The Good, Bad, and Ugly of Doing Ministry from Home

The Good:

-  Face time with my kids – even if I’m working, I get to see my kids’ faces and they get to see mine.  Though I have to say quite a few times “I can’t find your Barbie right now, Mama is working” or “I can’t help you with that stage on Wii, Mommy’s working”, I am at least here to say that.

-  Getting more done – I know everyone’s work style is different, but I truly can accomplish more in the comfortable setting of my comfy chair and pjs.

-  Fewer interruptions from tall people – I love people and I love the people I work with.  And I know I am terrible about walking into others’ offices and interrupting their work flow.  I need to do better.  But that is also part of office community.  It’s good, but at the same time it can really hinder productivity.  And, yes, at home if my little people are awake I am interrupted constantly, but I can send them to timeout if needed.

-  Great connection with volunteers – One of my biggest worries was that my volunteers would feel slighted that I wasn’t in the office during office hours.  But the reality is, most of them work real jobs too and they aren’t available to think church business during office hours either.  Part of my crazy working schedule includes lunches with volunteers and their kids or late night ice cream runs to chat ministry or Facebook chat recruiting.

The Bad:

-  Work never really stops – I fit productive times around and throughout my girls’ schedule.  This often results in working whenever I can.  I often use the phrase “I’m always working and always not working.”  I don’t clock out at 4:30.  I just get it done when I can.

- Impossible to do anything in a straight line – This is probably more the dysfunction of my brain more than it is a result of working from home, but I am usually working on chunks of different projects all at the same time – usually something at the office, something before dinner, something before bed.  There’s usually lots of zig zags, lots of requests for juice, a few games of The Ladybug Game, finding a lost stuffed animal, and a few timeouts before a task is completed.

-  Having two work spaces – I wish I had a dollar for everytime I said, “Aw man, I left that at the office.”  Seems like too often what  I’ve needed here I’ve left there and vice versa.

The Ugly:

Constant struggle between:

-  Mama Guilt – When I’m working I feel bad I’m a bad mama.  I feel bad when I have to say “wait” or “stop that” or “Mama can’t right now”.

-  Employee Guilt – When I’m being mama, I feel like I’m a bad employee.  I feel I need to overwork at other times to compensate for the minutes I am being mama during the day.

Remedies:

- Choose your guilt – Andy Stanley’s book Choosing to Cheat was a life changer for me.  Basically he says you can’t be everything to everybody.  You are going to cheat someone. If you are giving 110% to work you are cheating your family.  If you’re giving 110% to your family, you’re cheating work.  You will cheat, so choose your guilt.  Choose what you are going to feel bad about.   Ministry is a marathon not a sprint.  Ministry will still exist when my girls are bigger.  I can NEVER have these days back when they are little.  I do not want to cheat them.

Time management and planning-  One of the greatest skills I learned from Jim Wideman is to track my time and to very specifically plan my time.  This did two things:  1) made sure I was utilizing my time most efficiently and 2) relieved some guilt because I could see on paper how much time I was spending with my girls and how much time I was working.

- Iphone – Though it could probably now be classified as an addiction, I started with a Blackberry and then my husband graduated me to an iphone.  Having email in my hand has made ministry from home possible.  I can respond to volunteers’ emails quickly even if I’m standing on the playground or at the office or sitting at a red light.

- Google docs - I put important documents that I need to access from anywhere I’m working on Google Docs.  I can pull it up and edit it from home, from the office, and even from my phone.  That’s eliminated alot of the stress of forgetting.

So, I know there are more of you out there who work from home.  What are your good/bad/uglies?

Making Decisions About Balancing Family and Ministry

This post is part of a series called “Being the Mama and the Minister”.  You can read the other posts here and here.

In the last post I shared a little of my story of dealing with decisions of how to stay home with my kids and continue in ministry as well.  If you’re facing this kind of decision whether it is because of a new baby or any other family issue, here is my advice (for whatever it is worth):

-  Pray a lot.  You are about to make decisions that impact you, your family, your future family, your church, your staff, your volunteers… you get the point.  You want to be very clear that you are walking in God’s path.

