63. Goal Setting That Builds Real Spiritual Growth In Kids with Chuck Peters

You can run an excellent kids ministry and still aim at the wrong target. That sounds harsh, but it is also freeing because it means you do not need more activity, you need clearer purpose. 

In the first episode of our Summer Dreamin' series, Jana Magruder sits down with Chuck Peters, LifeWay’s Next Gen director and host of the ETCH NextGen Ministry Podcast, to talk about goal setting that moves beyond busywork and toward real spiritual growth for kids and families.  

Chuck tells the true Olympic story of Matt Emmons, who hit a perfect bullseye yet lost because he shot the wrong target. It is the perfect picture of ministry life: calendars fill up, events go well, volunteers hustle, and we still wonder why lasting discipleship feels elusive. We unpack how to define success before you plan, how to resist comparison with the church next door, and how to step off the treadmill long enough to see the bigger picture.  

From there, we get practical with two powerful goal-setting lenses. First, use the right lens: ministry goals are not “my goals,” they are goals for the church we serve, aligned with the overall mission, vision, and values. Second, use a long lens: begin with the end in mind and plan for kids to become godly adults, not just better-behaved children. We also talk tangible targets that support that long game, like building a culture of Bible reading and ensuring every child is known by name.

If you are ready to move from activity to impact, press play, then share this with a teammate and subscribe so you do not miss part two!

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Transcript

Summer Dreaming And Why Goals Matter

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Are you dedicated to working with kids and families in the local church? Well, clearly that's more than a career, that's a calling. I'm Dana Magruder and this is Kids Ministry Calling. Hey friends, this summer we are talking all about dreaming. Dreaming up new ways to plan events, recruit volunteers, communicate with parents, and so much more. We know that this season is going to inspire you to think outside of the box. And who better to kick off the season than with my friend Chuck Peters? In ministry, it's easy to stay busy planning events, filling calendars, and trying to keep everything moving. But today, we're stepping back to ask a bigger question. Are we actually aiming at what matters most? In this episode, we're diving into the heart of goal setting in kids' ministry. How to create goals that don't just check boxes, but actually move people towards spiritual growth. We talk about aligning your goals with your church's vision, using the right lens to measure success, and why long-term, kingdom-focused thinking matters more than quick wins. Now, Chuck is LifeWay's Next Gen director and the podcast host of ET NextGen Ministry Podcast. And we're gonna break this episode into part one and part two. Because if you know Chuck, you know he's a wealth of knowledge and a little long-winded. Now, if you're ready to move from busy to intentional and from activity to impact, this conversation will help you reset and refocus. Let's jump in.

A Reunion With Chuck Peters

SPEAKER_00 1:35

Well, hey, everybody. I am so excited. Today is a special day. And here's why. We have in the studio my good friend, my former co-host on the podcast. Yeah. You know him, you love him, listeners and watchers. We have Chuck Peters here today in the studio. Man, how long did we co-host together, Kids Ministry 101?

SPEAKER_01 2:01

My goodness. So we, that Kid Ministry 101 or Kids Ministry 101 had about a 10-year run. That's awful. And most of that was you and me. Yeah. In some combination. There was times when I did it alone, times when you did it alone. And a lot of it where we were together. And it was so fun.

SPEAKER_00 2:15

Yeah. Well, it's I'm I'm enjoying hosting on my own, but you're doing so good.

SPEAKER_01 2:21

Thank you. Longtime listener, first time guest of the podcast. I'm so glad to be invited back. I've been waiting, you know. Like I'm I've just I don't know. I'm like, does she not want me?

SPEAKER_00 2:32

Really? Seriously? Oh man.

SPEAKER_01 2:33

I've had you on Etch. I know. Yeah. So you now have Kids Ministry calling and I have the Etch Gen Ministry Podcast. Yep. And both of them are doing really well. And it's fun to have people have, you know, new ways to connect with us. But I do miss doing this with you because we always had such a great time.

SPEAKER_00 2:50

Yeah. So that's why we're doing this. Okay. I brought I haven't asked you yet because I wanted to wait until I had the perfect topic.

