Unpopular Kidmin Opinions and Why I Have Them

This episode might step on your toes, but listen in as Amber talks about 10 of her unpopular kidmin opinions and why she has them. Each of her opinions is rooted in the eternal importance of what we do in children's ministry. 

If you want to learn how to be more intentional in your ministry, grab a copy of her book Intentional Children's Ministry on Amazon (available in audio and ebook as well) or at renewanation.org. 

Transcript

Amber Pike (00:00.91)
Welcome back to the Kidman huddle. If you are watching this you might be wondering, Amber, why are you wearing a tiara? Or you're not wondering because you're like, I've seen pictures of you on social media. This is not surprising. This is my prop. You saw my social media reel. Today's episode is not going to win me any popularity contests. That's the tiara. You know, I got crowned Miss Popularity. No, I am giving you 10 of my

potentially unpopular Kidman opinions. I don't always agree with some of the things that I see on social media that Kidman leaders are doing. So here are the 10 things that might be a little unpopular and why. So I'm challenging you to maybe think through some of the things you do. And remember, my word for children's ministry is intentionality. So these 10 things.

Really, they all boil down to, we using our minutes well to disciple boys and girls, ground them in the truth of God's word, or have we filled it with fluff and filler? All right, number one, you have likely heard from me before. I do not do snack time. I think snack time is a 15 to 25 minute waste of time. I could fill that time with much better things. And realistically, most church services are an hour.

You have the kids about an hour, maybe an hour and a half. They will be just fine without snack. Now I do have some caveats with that. If you live in an impoverished area where you know there is not food in their home, they are not being fed. Not just the kids didn't want to eat what mom made, they were running late and they didn't want to grab the snacks that they already have. Not those situations, but the legit families don't have food. Then I have a different opinion and you should be doing snack time because you're meeting a physical need.

Do I think sometimes busy mouths and hands are better listeners? Yes. But could we engage them in the lesson better than just snack time? Snacktivities, I'm all for. We can make something really delicious while learning a truth about God's word. But on the whole, I'm not team snack time. Used to do it. It would take up so much time. Legit. 15, 20 minutes of my class. Messes to clean. Someone's knocking over something.

Amber Pike (02:22.584)
I didn't love it, I got rid of it. The kids complained for like two weeks, then they were fine. I have gotten rid of it at two separate churches that had snack time when I came in and they're just fine. So I don't do snack time. Unpopular opinion number two, I also do not do Easter egg hunts or fall festivals. Now I used to, I have logged years of Easter egg hunts and egg stuffing for the egg hunts and sampling those Reese's.

peanut butter eggs, because they're the best. It did it all. I did it for the reasons, right? It's outreach. We're inviting people to come to our church. My egg hunt always had a gospel presentation, and the kids would line up in front of the line, and they would hear this creative presentation where I'm telling them about Jesus, and I'm inviting them to church, and I'm sending them home with something cool. And then I realized they truly do not care. They wanted the candy. So I could have said whatever.

They don't care. They just wanted the candy. Now I'm all for giving kids candy like constantly. But I really felt that there is better use of my time and resources that instead of just creating event that's pretty much the purpose of just giving them fun and candy, I could instead do something that is discipleship focused and growing their families. And I made that shift four years ago and I won't be going back.

I did think it was interesting. So in our Facebook group at Renew Nation, the family ministry community, I polled people. Do you do an egg hunt? Yes or no? I did the math yesterday. I know, me and math. But only 38 % of people said yes that they do an Easter egg hunt. And I found that very interesting. Now, here's how I got my math. This was not, I checked to see how many yeses were in the whole group. These are of the people answering yes or no.

Only 38 % of those people said yes. There were more nos, which I thought this was a pretty unpopular opinion. So maybe it's not as unpopular as I had once thought. So I would love if you, our team, nope, don't do egg hunts. Tell me what do you do instead of. So I don't necessarily do something instead of. I just don't do. I have done family discipleship events instead of Easter egg hunts. But like this year, I just sent home a great resource and families are doing it at home.