-   Talk to your spouse. Don’t make any decisions alone.  You are one team.  Make sure you both are as close to being on the same page as you can be before you take another step.  You don’t want to set your relationship up for hidden resentment (he made me keep working or she quit and is costing us money…)

-   Define your priorities. Decide for yourself what is most important.  Being home with my babies was most important to me.  If the choice had been put the babies in fulltime daycare or quit, I probably would have quit.  Now, let me clarify that this was the decision and priority that was right for our family.  If you’re a mama reading this who has made a different choice, I rebuke the mama-guilt creeping in.    Your family decisions are between you, your spouse and God.  But it is essential that you define those and make your choices based on them.

-  Define your non-negotiables and define what has give-and-take. How much childcare are you willing to do and feel comfortable with?  How much time can you be in the office?

-  Are you being realistic? You’ve dreamed and determined your ideal plan.  Before you talk to anyone, take some time for some  honest evaluation.  Is your plan realistic for your church?  Can you work the way you have planned and truly be productive?  Can you do what you are planning without hindering the work of your ministry?  Can your family still function in the arrangement you have in mind?  Answer the hard questions before someone asks them.

-  Talk to your supervisor and/or pastor first.  If he/she is not comfortable with your proposed arrangement, you need to tread lightly.  Remember your job is to serve those God has put over you.  And just because they don’t immediately agree to what you want to do doesn’t mean that they don’t love you, that they hate families, or that they aren’t listening to God.  I could mean that either they just aren’t ready for it yet and God has to work them through it OR that your plan just might not be a fit for the organization.  This is why you have pre-determined your non-negotiables and what you can and can’t live with.

-  Be patient and don’t have a sense of entitlement. No one owes you anything, no matter how long you’ve worked somewhere or what you’ve done.  Be humble.  Be grateful for any amount that your church is willing to work with you.

-  Honor your commitments. Work harder than anyone expects.  Do what you said you were going to do.  Go above and beyond the call of duty when you can.  At the same time, be intentional about carving out time for your family and honoring your commitment to them as well.

How I Know My Church Truly Values Family…

This is post is part of a series called “Being the Mama and the Minister”.  The first post was here.

So I was pregnant, I didn’t feel led to quit my job, and I didn’t feel comfortable with putting my child in childcare all day long.  Sounds like an easy problem to solve, huh? 

The first hurdle we had to cross was the issue of maternity leave.  I was the first pregnant staff person, I think ever.  We had no maternity leave policy.  Thankfully I had not been sick much and had LOTS of days saved up.  This was a plan that made me nervous because of the unknown of what happens after the baby is born.  What if she was sick or what if something happened?  But I trusted that God and our staff would provide.  It was a catalyst, though, for our teams to formulate an official policy (unfortunately that happened after I had my SECOND baby, but that was God’s fault… we didn’t plan for them to be so close together. )

The second was the big question of what happens to my job.  My proposal was to be able to work from home for a large majority of the work week.  I usually accomplished more in the evenings with my laptop than I did in the office anyway.  I felt I could do it, but it was a very different concept from anything we had done before.  There was also the question of how other staff and how my volunteers would respond.

I also tried very hard to make known that along with my proposal, if the arrangement ever became a detriment to the ministry or to the church, we would change it at that moment.  I did not want my personal needs to negatively impact what God was doing in the kids ministry.

I really think most churches and most pastors would have laughed at my crazy proposal, if they would have even listened in the first place.  Working from home is a lot more common now than it was 5 years ago.  They could have very easily told me if I wanted to keep working there I would have to make childcare arrangements.

But they didn’t.

They were gracious enough to let us try it.  And we did.  And it has worked.  I won’t say it has always been easy, but we’ll talk about that in another post.  And I feel that God has blessed both sides.  As my oldest prepares for 5K next year, I can’t imagine not having had this time to invest in her.  I feel I would have always regretted sacrificing her early years for ministry.  And on the flip side, had I quit, I think a part of me would have always felt like something was missing.  And in some ways, the escape of ministry has given me sanity in the crazy days of mothering two preschoolers.