SPEAKER_02 2:58

Oh no. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 2:58

And there is no better topic than what we're going to talk about today. This is truly a Chuck Peters kind of topic. All right.

The Post VBS Reset Mindset

SPEAKER_00 3:07

So our theme, I was telling you before we hit record, our theme this summer is summer dreaming. Yeah. Okay. That's very loose. Can mean lots of different things, but here's my thought. So in the summer, let's say after VBS, maybe after you take kids to camp, um, you might have a few weeks to do a little uh reset, is what I'll call it where you um take some time. Maybe it's on vacation, maybe it's just an extended little Sabbath time to reset for the year and think about what's ahead and um dream a little bit. Allow yourself to dream a little bit. Um, and so I think you have to start with that by setting goals. And you have so much good content on this. I've heard you do um many a breakout conference on um and and even with our own team within Lifeway, you have led us in this. This is your wheelhouse. And so I want to set you up to be able to transfer that knowledge to our kids' ministry calling audience. And so um I knew you would have a framework for us to walk through. I didn't even create anything. I said what she got, Chuck. Because um, you have so much content that, you know, you said you even curated a little special for us. So I wanna I wanna let you walk through that. But let's start with this question. Okay. Okay. First of all, what are you dreaming about these days?

SPEAKER_01 4:36

What am I dreaming about these days? Oh my goodness. This is one of those curve balls that I used to throw in. Where did I get that? Now you've got me. Okay, what am I dreaming about this these days? Um, right now we are working on a project at home where we are turning our upstairs bonus room into like a little mother-in-law suite, little efficiency apartment.

SPEAKER_02 4:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:56

So I have been going to the restore. You know the restore? Yes. It's like habitat for humanity store. There's one in Franklin here, not far from us. So I've been going there like buying cabinet bases so I could build a little kitchenette and things like that. So I've been working on that. And it's good because it lets me do things with my hands. Yeah. It's like I can see the results after I do some work. And it's actually been really fun. Yeah. So we're working on that. And you know, I'm acting as a contractor. So, you know, plumber, electrician, all that stuff. Those are the things that I don't do.

SPEAKER_00 5:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:27

But yeah, hammer, running a nail gun. I like those things.

SPEAKER_00 5:30

You know enough to be a GC, a general contractor. Um so I mean, through the years, I've watched you have all kinds of handy hobbies.

SPEAKER_01 5:39

Yes. And always like a smash thumb, like see my thumb's all black and blue right now, hit it with a hammer. Yes. Always scars and scabs and things from some kind of job. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 5:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:47

Yeah. That's how you know you're successful, right? If you bleed as a kid, is that it?

SPEAKER_00 5:51

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 5:52

You know you've actually done work. You need blisters and blood. That's it.

SPEAKER_00 5:55

Well, and this holds up to what I've researched lately. If I feel like I've heard this several times, that if you work with your mind, your hobby needs to be with your hands.

SPEAKER_01 6:05

That's a great idea. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:06

And so you're you're doing that. And I know that's life-giving to me.

SPEAKER_01 6:08

And if you work with your hands, should your hobby be something with your mind? Yeah. Maybe more reading.

SPEAKER_00 6:13

Yeah. There you go. All right. I like it. Good. I will take that as affirmation. Yeah. I'm doing the right thing. You're doing great. You're doing great. I mean, you create tables, you know how to build furniture, you know how to drywall.

SPEAKER_01 6:24

Okay, so you know my secret, and this is true of everything you guys. My secret is PFD.

SPEAKER_00 6:29

What is that?

SPEAKER_01 6:30

Pretty from a distance. The closer you get, like to me personally, the closer you get, the worse it all gets. The closer you get to my car, the closer you get to my uh, my like my the tables that I build. So, yes, I've been building like eight-foot farm tables for a while. My wife Chris wanted one one year, and so I built her a table. Yeah. I'm like, I can't afford to buy one, they're super expensive. I'm like, okay, I could take the legs off that table and build a new surface. And I found out that people would actually buy them. Yeah, they will. So I've been teaching our son Tate to how to make tables. He's not as excited about it as I had hoped. He might be. I'm like, okay, maybe this will be your thing. No, not quite, not quite. But yes, I do like, I enjoy doing that kind of work, but my attention to detail is not the greatest in the world.

