Planning the Big Picture

Are you a detailed or a big-picture person? No matter how you are wired, if you are being intentional about your discipleship opportunities in kidmin, you've got to start planning the big picture of your year. 

Grab the Kidmin Planner, here. 

Plus, check out Amber's blog to get the free big-picture overview planner. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:01

Welcome to the Kidman Huddle of Amber Pipe. Where children as ministry get equipped, encouraged and empowered to disciple with intentionality. Growing God's kingdom one child at a time.

SPEAKER_01: 0:16

Welcome back to the Kidman Huddle. So are you a detail person or are you a big picture person? You might have heard the phrase like, well, they can't see the forest for the trees, or the opposite side, good enough. So I am a bit more big picture. I'm detail-y enough that I get the job done, but I'm also big picture. But in children's ministry, we need a little bit of both. There are pros and cons to being completely one way or the other, but really we need to start with big picture and then become that detail person. Or maybe if we know, nope, can't do it. I'm just one way and I've tried and it doesn't work, we need to then recruit someone to be our right-hand man to be that flip side. Especially when it comes to planning. So as you see, if you're watching this, I'm in my Christmas earrings, got a little Christmas tree behind me. It is December. It is snowy here in Kentucky. We got like four inches of snow. My kids had so much fun, and I love I have bigger kids that I just got to watch them out the window and stay warm. But yes, we are in full Christmas mode. It is also time to hopefully continue, if not continue, to go ahead and start on your next year planning. And you need to plan with the big picture. Otherwise, you become one of those people that on Christmas Sunday morning you're purchasing your lesson. Don't be that person. You need to have a plan. There is a phrase in the prepper world, I think I've mentioned this again. Failure to plan on your behalf does not constitute an emergency for me. When we are not planning well, we are making a whole bunch of needless emergencies. We are making emergencies for our families, for our volunteers, for our kids. We are not doing our due diligence to be intentional with the discipleship hours we have if we are just flying by the seat of our pants. And I have seen this in ministry. I worked with a youth leader who on Wednesday would be Googling his Wednesday night lesson that night. When I ran an online store, I saw so many of you, maybe not you specifically, but you, the kidman world, would purchase your Christmas lessons or your Easter lessons that Sunday. My friends, that is not time to read the lesson, to prep the supplies for the lesson, to make sure that you are ready to go to teach these kids if you're buying it 45 minutes before church starts. You have to plan. And now is the perfect time to start that big picture planning. So, what does this look like? Well, I'm gonna kind of walk you through my process and then highlight these areas that we need this big picture on. I start with some planners. Now I've made a kind of big picture planner, and then I use the one that I made for me, my Kidman monthly planner. Whichever works for you, use them both. Hey, by the way, make sure you head to my blog at amberpike.org and I am putting this big picture overview planner as a freebie on there. Go ahead, grab it. And then you can go to the store and get my kidman planner. But here's what I do I'll look at my year. All right, what are my Sundays? What are the holidays? When is Christmas? When is Easter? Do I know when VBS is going to be? Like what are those big things that I already know off the top of my head? When is Mother's Day? When is Father's Day? Plan them in. Now I'm gonna look at a couple of different categories and I'm gonna go and I'm gonna plug these things in accordingly, in advance, even if I'm just kind of bookmarking something that I need to figure out the details of later, I've got my outline. So think of it like a paper outline. If you were weird like me, and in college, I loved writing papers, which makes sense that I'm a writer now, right? But I did. I loved writing research papers in college, and in high school, we had to do in Kentucky, we had to do all these portfolio pieces, and they were so silly. Like, why do I need a paper in gym class? We don't bring pencils to gym class, but we did. I love papers. Think of this as your outline. What does your year look like? You're making sure that you're hitting the areas that matter so you're not making a bunch of emergencies. So, what are these areas? Number one is lessons. We have to have a scope and sequence. What are you teaching your kids? Do not be that kidmen leader who is purchasing your lesson Sunday morning just hopping around. You need a plan. What do your kids need to know? Now, I've got podcasts on this, I've got a whole section in my book, Intentional Children's Ministry, about this. If you need a refresher course on why scope and sequence matter, please go look at that. You need one. You need to know what lessons you're using. Now, maybe you are a, we use this curriculum, it's a weekly curriculum. I know I'm using this. Awesome. I challenge you to make sure are your particular kids where they need to be faith-wise using this curriculum. So, example, I've never been now for Sunday school, yes, but children's church, I've never been a here's our subscription. I'm using the same thing every week. I would hop around series to series, make a lot of my own. What I made or found was based on where I felt God wanted my kids to go that year. So I would spend time in prayer, and or it would become clear to me that my kids were lacking in a certain area or needed a certain area. For example, one year I looked around my kids and I'm like, you know, they don't know how to worship. They don't know what worship is, how to worship. And neither did our teens. So I got special permission and I did a 16-week, 12 or 16-week