Amber Pike (04:49.952)
unpopular or maybe becoming more popular. We'll see. Number three. I do not think classroom rules are needed in children's ministry. I am seeing so many of this question being asked in the Facebook groups. What are your classroom rules? Give me an example. How does your poster look? And if you would love to have a conversation with me about this, let's do it.

But my question to you, why do we need to go over classroom rules? I have served for 20 plus years in children's ministry and I have never once had classroom rules, nor once had it necessary. Now, does that mean that there aren't rules in my head? I mean, cause there are, you know, we're not going to hurt another friend.

You know, we're not going to use bad language. Sure, there are standards, but I don't have rules. I don't have them listed. We don't go over them. And honestly, I don't see a need for them.

So if you do classroom rules, I'd be curious to know why you feel it's necessary. I see a lot that the classroom rules involve sitting in our chairs quietly. That has never been one of my goals. I want you listening, but sitting quietly, I don't know, I feel it just can kind of rub kids wrong. I'm able to help my kids be good listeners in a fun, interactive way where they're learning and absorbing the information, which is what we want.

So I'm just, not a classroom rules person. I also know that sometimes the rules don't fit the kids. I have had kids over the years that truly would be climbing the walls, but they were listening. Some kids don't do as good sitting down and they need to be able to move around. Maybe they need something in their hands, maybe, you know, ton of different reasons. So I feel like we can alter how we are setting up our ministries, how we are teaching our class.

Amber Pike (06:58.146)
to not need classroom rules. From a visitor perspective, I feel like this could kind of come across as a little harsh. I don't know. This might be one of those. Change my mind. If you are diehard, classroom rules are needed. I just know in 20 plus years, multiple churches, camp situations, I lead camp with hundreds of kids each week, and I don't have to establish classroom rules. I can calm down behavior when it's needed. I can redirect.

which I think is a lot of the times we need to redirect or we need to plan to where the redirect isn't needed. So unpopular, maybe. I challenge you to think about why do you have your rules? If you do rules, could you set up your class and ministry differently to negate the need for the rules? Number four. Now this one I do have a disclaimer for, but I do not do age graded classrooms through my regular ministry.

Now, here's my disclaimer with this, size could be a factor. If you can physically only fit so many kids in this room, you might have to split up. And age grade is a way to do that, potentially. I love one room classroom. I love having multiple ages. I currently have let my two-year-old niece, if you've listened to the podcast, you've heard it before, likely, my two-year-old niece attends children's church with us, even though she's too young.

Part of it is I am Aunt Amber and she is comfortable with me. She's in there with big sisters and big cousin and she's potty trained. She can sit down and listen and she's with family. But the beauty of seeing older kids and younger kids relating together where you get to see giftedness coming out. My daughter is a mama hen. We actually have a lot of mama hens at our church and you get to see them helping the little ones.

and engaging with them and it's beautiful. I've seen it work in multiple church situations where relationships are being formed, friendships are being formed with other than just your exact same grade and that is beautiful. I think that's biblical, right? Multi-generational ministry. It also really aids in that transition from children's ministry to youth ministry. That is a hard thing.

Amber Pike (09:25.262)
So if you are, let's say fifth grade, I know fifth, sixth grade, it's usually one of those, fifth grade, and you move into youth group, and you've only ever been with your fifth graders now, your little fish, big pond, you don't know those people because you've just been with your fifth grade person. And that's also a year where sports really becomes a factor in attendance. Maybe your friend decides to go to a different church. Maybe their sports day got moved and you don't have your safety net.

people so then you move and you're overwhelmed and you don't want to come because you don't know anybody but if you've been in a multi-age situation where you have true friendships with different age groups you know some of those people you have been hanging out with those people so they move to youth group before you but you knew them you've been friends with them there's also it's a whole nother conversation on why we should have our teens helping our children's ministry and hanging out and all that