And God has blessed the ministry in spite of my crazy working arrangement.  We survived a relocation, programming changes, and more.  I don’t say that to brag because it was definitely all God, but He was able to use me even when I wasn’t in my office chair 40 hours a week.  More posts later, but I’ve learned more in the past four years than I think I would have in a typical situation.

But what I’ve learned most is that my pastor and staff love my family more than they love me being in the office.  (Wow, that totally set them up for lots of sarcastic remarks).  Our church values family, and as long as I have maintained my end of the bargain, they have fully supported me being the mama and the minister.  In fact our administrator allowed my girls to sit in on a phone conference meeting in which my 4 year old was trying to lick ketchup off her arm.  Doesn’t get more family friendly than that.

How can we be a church that says we value families if we don’t invest and support the families within our own staff?

Tags: family, mama and minister

Being the Mama and the Minister: New Blog Series

A little over five years ago my ministry world changed dramatically.  I found out I was pregnant.  My husband and I were beyond thrilled.  However, we had some things to figure out.  At that point I had served as Minister to Children at our church for three years and I loved it.  I had no doubt that I was still called.  I had no sense from God that He was done with me at Westwood.  Not to mention that quitting was not a financial option either.  In fact my husband lost his job 4 weeks before my daughter was born!

Yet, my husband and I both had quite a burden for fully investing in our babies’ lives.  For goodness sakes, I have degrees in education… I have read all the studies of how important it is for a baby to have a mama home with her.

And so, 9 months later, the great balancing act began… but more on that tomorrow.

I recognize that mine has been a somewhat unique situation, but maybe some of our story will resonate with you somewhere along the path. I know many of you who read this are parents and many of the struggles are universal.  Many of you are in ministry and seek balance of family time.  Some of you may have someone on your staff one day who is living my world.  Who knows?    But thanks for being along for the ride.

Welcome to First Grade Party

Kids move from our preschool ministry into our elementary ministry in first grade.  Each year we do a party before the church year starts to welcome them and to fill their parents up with information.  Here are the basics of what we do:

-  Feed them. We have traditionally done a lunch after Sunday church.  This year we decided to do an ice cream party on a Wednesday night instead.  The main reason is that following three services of ministry it was draining to try to immediately pull together a lunch just made for a hectic time.  We could immediately give parents and kids our best.  Plus lunch gets expensive! (Just sayin’.)

-  Introduce the  ministry. We explain as much as we can while we have a captive audience.  We give details about check-in, what to expect on Sunday mornings, behavior expectations,  how to best communicate with us, and more.

-  Give away Bibles. We charge $10 for the party and that entire cost goes into giving a real Bible to the kids.  We started charging for two reasons:  1) We want to provide good quality Bibles that will last a long time.  But as we grew this became outrageously expensive.  2)  Our whole goal is to partner with parents and we want the Bible to be from them and from us.  We give away the NIrV Adventure Bible.

-  Scavenger Hunt. The fun ends with a scavenger hunt to show them important places on the children’s hall and in the church.  When they finish they get a goody bag and mom and dad sign up to substitute on Sunday mornings or serve on Wednesday nights.

How do you welcome your little people into the ministry?

Promotion Sunday: Wins and Challenges

We promoted all of our kiddos two Sundays ago.  Here’s the good, bad, and ugly of getting three services of kids and volunteers situated to a new routine:

Challenges:

-  I found out on Sunday that our bulk mail that told all of our kids about their new small groups arrived on Monday after promotion. Awesome.  We have a love/hate relationship with the U.S. Postal Service. Has anyone else experienced this?  Some things we can bulk mail and our kids will get it the next day.  And sometimes this happens.  Oh well.  Explains some of our confused first grade parents.

-  We scared some of our new baby first graders.  The loud and the lots of kids is pretty different from what they did in 5K. We need to do a better job of transitioning them.

-  We saw quickly we are going to need to grow our team at our earliest hour.  That is great news, though, because this service was struggling with attendance before promotion.

Wins:

-  We started off with an almost completely full team.  We were missing one weekly teacher and one 2x/month teacher for our 11:30 service.  Now we just need to fill the 2x/month.

