Overwhelmed in Kidmin?

Your weekly kidmin to-do list is full. It might even feel overwhelming. But it doesn't have to. Consider the 3 P's of Kidmin Time Management. 

For more, check out the Time Management Training in the Family Ministry Community on Facebook. 

Grab Amber's Kidmin Planner, here. 

Transcript

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Welcome to the Kidman Huddle of Amber Pike. Children's get equipped, encourage, and the power to decide with intentionality. Growing God's kingdom one child at a time.

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Welcome back to the Kidman Huddle. Do you ever feel overwhelmed in children's ministry? For a breakout one time, I tried to make a list of every task that I could think of that I do as a children's ministry leader, either weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly. In less than five minutes, I had two pages of two columns, single-spaced. We do a lot in children's ministry. There is a lot of moving pieces, and that's just the ministry aspect. That's not taking into account any kind of personal life, a family, a home, laundry. I've said it before, I'll say it again. I think laundry multiplies on its own. I can't keep up with laundry. I'm constantly washing and not putting up. It also would help if I put up more frequently. I just kind of leave it in like once a week, put up like 18 loads. It's bad. I know. I'm working on it. But we sometimes feel a little overwhelmed. So right now, this episode is airing in November. It's the first part of November, but are we just thinking about November in children's ministry? No. We are also not just thinking about Christmas. That's our next big thing that we're going to. We're also starting to think towards the next year. We are juggling multiple things at a time. I wish I was cool enough to be able to juggle. It would make a great illustration right here for you, but I can't juggle. Not one of my skills, sorry. There is lots to do. And we can very easily feel overwhelmed. That's when things are smooth sailing, not even take into account when there's problems or issues or just struggles we have to figure out. There's a lot to do in ministry, but taking a nod from the senior pastor with um, you know, three points. I've got three P's that might help you just kind of balance everything in children's ministry, especially when you're feeling overwhelmed. So your three P's are planning, prioritizing, and personal time. Okay, so planning. There is a prepper quote: failure to plan on your behalf does not constitute an emergency for me. And this is something that I think we in children's ministry should take to heart. When we fail to plan, that makes some emergencies, right? If we are not planning what we're doing, what we're teaching, events, all this, it's chaos. We're having to scramble last minute. We are stressing out volunteers or parents. It's not going it smooth. It's not as good as it can be when we fail to plan. So you need to be planning. Kind of think of this in two different planning documents, if you will. One is going to be what you're teaching, scope and sequence. I'm not going to dive into that on this podcast. I would love to talk to you about curriculum, about what you're teaching, how, why, all of that. It is so important that we have a good scope and sequence, that we are doing a good job of grounding our kids in the faith, teaching them the truths of God's word, not just here, there, disjointed, feel good stories. No. So we need a scope and sequence of what we're teaching. I'm going to kind of set that aside. It's a different podcast. What else are we planning? Well, what's important in your ministry? What are the things that are maybe mission, vision, value for your church? That needs to be the foundation of what you're planning. You are possibly doing things in ministry, good things, successful things, that maybe don't need to be done if you were taking the time to sit and plan. This is that thinking, dreaming, planning. What is important to your church? And I want to tell you and encourage you that it needs to start with how God set up the Bible, how he set up our world. Now, you you guys know if you've listened to my podcast before, I'm a lifelong kidman gal. I started at 15, I was called at 16. I am now 38. I've been doing it for a lot of years. I love children's ministry and I think it is important and it is valuable. However, children's ministry is not set up by God. He'd never intended for the church to be the primary disciple makers of boys and girls. We kidmen leaders were not and are not supposed to be the ones, the only ones teaching children the faith. It is mom and dad. We see this passage after passage. You guys likely have this framed in your house. It's on a wall. If you're super cool like me, it's literally written on door frames. Fun fact when we were building our