But I love multi-age classroom. Is it difficult? Sure. But is teaching any age group difficult? Also sure. It's how you do it. It's how you structure your lessons, how you as a teacher communicate. I honestly have done it so long. It's easy. It is just second nature for me. And truly, if I had the option, if they were like, hey, Amber, here are all these volunteers. They want to come and teach.

so we can split up in age groups, I would say I'll take the volunteers, but we're not splitting up in age groups. I think there's just so many beautiful things in multi-age classroom and I love it. I prefer it. Again, size and room size could be a factor, right? You might not be able to fit 100 kids into your classroom designed for 30.

Would I potentially play around with instead of doing it by ages do it by something else? Maybe you know then you get in the craziness of How people up and how do we do it? Yes, but I'll kind of close this point out with Storytime when I was young I Believe the fourth fifth grade range somewhere around there. I brought a friend to VBS. My friend was a year older than me

Amber Pike (11:50.368)
And my friend was not allowed to, we were not allowed to be in the same class because she was a year older than me. Now, I'm telling on myself here. I was not happy about this because that was my friend and they wouldn't let me be in class with her at my church, right? A visitor coming to church, being put in a class with not her friend. And so I did as I sometimes did and I acted up.

because I was bored in my class because I was more biblically sound. I had a stronger in my faith, but still immature because I was a kid, but also mature. And I acted up because I didn't want to be in that class until they moved me. Now, shame on me. Yes. But shame on the church splitting up friends. If you do age graded

Put kids where they need to be, not where the class line says. Let them be with a friend. I have let little kids be in, I'm talking like six years old, be in with the older kids class at VBS. Why? Because that's where they needed to be. That's where they were most comfortable and not going to cry if they were with sibling. OK, cool. You're still going to get something. You're where you need to be. So think about how you're dividing up those kids. Number five, unpopular opinion.

I do not have a full children's hour, kids worship hour, because we start in corporate worship with the grownups, with the whole church body. We do our kind of intro, our worship session, and we're like old school hymn organs and corporate prayer. And then when the sermon is getting ready to start, we exit to children's church. This is old school, but I love this and moved back.

towards this. I've done this in three different churches that I have been in charge at. And at this church, that was not the case. When I came back, you know, this is the church that I was born and raised in, went and served two churches, full-time ministry for like 20 years, came back to this church. And it was the children are dropped off at the children's building and the fellowship building. And they're there, the whole church service. And we've been going for a couple of months and one of the members, she's like, so you have a son?

Amber Pike (14:16.994)
Yeah, that's my son. But I have a daughter too. I've never seen you with another kid. They didn't even know I had another kid and I'd been back there for months because they never saw her. She didn't get to be part of the church body. And I think this setup where you are worshiping together and then you have, you know, about 45 minutes of kids worship. I think it's important. Corporate worship is biblical. Intergenerational ministry. Biblical.

So we are definitely meeting a need and I see my kids run around, all of our church kids now, they're running around and they're talking before church starts that, you know, 15 minutes between Sunday school and worship. And they're talking with their favorite adults. We had one of our favorite older members has been gone since December. And we've had a lot of snow, a lot for Kentucky and we had a lot of cold and with that, with sickness and know, mobility with our older members. This was her first Sunday back.

since December and our kids flocked to her. All the kids who have a relationship with her were so glad to see her there and that is a beautiful thing that was not happening until we started staying for the beginning of worship. So it might be unpopular. It is my preference and I definitely switch things to keep it that way. I want relationships being built. I want kids worshiping beside mom or dad. In my family situation, they're worshiping beside...

Mom, Dad, and Grandma and Grandpa, and big cousins, and aunts, and uncles, and it's beautiful. Unpopular opinion number six. I have a hard no on free play. I do not think class time, worship time, children's ministry time should be used for free play. You do not need classroom toys for free play. You do not need learning stations. I do not have a separate preschool ministry.