-  Attendance was great and energy was great.  Most important note was that we were able to move some kids from the second service to the first.  We accomplished this by our adult ministry moving a few key small groups.  This helped our balance out tremendously!!!

-  We had all new worship leaders which was so great.  Love building up that team.

-  This year we are trying some different things with our small groups for 5th grade.  They are in large group with all the other grades, but when they go to small groups, the style of teaching for them is more similar to how our middle school life groups function.  Thumbs up’s from teachers and kids on that one.

How was your promotion Sunday?  What were your wins and challenges?

Product Review: Day by Day Begin-to-Read Bible

My little Kaylie Bug has begun reading up a storm.  I’m so very proud of her.  She loves it.  We read The Jesus Storybook Bible (my absolutely favorite children’s Bible storybook of all time… but that’s another post) to her and her sister every night.  She has started wanting to read the first page of each story, which for a beginning reader takes a VERY LONG TIME!  Little sister loses interest and Mama and Daddy are ready for everyone to sleep!

I came across the Day by Day Begin-to-Read Bible by Karyn Henley.  I had used her Day-by-Day Bible in our elementary ministry and was intrigued because while I had seen lots of “beginner” Bibles, I had not seen one designed specifically for “Begin-to-Read”.

Here is what I love:

-  The stories are short, and really designed for beginning readers.  It is the meat of the story, but my little girl can read it!  It is a great transition step from Mama and Daddy read everything to you to you start reading God’s Word independently.

-  She feels like she is accomplishing something!  Because each story is so short she can finish it easily and feel successful.

-  While it is still essentially a Bible storybook, it is much broader in depth.  There are lots more stories than would be included in your typical preschooler Bible, including lots of Psalms and other parts of the wisdom writings.  Even Hezekiah gets a story!

This is an excellent resource to start helping young kiddos develop the habit of reading their Bible on their own!  I can’t wait to recommend this to our parents!

Joys and Challenges of Staying Put

This year I celebrated my 8th anniversary at Westwood.   For some reason it really occurred to me how LONG 8 years can be.

Here are some things that I realized:

-  The kids that are moving off to college right now were my fifth graders.  That group was precious to me and many served in children’s ministry from 6th grade all the way til last Sunday.  God has called several to ministry.

-  At our “Welcome to First Grade Party” I realized that many of those were babies I visited in the hospital when they were born.  Lots were kids of parents who were my friends.

-  I’ve been blessed to live life with families through joys and great sorrows, sicknesses, and tragedies.

-  I have volunteers I have served with for almost a decade.  Those are valuable friendships.  There are relationships here that could not have been built in shorter amounts of time.  I (hopefully) have some trust that exists simply because I’ve been around awhile.

-  This church is truly my family.  This is not a job. This is home and this is life.

-  I can tell you who can fix your car, who can fix your air, who is a Tennessee or Auburn or Alabama fan, who can grill really good hamburgers,  who has battled cancer, who used to be in so-and-so’s small group, who can get us discounted _______________, etc… simply because I have lived life here for a really long time.  In a large church, that is valuable info that might be tough to come by.

-  I have been blessed by 100′s of kids.  Much more blessed than anyone could imagine.  It is a blessing to see them grow and mature and to see how God works in their lives.

Here are some challenges I’ve seen as well:

-  You have to constantly battle being too comfortable or doing things like they’ve always been done.  It’s much harder to see what needs to change or be improved when you’ve been living in it for a really long time.  It’s a constant battle to have fresh eyes.  It is easy to let your ministry become stale, usually because you have become stale.

-  You have to be very intentional about continuing to stretch yourself and educate yourself.  When you feel “at home”, it is easy to stay where you are and not force yourself to grow.

-  Part of living life long-term with people is sometimes getting hurt.  That’s just life.  People mess up, people go to jail, people leave their spouses, people leave the church.  This hurts no matter how long you have been somewhere, but when you’ve served with someone for years and something bad happens, it can rock you.

-  It takes work to stay put.  In the life of every church there are seasons when it would be easy to quit or when your frustration reaches an all time high.  It is hard to choose to stick.