series with our kids and our teens all on worship. Because I just really felt in my heart they don't know what worship is or how to do it. I had a couple years back, I think it was my last year at my last church. I'm like, you know, most of these kids are Christians at this point. Do they know what's next? Do they know how to live as a Christian? How they are supposed to act as a follower of Christ. So our lessons that year for a portion of the year were focused on that, like living out their faith. What do your kids need to know? Template it in. This is the kind of research phase if we're going with a paper analogy. I'm looking to see what's out there. What do I need to create? What are my resources? Think too about your holiday schedule. Okay, Easter. What are you doing for Easter? Christmas, when is your Christmas series starting? How many lessons are you going to template out for that? And this is what I'll do. So um I recently did one called Build Your Life. It was a Lego one. It was so much fun. And I would look at my calendar and be like, okay, January. I know that in the month of January, I want a four-lesson series on XYZ. So then I would write, okay, Build Your Life 1, Build Your Life 2, Build Your Life 3, Build Your Life 4. If it was something I was writing, I might not be at that place yet to plug in. This is the title of that particular lesson. This is the focus. But I would know this is where I want to go. So think your summer curriculum. All right, I want it to tie into VBS. So I'm going to template out four weeks leading up to VBS, a celebration Sunday after. This is what you're doing right now, that big picture. What do your kids need to know? How many lessons are you looking for? There's obviously going to be wiggle room. There's going to be things happening. Unfortunately, I have to sometimes be flexible with my lesson numbers because our pastor doesn't like to tell me in advance when communion is going to be. And he does the whole service communion. Honestly, I don't love it. Don't hear me wrong, I love communion. I think it's a beautiful sacrament, but it's the same sermon every time there's communion. And it's like every other month. But I want my children to be able to participate in communion as the with the church body. So instead of a fifth Sunday today, we do communion Sunday, staying up with the whole worship. And so sometimes I know about this two weeks before, and I gotta adjust and I adjust my lessons. But I have that big picture, and I know, well, this month it's I've got four lessons on this. I've got this great sixth lesson one, it's going here. It's like Tetris for kidman lessons. Go ahead. What's that big picture? This also can direct you for, man, I need to start looking for this three-week, it's kind of a funky time in our schedule. I need it low volunteer and no tech, you know, yada yada yada. Then throughout the years, you get closer, you go in those details, those prepping. But what are you teaching? Don't be scrambling for your lessons last minute, especially at Christmas and Easter, my friends. So, lesson-wise, what are you doing? Second, I am looking at my families. And I'm looking at a couple of different things when I'm thinking about my families. One is resourcing. I know that I want to resource my families throughout the year, but I want to be intentional with it, especially because budget dollars are at play. I'm also, because I'm taking this big picture look, you know, some of these things that I'm resourcing parents with or I'm training parents on, I want them to tie into our lessons. So, for example, maybe I am teaching my kids about praise. And I know because we've done this five-lesson series on praise, I know that I want to send home a resource that is helping parents, helping families dive deeper into what praise is. So I know because I'm doing this in February, that I'm doing something praise-heavy and I need a praise resource, boom, I can start to fill in those gaps because I stepped back and I've got the big picture. By the way, so today is I'm recording this on a Tuesday. It's actually a little bit late because today was just one of those the children didn't let me go and film earlier. But Wednesday, December 3rd, by 9 p.m. at night, I should have the most exciting delivery of the year on my porch. And I will have boxes of my brand new family devotion entitled Praise Him, a 30-day devotional for family. So hey, if you are plugging in a praise series, I've got just the devotion for you to send home to families. Seriously though, think about when you're sending home resources and maybe what it ties to. I already know what VBS I'm doing this summer. We do VBS in July, and I'm doing Emerald Crossing VBS. Well, guess what? Because I know big picture, I already have a resource that I'm have previewed because I always preview my resources and I love it, and I have it picked out to send home for my littles. It's this really cute Psalm 23 board book. Big picture. What resources are you sending out? Are you doing quarterly? Are you doing monthly? Are you doing whenever you find something cool? Go ahead and template it out, and you might be able to tie it into your lessons. This is the same thing with trainings. We sometimes fail to train parents. So look at your year calendar. When are you training them? Are you doing an in-person training? Go ahead and look now and judge when's the best time to do that. Think about your schedule, holiday schedules, holiday weekends. When do you tend to see most of your parents more? Is it February or is it for sure not July? Plan in advance because what you don't want to happen is you turn up, gosh, you know, it's September. I need to get a parent training in. I'll do it in October. Parents are totally not busy in October. That end of the year, nothing going on. And then you do all this work and like two people show up. That's not what you want. You want to plan with excellence so that you have the best outcomes. So how are you resourcing families? What are you resourcing with? Even if it's just a, okay, every other month I know