house, um, I just wanted to cover my house in scripture. So when it was at the stud stage and it was safe for us to go in, my whole family went and we covered all of the studs all over in scripture. And then I took pictures, and this is before I was as smart. Um, and I didn't back up my pictures and my camera died, and I lost all but like two pictures, and I had pictures of all of it in scripture, and I cried and I cried. It was sad, but there is a um kind of archway going from my front door to my living room, and that is where the Shema is written. Deuteronomy 6, 4 through 9. Hero Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind. Impress upon your children. Impress these upon your children. That is a command to mom and dad. Not to kidmen leader, Miss Amber, kidmen leader you, not to senior pastor, whomever, not to next gen, youth leader, family ministry, mom and dad, primary role. Now I unfortunately knew this, but didn't completely minister this way. I thought I did. I thought I was trying, but with wisdom, uh with age comes wisdom, and I realized that I was doing children's ministry first and family ministry second. But if I'm looking at what the Bible says on how faith is to be passed on, I had my priorities reversed. I needed to be doing family ministry first and children's ministry second. Now, children's ministry is still so important to do an amazing job. Our lessons, our activities, all that needs to be super awesome because you have kids whose parents are not leading, kids whose parents will not lead. You might have kids whose parents want nothing to do with Jesus whatsoever. So everything you're doing at church needs to be enough for that child. We still, as the church, children's ministry is the church, we are to be equipping the saints, meaning children, meaning mom and dad, grandma and grandpa, all that. So children's ministry still needs to be rocking it. But if we truly had our priorities in line the way that God meant them to be, family ministry would come first. When we are thinking about our priorities and we are planning in order of our priorities, you might find there's a little less for you to do. I've said it before, I have a whole podcast episode. Um, go listen to the episode where I talk about why I don't do kids' events anymore. I did the kids' events early on, I did one almost every month. I did a lot of kids' events. Then I got older and I got wiser and I had kids of my own and I got busier and I didn't do them every month, but I was still regularly doing kids' events. I had movie parties and zoo trips. Um, I had hangouts at my house, I had water parties at church, I did all the things. And it just hit me one day. I'm like, why am I doing a fall festival? Why am I doing an egg hunt? Because all they care about is a candy. Yes, I'm showing the message of Jesus, but like the egg hunt, they don't care about Jesus right now. They want to go find that golden egg. As much Jesus as I tried to put in in those touches where they were hearing the gospel, they didn't care. And so I just sat back and I'm like, I could be more effective if I was taking the time to equip mom and dad to disciple rather than give the kids candy. I can just send them home with a bag of candy. So when I started cutting out kids' events, guess what? I freed up some time in my kid men schedule. And I'm multi-purposing now. I'm doing only family events. I just had one um last week at my church. I did our kind of fall, I'm doing kind of quarterly events. And it was a pie themed. It was a taste and see event. You can see it on my website on church.renewation.org. And families were making a pie together and we were learning about praise. So it's discipleship, it's fellowship. I'm teaching mom and dad because I'm teaching them through example. Here's how you lead. At home, you can replicate this, and then I'm resourcing them and I'm sending them home with something to go and do that they've just seen how to do. So I just killed one, two, three, four birds, one stone. And I'm only doing one once a quarter. When we're prioritizing, when we're deciding what's important and we're planning, we can do a better job multi-purposing. Um, so what's important? How far in advance are you planning? I'm really gonna encourage you to take a step back and take a look at the big picture. So maybe you have a several different planning documents where you look at the year. I am getting ready to go on a work trip, on a conference. And as soon as I get back from the conference, it's your your big picture for me planning. I'm gonna step back for my church, not just my job, but my church. I'm gonna step back and I'm gonna take a look at what is my big plan for the year? And here are the here are the areas that I'm looking at when I'm doing my big picture planning. Lesson scope and sequence, number one. Number two, I'm looking at events. So when am I looking to