SPEAKER_00 7:16

Wow. That's what you have others around you for, right?

SPEAKER_01 7:20

That's right. So remind yourself of people who are better than you. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 7:23

Oh, goodness. Okay. Well, thanks for sharing that. Um, let me ask you our lead-in question.

The Olympic Story About Aiming

SPEAKER_00 7:29

Okay. So, why do you think it is so important to set goals?

SPEAKER_01 7:34

Oh, so important. So, this is true of anything that you do. So, whether it's your career, your health, your family, whatever it is, you because because here's what I've learned about goals. You will hit whatever you aim for. And so if you aim for nothing, you're gonna hit nothing.

SPEAKER_02 7:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:49

And so if you aim for the wrong thing, you're gonna hit the wrong thing. And so there's this story that I know you've heard me tell, but I want to share it with you. Definitely. I want them to hear it. So they're uh in 2004, the 2004 Olympics, the story goes, and this is a true story. You can Google it, look it up. Uh, ask AI if you want to. This guy named Matt Emmons was in the Olympic rifle competition. And so he uh I've found pictures of him, and he has all this crazy gear, headgear, and little focusy things, and this really fancy rifle that he shoots. And in the 2004 Olympics, he had scored enough points that all he had to do to get the gold medal was just hit the target. Yeah, not the middle. He didn't need a bullseye. Okay, all he had to do was hit the target. He was so far ahead of everybody else, that's all he needed for the win. So he lined up his shot, the story goes, and you know, he's focused in on the bullseye and he aimed just right. And you know, people who shoot, they do that whole thing with like you take a deep breath and you let it out halfway.

SPEAKER_00 8:52

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 8:53

And then you squeeze, he fires and he hits dead center in the bullseye, dead center in like the red circle in the middle. And he he's like, I that's it, I got the goal. Then he turns around and he looks up to the scoreboard, and there's no score, it's zero.

SPEAKER_00 9:11

Poor Matt Emmons.

SPEAKER_01 9:12

So, like he looks at the judges and he's like, There's some kind of malfunction, what's going on, right? You um you're a tennis person. So I picture like the John McEnroe days where he's like, What's going on with the judges, you know? Yes. So I'm I'm sure it was a moment like that where where Matt Emmons is like, I hit the thing, where's my score? Yeah. And the judges conferred and convened, and they came back and they said, No, it's no score, zero. Oh my goodness. What had happened, Jana, is he hit the bullseye on a target that was one lane over. So he hit he hit the bullseye, but it was on the wrong target. And so for us, it's so important that we have goals that are the right things because we will hit what we aim for. And so there's a quote by Howard Hendricks, who is a professor at Dows Theological Seminary. He said this, he said, My great concern for you in life is not that you will fail, but that you will succeed in doing the wrong things.

SPEAKER_02 10:07

That's powerful.

SPEAKER_01 10:08

And I think for that was that just hit me. Yeah. Right. Because as driven people, we tend to have a lot of things going on. Yeah. And it's so easy for us to move from thing to thing to thing to thing to thing and just keep knocking down targets. And maybe I need to be careful that I'm not missing the target that really matters. Yeah. Right. The one that counts.

SPEAKER_02 10:29

Right.

SPEAKER_01 10:29

And so the idea of setting goals, of clarifying what is the mark, what is we're trying to hit, what are we, what are we aiming for? How do we define success? Is so crucial to what we do. Because otherwise, we're just firing randomly. I mean, who knows if we're accomplishing what's really important.

SPEAKER_00 10:46

And what I like about the story, Matt Emmons, bless his heart, we all remember his name for the wrong reason. Poor guy. Um, but I could take the analogy a little further, just as you're talking, because I've heard it several times and it made me think about, you know, the target that he did hit was just slightly next to him, right? I assume it's very close that he would get confused. It was. And so um, you know, we could have things almost right, or you could take it even further. And this is, you know, in our culture, there's a lot of comparison. You could try to hit someone else's target, the person next to you, the church down the street. That's right. You know? Yes. And and and then what does that look like? It could be the wrong. Your target. Your target. That's right. Right. So staying in your lane. Staying in your lane.