I haven’t read the latest statistics about the length of time ministers stay in one spot, but I know historically it hasn’t been very long.  I know there are lots of reasons to leave a church, and none of this is written to make anyone defensive or feel bad.  The length of your tenure at your church is God’s call, not yours.  But as much as it is up to us, let us strive to change the status quo of children’ ministers not staying in one place for very long.

I’m so thankful that He’s allowed me to serve at Westwood for these years and pray that He lets me stay put for quite awhile longer.  I’m thankful for a pastor and a staff that’s let me hang around and been patient as I’ve learned and grown.

Finalizing Volunteers’ Commitment

This is the final post in a series about Kidmin recruitment.  You can read the other posts here and here and here.

So you’ve prayed, you’ve stalked, and now it is time for your peeps to sign on the dotted line.

-  Don’t be afraid to ask for a final answer.  People are busy and tend to wait til the last minute for signing up for anything. (So do I!)  They truly don’t have the same sense of urgency that you do.  Nicely (you don’t want to seem pushy) remind them that you need to finalize your team and you do need a commitment.

-  Follow up.  Assuming is dangerous in recruitment.  You want to be 100% sure before Sunday morning that your volunteers are truly committed and coming.  I’ve heard people say too many times how frustrated they were that new volunteers just didn’t show up.  On the flip side I’ve heard too many times potential volunteers say how frustrated they were because someone called to recruit them but never called back to let them know when they were supposed to serve.  Usually mistakes like this are on us.  Follow up and make sure your recruits are truly good to go.

-  Make sure you are all on the same page.  Be sure your volunteer understands what you want them to do, when you want them to do it, and what the level of commitment is.

-  Give them a next step.  Whatever your process is: background checks, orientation, training… make sure you are very clear with your volunteers what they need to do next.

-  Take the answer “no” graciously.  Sometimes people have a change of heart.  Sometimes you are sure they are going to serve where you want them and God instead leads them to student ministry or guest services ministry.  Sometimes people just are nervous to tell us no.  How you respond to someone’s “no” will greatly determine if they ever serve for you in the future.  Don’t respond with frustration or annoyance.  Show grace.  God has the right people for your team, this person just isn’t one of them yet.

What do you do to finalize volunteers’ commitments?

How Good of a Stalker Are You?

Oh, not the scary kind.  Please don’t go to jail.  That would be bad for your kidmin career, and well, it would make you pretty creepy.  This is part of a a blog series about kidmin recruitment.  You can read the other posts here and here.

So how do we stalk (in a non-frightening way) in children’s ministry?

1.  Identify the very best people who need to be serving. We are a little snobby.  We love our kids and think they deserve the very best volunteers.  Pray for God to show you your future team members.  He may show you before He shows them!  So throughout the year we identify those people, warn them we’re coming, and then invite.

2. Take advantage of the opportunities God puts in front of you. It is funny how when God brings someone to my mind I run into them 20 times more than I ever have.  Make conversation. Make connections.  I usually say, “I’ve been thinking about you… does that make you nervous?”  And usually they will say “Yes”. 

3.  Find the balance between being persistent and being annoying. Sleeping on their front porch might be a little much.  Chasing them down the church hallway might send them in the other direction.  But sometimes because our minds are constantly thinking about placing people we assume that the person we’re asking is thinking about it as much as we are.  They have whole other lives and are likely not as consumed by the idea.  So reminders are good.  Short texts or facebook messages spread out over a week or two are good.  Annoying is bad.

4.  Give them permission to say no. Just because you really want them doesn’t mean it is the right time or the right thing for them.  It takes pressure off of people if they know they can say no without you giving them a guilt-trip or breaking down into sobs.  Tell them that it is fine for them to say no and mean it!  People are more important than filled spots.

5.  Be clear in what you’re asking them to do. Be straightforward.  Don’t sugarcoat.  Be honest.  Treat them like you would want them to treat you.

6.  Invite them to come peek at the ministry. I will often say, “No commitment, just come see what we do.”  It is amazing how many people really don’t have a clue what you’re really doing.  I’ll never forget a friend of mine who came to observe children’s worship and said, “I had no idea that this is what you did – kids really worshiping.  I didn’t really know what you did, but I had no idea this was it.”

How do you “stalk” potential volunteers without being creepy?