do events? I'm also like comparing this to the life calendar, right? So I like to do an event on the first Sunday in Advent. I have decided that that is when I'm doing my Christmassy event that I am resourcing um families with Advent resources. And if I do it on that first Sunday in Advent during the Sunday school hour, people are already there. So I'm planning that in when I'm looking at my events. Okay, when is VBS happening? When is this? When is Easter? Um, with that, as I'm doing scope and sequence and big events, I'm looking to see when are kids in corporate worship. I'm marking that in my calendar. If you're doing fifth Sunday, if you're doing holidays. Um, unfortunately, I don't get that much advance. I have kids staying up for communion whenever we do communion, and it's just whenever the pastor decides. So I have to be a little flexible with my planning because he doesn't plan that far in advance and let me know. But I'm deciding when is corporate worship. I am planning what resources, big picture resources for parents. When do I want to put something in their hands? Um, along with resources training. So parents would be its own planning. When am I training parents? How am I training? What am I training them on? What resources am I putting in a family's hands? Um, and then I'm also looking at my volunteers. When are my volunteers getting trained? When are they getting appreciated? So these are, we're condensing it, four big picture areas that you need to plan for. When you're doing this, you're prioritizing, you're thinking what's important, what's getting the bulk of my time. And you're able to prevent less emergency, emergency. Don't be like the people I knew when I worked the kids' matter store online. And I would see on Christmas morning or an Easter morning, people buying their lessons. Friends, you know it's coming. Plan in advance. You can do a better job if you're planning in advance. Plan in advance. So even if it's just that big picture, and then you're gonna go down and plan the nitty-gritty details as it gets closer to, there's less emergency. But let's think of practically. I know I am very much so guilty of it too. If it weren't for Amazon Prime overnight, whew, sometimes things would be in trouble. We need to plan and we need to plan in advance, prioritizing what's important. Are there things that can be cut out that are taking up too much of your time? Are there ways that you can enlist the help of others to maybe delegate a little better? Birthday cards is another important. I'm a big fan of happy mail. Maybe I need to plan to make sure I don't miss anybody. Happy mail. But is that something that maybe someone else on my team could do? Maybe I've got an older lady at my church who can't get up and down with the kids, but she absolutely could take care of my happy mail for me. Can you delegate the things that are important that somebody else could do? Comes back to planning. To be able to delegate, I have to plan so that I can delegate it. So that's kind of planning and prioritizing. They really go hand in hand, but you've got to do it and you're gonna feel less overwhelmed. I am that type of person who I have messy notes everywhere. I don't know if you can see my notes. I write on the backs of papers after I use them, like my lessons, and I'll use the backs of them. Sometimes I just need to sit down and organize my notes. And I think in kid men, sometimes we need to sit down and organize our heads. Spend some time in prayer and then write it all out. Where is God leading you? What does he want you to do? Where are the areas of need that you see in your ministry? Maybe you are so overwhelmed because your storage room is a hot mess express. Well, could you plan a cleanup day? Could you coordinate with some other ministries? Some maybe maybe you got a ladies' group that would come and clean for you and help you organize. Sit and do some planning. Another thing that I have noticed when we are feeling overwhelmed, or maybe this is just a me talking, when I'm feeling very overwhelmed with all the things and I feel very scattered. Sometimes I'm the problem. And I need to step back and take a break. I am getting good at recognizing when I'm overwhelmed and getting burned out. Now, I'm not so good at always following through on taking a break when I recognize that, but at least I recognized it. That's half the battle, right? We need to make sure that while we're prioritizing, we're prioritizing our personal time. You cannot be working nonstop. And I say this as one of the most guilty guilty offenders of this. When I work a full-time job and I homeschool my kids, and at one point I had two full-time jobs basically, I was full-time at church, I was full-time running a ministry. Um, I would work weird hours. You know, I'd be writing books at 11 at night, sending emails at 11:45 at night, right? We do the weird things