There are 2 common mistakes I’ve seen repeatedly made in my own ministry as well as that of others.
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Getting the direction wrong. |
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Underestimating training. |
These two areas make a huge difference to every team so lets examine them in the light of what we are doing. Read on and reflect how you may be able to start to implement this in your ministry.
Getting the direction wrong.
Leadership is often talked of as a circle or a pyramid, or some other shape, but that’s not what i mean by direction here. Here I mean the various groups of people you work with in relation to a leaders authority.
If you don’t seem loyal to your overall church leader you may to find it harder to find loyalty from them to you. However much your church may preach a team ministry it’s going to be one name that people read at the top of the list and they will see that name as the big boss. I’ve sadly seen the picture when church staff don’t publicly show loyalty to the present minister and it sows seeds of distrust and resentment very quickly.
You also need to show respect and support for those ministries you work alongside. Perhaps you don’t believe that the church gardener’s immaculate display is as important as reaching the un-churched kids who mistakenly trampled them, but you should try to do everything you can to show support for their offering. I’ve more than once theologically tried to justify treading on peoples toes, it’s not pretty, and it doesn’t bring about anything but angst.
Perhaps surprisingly, you need to spend less effort on those in your care than most of the kids ministry leaders do. putting an extra social event for leaders or parents rather than the kids may actually build a better ministry in the long term.
Lastly your ministry is not your own, your own life can often get in the way and it’s amazing how many kids ministry leaders will sheepishly admit to spending very little time reading the bible or praying about things unrelated to the kids work. God is equipping you to be his servant, and a servant needs to spend much of his time listening to the master.
Underestimating training.
When did you last have a training event…. really?
Training events can be a bit of a struggle to pull off. normally your leaders are busy, they have a lot of commitments and finding a time to get them all together is tough. But training needn’t be huge.
Simple suggestions to get started:
You can put an exercise at the beginning of a planning meeting,
call a few leaders together for a coffee one evening and just go over difficulties and share solutions,
or simply phone round at least once a month to show you are available.
This will make a huge difference to the team as a whole, time spent as a team grows the team, times spent showing you have time to share and you care about their struggles will build a relationship of genuine trust and loyalty.
there is a few simple ideas for training exercises here for a bit of inspiration.