I understand that preschoolers do learn through play. I still think free play for preschool is not what we need to do. I will say like if we're doing maybe sensory bin stations or things that are related to the lesson and leaders are there instructing them on it. I know our BBS has it set up that way. There's exploration stations.

Amber Pike (16:40.064)
Noah's Ark, year that we did Ocean Commotion, one of the exploration station was building supplies and they could like, you know, use their toy hammers and stuff to practice building. But then there was the leader tie in why we're talking about this, why we're why we played this because of what it's teaching us in lesson. That I can get behind a little bit, but no free play. Friends, if you're doing free play, why? What's your reason?

I would love for you to think about that. What's your reason? Is it because friends, because kids need fun? Yeah, we can make lesson time fun. Is it because we don't have enough content to fill our teaching time? That's a problem. Is it because we need a good transition because kids struggle in late? Well, then they're going to miss something.

that time, once class starts or start time, it can be used every minute of it. It can be fun. It can be exciting. It can be play-based learning. I involve games in my lessons all the time, but they are intentional. So if you're doing free play, if you've got classroom play centers and free time, I challenge you to ask yourself the question, why? And then,

Is that time being used with intentionality to ground them in truth of God's word? I don't think free play accomplishes that. Absolutely. It's fun. It's helping them come in. It's they can make friends and have fellowship time. Sure. But do I want them to have friends or do I want them to deepen their faith? I want them to deepen their faith and I can do that in a way where they get to interact with others and build friendships. So no free play. Okay. Number seven.

this is a me thing, not a hard rule that I have in children's ministry, but I just thought this would be fun to throw in. My unpopular Kidman opinion is that I don't teach in jeans or leggings. I have never once taught a kid's lesson on a Sunday morning wearing jeans or leggings. don't wear leggings to church.

Amber Pike (19:03.022)
But I've never done it in jeans except for one time that I did a costume change. Now do I have a problem with you wearing jeans in your kids t-shirt? Not at all. But I was raised very traditional in very traditional Baptist churches where you dress up. So I am often in a dress and heels and I can do the things in a dress and heels, although I'm getting older and I've got some foot problems. I was actually just at the foot doctor yesterday. So I'm often in flats or wedges.

But I'm talking in my younger days, because I think I'm getting old, but I don't want to face it. I would be like rocking kids church in Stilettos. This is not a, you should not be wearing jeans. I am totally cool if you want to wear jeans. I was just raised really, really conservative. And so just personally, we dress up to church. My family dresses up, our church culture dresses up, though we do have people in jeans. No big deal.

I'm not going to judge you on how you came to church as long as you're clothed and covered, please. And you're clean because I don't like dirt or smelliness. Come on. Also, if you're still dirty and smelly, please come and hear the word of Jesus. Just I have a sensitive nose, so I would appreciate bathing. That's just a this is how I was raised. So I don't do it. There was one time my last Easter on full time staff, I did a costume change. So I was in my full Easter dress.

And then my teens were there and we all had matching shirts that said best day ever. And I went and did a costume change in my shirt and my sparkly shoes and my jeans. And it was super fun. So there you go. Me personally, I don't teach on Sundays in jeans. Number eight. This is a lesson that I learned the hard way. And it took a while, a long time in ministry before I understood this lesson. Unpopular opinion is that the bulk of your

Planning time, prep time, your ministry hours, your paid hours, your volunteer hours, however that is, the bulk of your time should be spent equipping moms and dads, not preparing for Sundays, Wednesdays, and events. I had my priorities out of the line for so long. I was out of alignment. Biblically, we know that mom and dad are the ones given the primary role of disciple maker. We the church secondary, we are still grounding kids in the truth.

