Neal's letter to Wee Praise parents

This is the letter I sent to Wee Praise parents welcoming them to the new year and asking those who are not currently involved to consider working with us! (This is the one I would have sent to myself.)


Neal

Dear Neal & Jennifer,
The new school year is here, with our Landmark Promotion Sunday coming on September 7. All of the children’s ministry is gearing up for the event, with the teachers preparing their classrooms. The Wee Praise ministry is working too, and I’ve gotten the class rosters from Allison Phillips to see what class size to expect on Sundays. God has truly blessed us both as a church and within our families with many children!
After comparing the numbers of students to the number of Wee Praise helpers currently on our lists, I became concerned that we would better serve our children with a greater number of helpers. While we have a sufficient number of people to keep the children safe while in the classrooms, my dream is to do much more than that: I hope to give each child the best chance for remembering the lessons and Christian principles heard during the Wee Praise story time by their interaction with that helper as they both put together a simple craft. My ultimate dream is that Hope, even at 3 years old, would be able to tell you on the way home from church what basic Christian principle was taught that day.
So, beyond welcoming you to a new school year, this letter invites you to participate in our Wee Praise ministry as a helper. We need more people to assist us as we reach each other’s children for Christ.
Finally, there are several other deacons who are responsible for the various aspects of the Children’s Ministry. I work with Joel Sikes, who directs the security aspects of the children’s programs; with Don Gilliam, who works with big events such as VBS, game nights, etc.; and with Craig Hopson, who is outlining outreach programs for our community and city. And Jeff Langham is working with the entire education ministry. When you see us around the building, feel free to give us your comments concerning any aspect of the program. Also, I would like to let you know of a “blog” we’ve started to let you see our vision as well as give you a chance to comment on what you see, and make suggestions about ways to improve the program. Check it out at http://landmarkchildren.blogspot.com/ . You will see more of our dreams for the Children’s Ministry written there.

Question 11: Other ministries as partners

A good fit to my thoughts would be a connection to the Public Relations Ministry, so we can better inform the city and the church about our activities and our goals.

Question 10: What will we need?

I’ll repeat this as the second half of question #1’s answer.
-Equipped teachers
-Sufficient numbers of motivated teachers
-Space to hold the children in our care
-Accountability from those who have committed to help us

Question 9: Who are our partners in the ministry?

There are several sets of partners.
Deacons: Don Gilliam, Craig Hopson, Jeff Langham, Neal McDevitt, Joel Sikes
Staff: Terry Dees, Al Millergren, and Allison Phillips
Others: Jimmy Dobbs and Teresa Messick

Also, the helpers who have volunteered through Faithworks, and the parents who respond to the call for assistance.

Question 8: Where is God calling us to be in 6 months

This is an interesting question. If the call is for numbers, should we aim for a percentage of possible students in Wee Praise or Sunday School. Or, if the call is for spiritual development of the children, how can we measure that?

I do plan to begin an informal list of children attending Wee Praise if for no other reason than to give me some averages that I can use for planning the numbers of classes we need over time.

If there is one call for the ministry I am pretty sure of, it is that we increase the numbers of helpers on Sunday for Wee Praise so that we can better interact with the children.

Question 7: Which core purpose does the ministry support?

I'd say that we support Discipling Others in Wee Praise, with a strong dose of Adore Him too.

Question 6: What scriptures guide and inspire you in the ministry?

This is the one I'd like the most comments on!

For me, two immediately come to mind as of August 27, 2008:
From Jesus: Matthew 19: 13-14
13 Then little children were brought to Him that He might put His hands on them and pray, but the disciples rebuked them. 14 But Jesus said, “Let the little children come to Me, and do not forbid them; for of such is the kingdom of heaven.

From Solomon:
Proverbs 22:6 Train up a child in the way he should go, And when he is old he will not depart from it.

Question 5: The principles and beliefs central to our work

Well, working with children I'd say patience would be one of our guiding principles! Also (of course) love and friendliness.