SPEAKER_01 11:33

Yes. There's there's truth to that. Yeah. I think another thing that I take away from that, Jana, is the is tunnel vision, right? Because clearly what happened is he was so focused in on that bullseye that he never zoomed out. He never stepped back to get the full picture of what's going on. So that's why when you say summertime after VBS, after camp, you might have just a little time to catch your breath. Rather than just zoning out and tuning out and crashing out, which is what we want to do after VBS in camp, right? Just recover, just let me take a vacation and go to the beach. But but to take that time to step back. And so in my mind, I see that as getting off the treadmill, right? Because what it's like for all of us is we are on the treadmill and we are running fast and running hard, and the incline may go up, right? It gets more and more difficult to maintain the pace, but a lot of us never get anywhere because we're on the treadmill, right? So we we expel a lot of energy, but we don't cover a lot of distance. So we need to step off the treadmill of our day-to-day grind so that we can assess the bigger picture, see the context, identify the right lane, identify the right target, then focus in and do all the right things. Because Matt Emmons did all the right things. Right. He he he, in a sense, right, his sights were aligned properly to shoot. He he breathed right, he pulled the trigger right, he did all those things right. But he had so focused in in his tunnel vision that he missed the bigger picture. I think for a lot of us, it's easy for us to get caught up in just doing what we've always done and not stepping back to see if it's the right thing.

SPEAKER_00 13:21

Right. Oh, well, that's a great setup for what we're gonna talk about. And I know you have brought us seven things to walk through. It's always good to have a number. Yeah. And so these seven things uh are about goal setting. So set us up. I know you love to use analogies and things like that. So is this all about the lens, right?

SPEAKER_01 13:41

Well, a bit, yeah. So this, I mean, this doesn't have they don't all start with the same letter. So I don't I hate to disappoint listeners.

SPEAKER_00 13:46

Okay, don't start with the same letter, but that's part of your signature though.

SPEAKER_01 13:50

A little bit, a little bit. So maybe we'll come up with them as we go, as we go. But these are principles, though, that are just really good big picture things that we should all do. And it does use the a lens as something to help us help us see where we're heading. So yeah. All right. So what's the first one? All right. So

Use The Right Lens For Goals

SPEAKER_01 14:08

the first one is as you set goals, you need to set your goals using the right lens, right? So often we're Matt Emmons was aiming at the wrong target, the wrong lane. We need to use the right lens. If we you've heard me talk about my glasses, right? If you put on someone else's glasses, just like you're shooting at someone else's church or someone else's target, you wear somebody else's glasses, you're not going to see clearly. And so it's important first to identify what is the right lens. And so I have one big lens that I want to give to everybody, and that's the this is one that we all fall into if we're not careful. Your goals are not or should not be your goals. Your goals are for the ministry that you lead. And there's a difference between your personal aspirations and goals and those that are for your church. So as you are setting ministry goals this summer, as you're looking for what are you seeking, you know, for the Lord to do or things to grow or change in your ministry, the lens of those goals needs to be your ministry.

SPEAKER_02 15:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:07

And taking the your off of it needs to be the church's ministry. Right, right. Because for a lot of us, what happens is it's dangerous, I think, for a leader to come in and you bring with you your vision, your preferences, your the way that you like to do it, and you force that into the church that you're in. This church's vision and goals are now whatever I brought. Right. I'm here, my stuff. Yeah. And that's a low-level view of leadership. The the higher level view of leadership is to say, okay, you as a leader are here to steward the ministry of the church that you're in. And it is unique, it's not like the one down the street. And so it's this is less about creating uh goals and it's more about curating goals.

SPEAKER_00 15:54

Oh, I like that.

SPEAKER_01 15:55

It's about understanding, you need to have insight to see what's happening inside your church so that the lens you're using is the lens of the church. And part of that is not in a negative way, but in a realistic way. You may not stay at your church forever. Right. You might move to a different place. And so to set a goal that only lasts while you are there is a short-term, short-term and a week goal.