Amber Pike (21:21.09)
We are teaching them God's word, but we should be equipping mom and dad. And if mom and dad are the primary disciple makers, we are secondary. Actually, grandpa and grandma are secondary, but church has a role. We should be equipping mom and dad first. And often we give that part of our job, or we don't realize it's our job, we give that our leftovers. Okay, Sunday's ready, events prepped, what can I do for mom and dad? quick, send home a resource. We need to be designing, planning everything in our ministry.

to where we're equipping mom and dad first, then we're doing the other things. And I did that wrong for years. So now I've tried to shift that. That's why I only do, I didn't even include this in my own popular opinion list. Now I don't do kids events other than VBS and I'm, you know, resourcing and training parents. I'm trying not to give them my leftovers. I'm planning parent equipping first, then all the other things.

If that is our priority, our schedule for our ministry or what we're getting done needs to reflect that that is the priority. And I did it wrong for a lot of years. Unpopular opinion number nine. I might step on some toes with this, but I do not think that you, the leader in charge, should be prepping the lessons for your team. I have heard stories, I've talked to some people lately, I'm seeing stuff online where the leader in charge, the paid staff,

or the lead volunteer staff, they are assembling the lesson boxes and getting the supplies and all of this. I think your job as the leader is to purchase the curriculum and distribute the curriculum.

and that's where your job stops. The leaders need to be preparing their curriculum. it's your classroom teachers, your small group leaders. They should be preparing their own stuff. You do not need to be grabbing their supplies. You do not need to be making sure that their boxes of their lessons are ready to go when they come in on Sunday. They need to be preparing in advance. And I think that includes the supplies. Now I will sit stuff out.

Amber Pike (23:34.297)
point them to where it is in the room, I'll make sure we have it purchased, right? So I've looked through the lesson and I see we're gonna need 17,000 popsicle sticks. I gotta make sure that we have enough. Hey, it's in the supply room, but I'm not packing your individual boxes. I think when we do that, we are teaching to our leaders that they can just show up, that they don't need to invest their time. But if they've committed to teaching, we want them to prepare.

This shouldn't all be on you. There are things that you could be doing that is not preparing their lesson when they could spend a couple minutes doing that. So if you are the one prepping everything for your leaders, how do we get your leaders invested to where they are doing that on their own? There are different things that you could be doing with your time, like look at number eight, equipping mom and dad to lead. And you making sure the boxes are ready to go for curriculum, there's a better use of your time.

We want teachers who are invested. If they are just showing up on Sunday and just looking at their lesson for the first time, that's not a good thing. And by you making it so easy for them to do that, that's kind of what we're saying. By prepping those boxes, by making sure they have everything that they need and they're ready to go, we've made it so easy that they don't need to prep.

So I challenge you, if you're the one doing the prepping for the lesson, ooh, how do we change that culture to where your leaders are so invested and preparing that they are doing their own prep?

All right, number 10. Do you guys hate me yet? I hope not. I hope we're still friends. Number 10, my unpopular Kidman opinion. I saw this one in the Facebook groups, like all the groups. If it's you, I'm sorry. No movies and Kidman. Nope. We have been called to teach. We have the Bible, the word of God, God inspired that is going to equip our kids to train them, correct them, rebuke them.

Amber Pike (25:41.549)
teach them. Why are we plugging in a movie? What happens when we plug in a movie? Someone's checking out, someone's talking to their friend, we're losing control, someone's not able to listen because somebody's talking in squirrely. So really, what was the point? They could have just stayed home.

movies

and video teaching longer than five minutes isn't needed in children's church, in children's ministry. Now, are you gonna do a special event that's maybe a movie night that has a purpose? Maybe.

But in your children's ministry, why are you showing a movie? Why are you letting a video do the teaching? You have been called to teach. I think if you were also honest with yourself that you would see when we are putting in longer videos, the kids' engagement lessons, right? They're not always paying attention versus we have teachers. So if you're like, I'm playing a movie because I got no one else. I'm out of volunteers.

Emergency, emergency. Well, then what can we do? Can we shift classes? Can we move to one room classroom for this where I need less volunteers? How can you do it without showing a movie? Because I just don't think that's the best use of time. Now let's say there is an amazing movie that I think is going to be great for our kids. Send it home, right? Hey, moms and dads, here's a great movie you guys should watch. Here's where you can watch it. Or you purchase those very old school retro DVDs.