when kids are sleeping. I wrote my first book or my second book, the Family Cookbook Devotional, when my daughter was a baby and I would write during nap times and my mom did the first edit, and she's like, You were distracted in these chapters. And I'm like, Well, I got a baby. I get it. But sometimes we need that for us. So the work can wait. Those tasks can wait because you have planned and prioritized, the super important stuff has gotten done. And so now it's those other, maybe it's maintenance, maybe it's advanced planning, but you need to take a break. If you are a spouse or a parent, those are your first ministries. They are more important than your church job. Church job is important, but God gave you your family first. So turn off the email, put down the lesson prep, go spend some time with them, go take a walk. I took a much needed brain walk the other day. It was sun, Sundays are good walk days, like just me walk, no, nobody else. Just I take a good walk. And um, I joked in my head with myself because I tell myself jokes, of course. And, you know, you're supposed to take a walk to clear your head, right? I don't do that. I end up with like a note full of the note app just full of notes that I thought of more, like, oh, this needs to happen. Oh, this. So walking for me isn't necessarily just clearing my brain, but kind of opening my brain up. Maybe you need to go do that. Maybe you need to go take a walk with your notes app on your phone and just brain dump. Get some fresh air, stretch your legs. Maybe you've been sitting in your office all day long and you're about to explode. Go take a walk. Eat something that's not goldfish and juice boxes because you forgot your lunch, or eat something that's not coffee. Yes, I know you don't eat coffee, but yeah, that's our meal sometimes. Just coffee. Fuel your body, take your vitamins, go to bed on time, spend time with your family, read for fun or play a game or do a craft, whatever it is your release. Making sure that we're prioritizing ourselves is important. When I take time for Amber, I can be Miss Amber a lot better. We did a big family vacation and I did not work on vacation. I had one meeting that I had to do and then it was done. Like I checked to make sure the world wasn't exploding on email, but otherwise I didn't even read them. I came back very rested. This is my encouragement to you. If you are feeling overwhelmed, braindump, organize, plan, and take time for yourself. You will be better at your job when you've done that. Also, like side note, I have found when I've let things pile up physically, if my desk is too messy, we're a kitchen table people. So if I have too many projects on my kitchen tables, I just feel like ah, sometimes you pop in something great to listen to and just clean. Organize your piles of notes or your papers and file things away. Sometimes you're gonna feel so much better. We are not made to just feel so overwhelmed in kidmen, feeling like it is just a constant running on water trying to keep up with all of the demands. We are not meant to stay in that rhythm of children's ministry. So I encourage you, go do your three Ps, planning, prioritizing, and some personal time. Take a big breather. You got this, friend. Just a couple of quick resources. If this kind of hit home for you, um, we did in the Family Ministry Community Facebook group, we did a time management live training where you're gonna get some more nuggets of awesomeness about this. So the way that Facebook has changed their algorithms though, live video feeds are only there for a month. So if you are listening to this in the month of November 2025, you can go to the Family Ministry Community group, watch that training. It's gonna benefit you. Um, otherwise, contact me and I'll send you the Venmo, Vimeo, not Venmo. Well, not giving you money, but I will send you the link to go watch this training. Um, and then I talk about my kidman planner. It's something I made that helps me prioritize these big things. I go and I write in, yes, I'm having church this day. This is my lesson series, this is the resource that's going home. These are the happy meals that need to happen and the training that needs to happen, and here's my shopping list. It's a month overview. Um, maybe this is a help to you. You can check it out on my website, amberpack.org, on church.renewination.org. And friend, if you are struggling and feeling overwhelmed, reach out to me, um, send me an email, message me on Instagram or Facebook. I would love to talk to you, maybe give you some advice, direction, maybe just a virtual hug and let you know that you've got this. We have a lot on our plates as children's ministry leaders. It's important. What we do is important. And so I'm just gonna leave you with the encouragement of you've got this, my friend. Keep pushing on, keep doing the things because what you do matters.