SPEAKER_02 16:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:22

It's much better for you to set a goal through the lens of what does what is the right thing for this church to be pursuing for the children and the families in this community with the unique set of volunteers and leaders and culture of the church, the overall vision of the lead pastor and of the church itself. One of the key goals is as you set ministry goals, one of the tests that I would always want to point you to is to say, okay, you set your whatever those goals are, how do they align with the goals, the overall goal of the church?

SPEAKER_00 16:55

I think you said a key word there, aligned. Align. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:58

That's right.

SPEAKER_00 16:58

That's a good anchor word to continue to go back to.

SPEAKER_01 17:02

Yeah, because if you're setting goals that are out of alignment with the rest of the church, you're out of alignment with the rest of the church. Exactly. That is not healthy. It's not good, right?

SPEAKER_00 17:10

It's dangerous.

SPEAKER_01 17:10

You want to have a mission, a vision, values, um, and goals that are an extension of those of the overall church that understands the culture, that understands the congregation. It feels like there's another C there somewhere. The culture, the community, the congregation. There, that uh you need to understand that this is not about you.

SPEAKER_02 17:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:29

And that's tough. Uh, but so for a lot of us, everything's about us or it's about me. And so the first tip is to lay aside the personal part of this. Now it's not wrong for you to have your own goals. You should have personal goals for your own development, professional development, spiritual development, all those uh things uh that are good for you. Uh but when it comes to setting ministry goals, there needs to be a separation of your personal goals and desires and preferences and you stewarding uh them for the church effectively.

SPEAKER_02 18:03

That's great.

SPEAKER_01 18:04

So that's again, it's about curating, not creating. It's about contextualizing, not revolutionizing, right? So you want to pull those out. You don't want to come in and make huge changes, especially out of the blue, out of left field. Yeah, some person took a week off after camp and he or she came back and changed everything on a whim. Not a good idea.

SPEAKER_00 18:25

It's not the summer dreaming we're talking about.

SPEAKER_01 18:27

It's the wrong kind of dream, right? Not the right dream.

SPEAKER_00 18:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:30

Um, so it's really good because of this to not set goals or cast vision alone. Yeah, don't do it in isolation. Yeah. So you want to look for other staffers, your co-workers. You want to consult your leadership. Yeah. You want to use volunteers who are highly and deeply invested, that are trusted, not just any random person, right? You people need to earn you, you need to trust that the people that you include understand the context of the church, the culture of the church, the needs. But again, staff, other leaders, um, key volunteers, parents uh who are invested to bring them in and give them an opportunity. And so the key there is the one of the big benefits in that is shared goals are always stronger than individual goals. So if I come with a goal for a team or for a church, and it's my goal, my vision, and I just force it on everyone, there's gonna be resistance. People don't like change, people don't like to be informed, right? They we talk a lot here about the racy. Racy is a construct in business that's like some people are responsible, accountable, consulted, or informed.

SPEAKER_00 19:41

We actually shared about it on this podcast. So this is a good review for nobody wants to be the one who's just informed.

SPEAKER_01 19:46

Just informed. I wish I was consulted. Why didn't anybody ask? Exactly. Right? So you want to make sure you're consulting the right people because you want them to be bought in. One, because when you leave, they can carry on a vision that's bigger than you, but also because they can help you when other people come and they question the vision or they're it's uncomfortable for them. You have other people who are like, no, no, I'm I was a part of this and I'm bought in. This is a fantastic vision. Yeah. So don't do it alone and it's not about you.

SPEAKER_00 20:16

This is such an effective way to build teams too. If you're if you're inviting in parents, if you're inviting in volunteers, you're getting other ministry leaders buy-in. Yeah. And this is a great way to be able to cast vision for what we do in kids' ministry. And so it's really easy to invite people into that when they've had a part of building it with you.

SPEAKER_01 20:39

That's right. And that's why it's important to get the right people at the table. Yeah. Right. If you have the wrong people at the table, that can be detrimental. This is true. If you have no people at the table, that's not good. But to have a group of others who are invested in this vision, and that that makes it harder for you. It's easier to go off and write my own vision by myself. It's harder to wrestle through values and ideas and concepts and priorities with a group of people, but it will be stronger if you do.

