Really? Another book on leadership? You’ve got to be kidding me. Aren’t there enough out there already?
No, not really. Just like you can’t get enough love stories and cookbooks, you can’t get too much leadership help when you are involved in kidmin (kidmin is the Twittertm hashtag used to denote children’s ministry). You see, leadership principles are a dime a dozen these days, but help which specifically targets children’s ministers and how they can manage the change in their ministries is priceless. That’s what this book is all about.
I had no idea when God started dealing with me back in 1995 about teaching leadership to the children’s ministry world all the wonderful doors and possibilities He would open for me. In September of that year, I was on vacation in Nashville when God first gave me the assignment to teach leadership to kidmin folks. I remember thinking, If I’m going to teach leadership, I need to be the kind of leader others can look up to.
My mom had always told me, “When you point your finger at others, never forget there are three more fingers looking back at you.” So before I launched my monthly audio resource theClub, I knew I needed to be sure I was modeling all the principles I was going to teach. This called for immediate change.
I couldn’t immediately change others or bring instant change to the organization I was leading. In fact, I still can’t. But I can always change me! With every change I made, I saw fruit around me and in my own life. Each change in me bettered my ministry and my leadership abilities.
One thing led to another, and since I was already on the conference trail speaking at national events to thousands of leaders, I began to incorporate leadership principles into my teachings. I explained that children’s ministers only work with one group of children, but their everyday duties involve three groups of adults: parents, adult workers, and other staff. A lot of the kidmin folks I ministered to didn’t like the idea that how they related to adults had everything to do with their effectiveness with kids. Some told me they would rather learn about puppets and balloon sculptures, but every tool or teaching method has its place. Without leadership we are just educators, entertainers, or as I have heard it called “edutainers.”
Whether you like it or not, your ability to communicate with parents and bring them on board to disciple their children takes leadership. It also takes scores of adult workers and volunteers to effectively minister to large numbers of kids. Leadership is required to be able to recruit, train, and lead effectively.
More to come... Be sure and order your copy at a special price here online from JWM.
No comments:
Post a Comment