When planning activities and the ministry's future, I think leadership, prayerfulness, and discernment are important.

And to paraphrase the mission statement for the Children's Ministry, my central principle is to assist our families as they teach their children to know Christ sufficiently to believe that He is the Son of God so that they will share that truth with others and live their life according to His teachings.

Question 3: What are we doing to meet those needs

Currently, we have involvement in these areas:

Nursery
Wee Praise
Kids Praise
Education
Kids in Action
Kids B.L.A.S.T Junior
Kids B.L.A.S.T Senior
Vacation Bible School
Trunk or Treat
Christmas Play
Bible Memory Challenge
Slip and Slide
Back to School Bash

We could add to or modify those as needed.

Question 2: Who are we wanting to reach?

Well, for the Children's Ministry that is fairly well defined.

We have Wee Praise for the 3 to 5 year group, Kids Praise for the first and second graders, our Sunday School program for all ages, with several special events during the year.

A second group we can reach is the parents of children who are perhaps not yet deeply involved in Landmark. If we can show these parents how much we care for their children, we might get them more involved too.

Question 4: How can the ministry improve?

Again I'll answer for the Wee Praise ministry.

We have a good nucleus of volunteer teachers, including those who are not necessarily signed up for the program but are willing to stay over after Sunday School and help. We also have many folks that we know are willing to help us if we need extra workers. The situation is better now than it was when I first started helping get volunteers because I have a list to work from in advance.

I believe we can improve further by expanding our teacher ranks, such that we increase the opportunity for one-on-one interactions with the students for teaching them more about the lesson for the day.

I also hope to improve further by perhaps giving some advance notice of the day's lesson to at least the teachers if not also the parents.

I want each parent to know that we are eternally serious about helping their child fall in love with Jesus, submit to God, and develop a spiritual walk even as a preschooler.

Question 12: Our action steps

I'm going to start out with the Wee Praise actions that I plan to start off with. Please feel free to comment on mine, and add yours too so that I can see your ideas and improve my efforts!

I've gotten the list of children that are going to be in the Wee Praise program from Allison, and I plan to send out a letter and otherwise contact these parents to let them know that we want to be there for them and help teach their children about the Lord. I also want to let them know about the scale of the enrollment and ask for their assistance, since the numbers of teachers we have are not sufficient to help teach all the children we are likely to have in our Wee Praise classes. See Question #4's answer for more background.

I also will direct those parents to this blog and invite them to add comments and suggestions that we might be able to implement to improve Wee Praise

Goals:
-Be ready to staff six Wee Praise Classes in each service if needed, such that if possible each class has a student:teacher ratio of around 6:1. Any higher than that makes the lesson more difficult to communicate to the students.
-Contact each parent and answer any of their questions about the program
-Get the Children's Ministry leaders together and discuss our collective thoughts and goals for the entire ministry.

Question 1b: The needs we have to meet our goals

This half of the answer is to set out our needs to meet our goals.

-Equipped teachers
-Sufficient numbers of motivated teachers
-Space to hold the children in our care

-It wasn't mentioned last night, but can we add "accountability from those who have committed to help us" ?

Question 1a: The needs we exist to address

The first part of this answer dealt with the needs we will meet as a ministry.

I had written these:

-Developing faithfulness to God in the children's life that stays with them into adulthood
-That the children feel the love of God when they are with us
-That we keep them safe while they are with us
-That we might affect parents through their children

Are there any others we want to add as our goals?

Getting our discussions started

Hello everyone!

I am new at this "targeted" blogging. I'm going to put down where we got to last night, and see how I can get all of us capable of adding comments. Hopefully I can figure it out!

The group I've invited to be authors here are ones that were at the "Summit" on 8/19 but is not restricted to them. If you know of others who have a serious heart for our various children's ministries I can add them easily.

I'll put the "going forward" questions down one by one so anyone who wants can comment on them individually.