Amber Pike (27:13.719)
and sent out to parents. Maybe you have a family movie night that is purposeful. We should not be showing the newest Disney classic. Now I say this as someone who has done it. If you remember back in the day when the movie Brave came out from Disney, she's the Scottish princess. She's beautiful, Merida, the beautiful red hair, and she shoots the bow and arrow. I did a movie night with Brave.

And there was, I made these like Scottish bites, these like pastry thing with cherries and they were delicious. Amber now wants to go have a hardcore talk with Amber of then. I was pulling out like, you know, Jesus allegories and stuff. And we had like a faith conversation about the film. Amber now would not show that at church for a slew of reasons.

One, the whole like mysticism analogies in that. Yes, so no Amber, what were you thinking? But also that wasn't a Jesus film, even though I tried to like make a Jesus thing. Now I did, and I kind of still stand by the Veggie Tales movie parties when they were still making new Veggie Tales movies. I'm that old. I remember the sweet, there was a princess one, Sweet Pea Princess, and I did a movie party with that. And they would like have a whole kit on how you could do it. It was awesome.

I still love VeggieTales. I think there's better use of our time. We can be more intentional. We can create something truly unique that's going to keep kids and families engaged. So if you are showing movies, what's your reason? And could something better be done in its place? So I would love to know, what do you think of my unpopular opinions?

10 of them, did I step on your toes any? Did I make you reevaluate listening to the Kidman huddle? I hope not. Now, will I shun you and never talk to you if you're like, but Amber, I do all 10 of these. No, we can still be friends. We can still learn from each other. If you are just adamant that I am completely wrong, let's have a conversation. Tell me why you do what you do. I'll tell you why I do what I do. These are my opinion. Why? Why do I have an opinion?

Amber Pike (29:36.629)
on these things. One, I'm just an opinionated person. But it is the mindset for me if we have one hour, you might have 30 minutes, you might have two hours, however long you have, you have that finite time span each week. You have a set number of minutes to teach these kids the truths of God's word. You don't know how God is working in a heart and you don't know if you will get another opportunity to teach these kids.

You might have a kid come and that is the one time they hear the message of Jesus. They come with a friend, with a grandparent. You don't know.

the future, their hearts. So we need to do our due diligence in using our time with intentionality. And so many of these things are my opinions in response to what I see as wasted time. So whatever you're doing, whatever your stance on these things are, if you were mad at me and you've made it this far, thank you. I just really challenge you to make sure that you are doing all of the things with intentionality.

that you are not wasting your time because eternity is at stake for these boys and girls. That is my heartbeat. I want to see kids walking with Christ, choosing to become a Christian, then growing in their faith as disciples of Christ. That is our goal. What we want to see happening, my ministry, your ministry, all the ministries around the world. knowing our goal and knowing that we have a finite number of minutes with these kids each week and we don't know how many, we are not guaranteed how many we will get.

I think we need to use our minutes well. We need to be pointing them to Jesus in every minute, every interaction, every activity needs to be done with intentionality. I have had lots of fails in 25-ish years of ministry. I don't even know, I started at 15 as full-time children's ministry. I've had so many fails. I have learned so much on the way. Through the years, God has grown me, strengthened me.

Amber Pike (31:46.123)
I have regrets. I've cried over wasted opportunities. Feeling like I failed a whole lot. A whole lot of kids, a whole lot of families because I wasn't as strong in the beginning as I am now. And so I hope that maybe what I've said today challenges you to think about the minutes that you have because eternity is at stake for these boys and girls. The world is a crazy scary place for them. So use your minutes well. Maybe you like

and agree with what I said, maybe you disagree, that's okay. But we can all agree that we want to see boys and girls walking as lifelong disciples with Christ. And with that, remember, what you do matters.