SPEAKER_00 21:07

Absolutely. All right, let's move to the next one. Set

Build Goals With The Long Game

SPEAKER_00 21:12

goals using a long lens. Yes. What do you mean by that?

SPEAKER_01 21:14

First one is make sure you use the right lens. Right lens. The second one is second is to use a long lens. And so that is this. A lot of times, if we're honest, our goals can be really short-termed and short-sighted. Right. And so I need a goal for lunch today. Right. My goal is not not to overeat at lunch today, not to eat, make bad choices. Uh, but what I really need is a longer-term goal to get the goal right out of your face and push it off and and set a long term goal. That's a long distance goal. So uh I often talk about the idea that as you start um a goal setting for ministry, think about so I one of my favorite persons, people to quote, is um is the the seven habits of highly effective people. Stephen Covey and he one of his big takeaways that always sticks with me is the idea of begin with the end in mind. Yes. Begin with the end in mind. So as you set goals for the effectiveness of your ministry, it's yes, you're going to have short-term immediate things. We're going to get to that next. But the most important thing is to say, okay, what is if a child enters into our system at birth or at preschool and they go all the way through our kids' ministry, what are they going to look like when they get spit out the other end as a sixth grader? Yeah. Right. They they're moving into that youth group and leaving us. What do I want them to know? How do I want them to grow? And how do I want them to go and how they live and walk, walk out their faith before we begin?

SPEAKER_00 22:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:45

And so with that, we can step back and say, okay, what kind what do we want kids to understand? What kind of spiritual disciplines do we want to instill within them? What sort of um people do we want them to become? Then with that long-term goal, we we identify the target. The target is that every kid who comes to this ministry will leave here knowing this, this, and this, understanding this, this, and this, and living in a way like this. Then we can say, okay, now what do we do between now and then to get there? Yeah. Right. And so it's it's setting the destination for your GPS, right? The GPS tells you which way to turn, but only if you tell it where you're trying to go. Right. And so we need to start with that long lens of what is the goal. And when you think about the the whole concept that, you know, train up a child in the way he should go, we we often are focused on making better children. And I argue that is not the goal. In my mind, that's not the goal of kids' ministry. Making better children is a great thing, but the goal for us as in kids' ministry as leaders is to raise kids up to be godly adults. Right. Because we see the statistics about them leaving the church when they leave high school. Right. So, what do we do about that? Well, first of all, if our goal is not to make them godly adults, they're not going to become godly adults. Right. Right? We, up aside from the Lord's intervention, obviously he's right, he's all powerful, sovereign, and good, he will do what he will. However, strategically, if our goal is to have, there's a book out there, I don't remember who the author is right now, but there's a book called A Better Kid by Friday. Right. Yeah. If our goal is a better kid by Friday, we are going to do things that lead to behavior modification, not heart transformation. And for years, you and I have talked about the importance of it's got to start and end with the heart. And if heart change doesn't happen, we have not accomplished the goal. Right. So when when a child is transformed by a life-changing relationship with Jesus, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, then their behavior follows, then their language follows, then their friendships follow, their disciplines follow. But the goal isn't those things, the goal is spiritual maturity. And then we build in those steps to get there.

SPEAKER_00 24:57

Right. And this is um super important to have these kinds of conversations as a ministry team. Is as you're talking, I'm thinking about, you know, some churches are set up where you have a preschool minister, they're over preschool, a children's minister, maybe even have a preteen. And then you go into middle school, high school student ministry. All of those age group areas need to be doing this.

SPEAKER_02 25:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:21

We need to be on the same page about, you know, what kind of godly adult do we want to, you know, to leave our ministries in high school and stay in the church and all of those things. That starts, that's a that's a journey. It is that starts as soon as those parents bring that baby into your baby room. And so what does that journey look like? I think that's the kind of intentional long game planning that you're talking about.

SPEAKER_01 25:45

That's right. Yeah. And as you sort of acknowledged, this is even stronger and better when it doesn't begin and end with the isolation of just kids ministry. It's it's the preschool team is feeding into what because into the kids. The kids team is connected with student ministry so that the the foundations that we're laying and the the core disciplines that we're instilling set them up so that that next level of ministry will carry them on to the next level of maturity.

