a list of goals.
    I heard a story about a Harvard MBA graduates who were tracked for a few years through the start of their careers. 3% had written down their goals, and at the end of the study, those 3% made ten times as much as the other 97% combined. Why? They knew what they were working toward, and when you know where you are trying to go, it’s a lot easier to get there.
  3. To do lists force productivity.
    Even on those days when you just have no desire to get things done, you can see what not working towards the things on the list will do to the rest of your week, and if you are like the majority of the population, it’s not going to do good things to your week. It’s like built-in accountability!
  4. To do lists lower stress.
    And we all need a little less of that in our lives. When you can see what you need to do, you can break it down into doable sections.
  5. To do lists help you really focus on the project at hand.
    When all the things you need to do are out of your head and on a sheet of paper, your mind can be completely engaged in the to do list item you are working towards scratching out.

If for no other reason, I have a to do list for the feeling that I get when I can scratch something out because it has been completed! Anybody else with me? Do you write something on the list just so you can mark it off?