RELEVANT CHILDREN'S MINISTRY

Twice a year, our children's ministry staff team goes on a retreat together.  We actually call them "advances" instead of "retreats."  Our goal is to move forward not backwards.

I believe it's important to get away as a team on a regular basis to pause, reflect, deepen your relationships, pray, plan and dream together.

One of our Advances takes place the first of the year.  This Advance focuses on team building, leadership development, spiritual growth, a review of the previous year and goal setting.  It's a great time to gear up for the new year.

The other Advance is held late summer and focuses on team building, leadership development, spiritual growth, campus reports, evaluating everything we do, brainstorming new ideas and planning out the next year's calendar.  It's a great time to gear up for the fall ministry season that's coming.

Here is the agenda for the one that we just went on to kick off 2015. 

• Worship 

• Devotions

• Break

• Ministry overview

• Lunch

• Review of last year

• Goals for 2015

• Leadership training - How to equip, encourage and empower your volunteer team

• Games and team building

• Prayer

We went to a camp our church owns for the retreat.

We love to laugh and have fun.

We stopped by to pray over one of our new campuses on the way home.

I'm always looking for ideas.  Would love to hear about any retreats, planning sessions, team building games or other things you do to grow together as a team.  Share them with us in the comment section below.

Each year, in the first few days of January, our children's ministry team goes on a retreat (we call it an advance).  Part of this retreat is spent reviewing last year's trends, goals, highlights, etc.

We then set goals for the coming year.  Here's what we measure. 

Top 3 overall goals

• What are the 3 big wins we want to see happen this year?  These would be three big picture goals that are separate from the other items on this list.
  

Attendance

• We count numbers because every number represents a person and every person is someone Jesus died for.
• How many kids are we currently ministering to?  
• How many kids does God want us to minister to this year on a weekly basis?

Number of volunteers

• How many volunteers do we currently have?
• How many new volunteers can we add this year?

Baptism class

• How many kids do we want to see attend our baptism class this year?

Baptism

• How many kids do we want to see baptized this year?

Milestone Classes/Retreats

• How many kids/parents do we want to see go through our milestone classes/retreats such as 1st Grade Bible, 5th grade to middle school passage, etc.

Parent/Child Dedication

• How many parents do we want to see attend our parent/child dedication class and then dedicate their child?

Serving

• How many kids do we want to involve in serving opportunities? 

Number of first-time families

• How many new families do we want to see walk through the doors?

Number of first-time families who return

• How many guest families do we want to see return?

Your turn.  What goals do you set?  What are you measuring?  Share with us in the comment section below.