SPEAKER_02 26:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:16

So it's all this planning about including the right people. Yeah. Part of that is planning your kids' vision alongside your student team. Planning your student team alongside your college ministry leaders, planning along with your senior pastor and the church overall. Yeah. So that it's all connected. Because the goal does not end when they leave fifth grade.

SPEAKER_00 26:34

Exactly. This is a great time to talk about things like milestone strategy, discipleship planning, you know, the truly the path that we would want a child to experience all the way until you know high school graduation, next gen.

SPEAKER_01 26:50

Yeah, 100%. And so some of these things, like I don't know, one example, so and I think these should be informed by uh by statistics, by you know, uh things that we know to be relevant and effective.

Practical Targets Kids Can Actually Reach

SPEAKER_01 27:01

So, you know, we've in the research that that uh that you did for uh Nothing Less, the book from a couple of years ago now, but it's a classic. If you guys if you haven't read it, you have to read Nothing Less by Janet Magruder. And our kids' team at the time put that book together uh and uh worked with Lifeway Research and it talked about these childhood indicators of spiritual maturity, right? And so there's things that are effective and there's things that weren't effective. Didn't make the list. The thing that stood out that is no longer a secret. Spoiler alert, if you haven't read the book, plug your ears right now. The spoiler alert is the one big thing that was the huge takeaway is was Bible reading. Yeah, the the number one indicator of will this child be spiritually mature when they leave home and move on is if they had an open Bible in their hands, in their house, in their home, yeah at church. Yep. So such a simple thing. But coming back to that, and it was so simple but so profound, right? Because guilt trip intended, if you're running your ministry and you're not opening Bibles, yeah, you're not doing it right.

SPEAKER_02 28:04

Right.

SPEAKER_01 28:05

So we so okay, we knowing the importance of getting kids into the Bible, we can say maybe one of those big goals is by the time they leave, we want every kid to have, carry, and use their own Bible.

SPEAKER_02 28:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:19

Simple, goal, that's a great goal to set. It's it's ministry focused, uh, it's something that we know will be effective. That's actionable, that's tangible. So then measure step back and say, okay, well, how do we get how do we accomplish that? Yeah, which leads to our next step. But it might be something else, like we know we know the importance of relationship. That's what we learned from the book that we did together with the script is the importance of reaching the next generation in relationship. They don't care what we know until they know that we care. They need to feel emotionally safe before they'll listen. We have to, we can't assume pre-existing worldview or Bible knowledge. And so we have to lay a foundation to get there. And we know that a lot of that is just by having every kid feel known and seen and valued. So we might set a goal that would be we want every kid to be known by name. If you had a church of 600 kids or of six kids, you want every child who walks in the room to be have somebody look at them and call them by name. Yeah. Uh, so that they feel known and they are known. And so here they're again really valid, important goal that leads to uh the setting up the right kind of conditions for the spiritual growth to happen that we're seeking. And so those are just two simple examples of goals that are not crazy insane goals. They're very realistic and attainable, but also of high value.

SPEAKER_00 29:43

And it's great for volunteer training because you can point to those. And people love to have little actionable things that they know is going to make a difference. Yes. And so these are specific goals. These aren't necessarily overarching, you know, broad vision goals. These are actionable where you can check it off every week. Every volunteer can have a part of this. And then you have all of your buy-in, a shared, a shared vision for us to accomplish together that leads to heart change, heart transformation, and you know, growing in God's word all the way through adulthood.

SPEAKER_01 30:15

That's right. That's all making sure you're aiming for that right target in the distance, right? To to line up the sites to get there.

SPEAKER_00 30:38

This

Credits And Closing

SPEAKER_00 30:39

episode of Kids Ministry Calling Podcast was brought to you by our amazing team, including executive producer Angie Elkin, producer Nikki Ogden, edited by Trey Garza, and recorded in the Lifeweight Podcast Studio in Brentwood, Tennessee, with Sound Engineer Donnie Gordon, and artwork by Cameron Wilson. And I'm your host, Jana McGruder. Thanks for listening to Kids Ministry Calling.