I want to send a resource home. So January, March, May, da-da-da-da-da-da-da. Start plugging in those resources. I know I'm gonna do this. I know I'm gonna do that. When you plan in advance, you are also often able to catch some sales. I purchased my family advent devotions in October, the first week, like this first second week of October, and I got them like 50% off. Buy three, get one free. Or buy two, get one free. I got a really good deal because I planned in advance. You might be able to catch some Amazon sales. Make a wish list in Amazon of family devotions. Periodically go through and check it. They always have like a big sale in July. There's usually a big sale Black Friday, Cyber Monday, boom. You can also plan with your budget. Maybe you're using a little bit of this year's budget to buy some stuff for next year, you're being good stewards, all of that. Plan, plan, plan. Same thing with trainings. When are you gonna train? How are you gonna train? Are you gonna do videos? Like I send videos to my parents. Okay, what videos am I sending out through the year? How are those videos tying into the lessons that the kids are learning and the resources that I'm sending home? Make this beautiful, symbiotic, schmorgish board of awesomeness that it's all working together, helping to disciple families. Think too with your families, think of events. Again, I don't do kids-only events outside of VBS. So my events are part of my family discipleship plan. I do about one a quarter. Okay, when's that gonna be? I'm planning it out, even if I don't know exactly what I'm gonna do yet. I'm gonna have some flexibility. It's not, you know, chiseled in stone because something might come up. I might end up being out of town on a certain week that I had something planned or whatnot. But go ahead and start now, all the way through the end of the year. Here's my template, here's what I'm working towards. And then lastly, don't forget your leaders, your volunteers. How are you training them? How are you resourcing them, equipping them, appreciating them? Go ahead and put this in your calendar. When's your big in-person training meeting or meetings? What is your digital training plan? Are you sending out some videos? Are you doing a book club? How are you appreciating them? Are you doing it quarterly, monthly? Are you doing one big thing throughout the year? Plan it in. I am an advanced planner. Despite um, yeah, I'm just I'm an advanced planner, and sometimes last-minute stuff gets me all flustered. There are the me's of your ministry, of your families that need that detail. I have got, I have a five-year paper camp paper planner because I'm that I'm that person. I want to know the things. I want to know the things in advance, especially these big things that are gonna require stuff of me. You have those in your ministry. You've got volunteers that absolutely need to know if you are trying to add in a volunteer appreciation dinner in November. They need to know it as soon as possible so that they can mark it down and nothing gets scheduled on top of it. There are those families who are gonna need to know when is camp. We need to mark camp. Maybe we have to start budgeting for camp and we need to know those details as soon as possible. All of these things start planning now. So get yourself a calendar. Maybe it's a cool five-year calendar like me. Maybe you are getting my kidman planner from my website or from church renunation.org. Go and start templating in these things. That big picture, what does your ministry look like? What are my lessons? How am I resourcing family? How am I training families? What are my big events of the year? How am I training my leaders? Where am I appreciating my leaders at? Then start plugging those details in. Log your holidays, your big dates, your if you have your family vacation, plan that. Put that on there. Maybe this is a great opportunity. Is the first of the year, like vacation days renew, possibly, depending on how your work does it. Log in. When are you guys going out? So this past year we went to um Florida in October. So I knew I should not have a big event near this October date. Unfortunately, my Christmas event, it just didn't happen where it was on the busiest weekend that did not work for me, but it's what needed to happen. So I wore myself out having an event on an exhausting weekend. You don't want to do that. Plan, plan, plan with intentionality. Remember our goal in children's ministry? We are wanting to disciple boys and girls. We do not want to do a disservice by just flying by the seat of our pants. We want to be intentional with every minute we have with them. And whether you are good at it or not, that means we have to be planning. So get yourself the coziest Christmas blanket you have. Go sit by the Christmas tree, get your cocoa, your coffee, and your festive mug, because I assume you all like me have just tons of Christmas mugs and start planning. Grab this free planner, the free year overview from my blog, amberpike.org. Go and buy a few more of the monthly planner. Get my kidman planner that's got the thing. So happy mail, parent training, parent resourcing, volunteer appreciation, volunteer training. Boom, right here. Get that, get to work. Plan next year. What is next year looking like? And I didn't mention it before, so I'm closing with it now because it is the part that needs to stick with you. You need to start with prayer. This is not your thoughts on what needs to happen this year. Yes, your thoughts are getting in there, but what does God want to happen in your ministry this year? What does he want your kids to know? Your families to know? What does he want going home with families? Where does he want your volunteers to be led? Start with prayer. As you plan, be a follower of God's plans for your ministry, for your volunteers, for your families, because his plans we know are the best plans. So start praying, start planning, be intentional with the next year. Start now. If you have not started, this is your call. Don't wait another day. And remember what you do matters.