186: Planning Your KidMin Year | with Lauren Jackson

What if you could enter the next ministry year with clarity, unity, and a plan that actually fits your church? 

In this episode, I talk with Lauren Jackson from Kids Ministry Circle about how churches of any size can create a meaningful, intentional KidMin plan—and why July is the perfect time to start. 

Whether you're leading solo or working with a team, this conversation will give you practical ideas and a whole lot of encouragement.

In this episode, you'll hear:

1. Why summer is the ideal time to plan your KidMin year
2. How to invite Jesus into your planning process
3. Key conversations to have with your pastor and team
4. What planning looks like in small church contexts
5. Encouragement for leaders who feel overwhelmed or under-resourced

Connect with Lauren Jackson:
www.nextgenministrynetwork.com

Join our free Facebook Community: www.facebook.com/groups/smallchurchministry


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Transcript

Laurie Graham: 0:01

Hey, welcome to the small church ministry podcast, where we help volunteers and ministry leaders experience less stress, more joy and greater impact as we share strategies that actually do work in smaller churches. I'm your host. Laurie Graham, let's dive in. You. You. Hey, hey, welcome back to another episode of the small church ministry podcast. If this is your first time listening in, welcome. We drop a new episode every Tuesday, and we are all about small churches, from kids men to leadership to women's ministry. We talk tons to volunteers. We understand that you wear multiple hats for those of you who are pastors listening in, we love you too, and we are here to support everybody who's ministering in small churches everywhere. Guest on the podcast today, we have Lauren Jackson with us from kids ministry circle. I'm going to introduce her in a minute. Have her talk a little bit about her, but right before we went live, she said, So what do you consider a small church? And we get asked this question a lot. I just got an email from one of the pastors in the UK who runs a small church connections group, and he's like, hey, you need to know, in Europe, small churches, you're not speaking to small churches. Small churches for us are under 50, and a lot of things that that you are putting out there, or recording or talking to are just we would consider that a large church. And so I just want to start off and say, We get that. We totally get that. We tend to talk to churches under 200 we also have tons of what some might call a micro church in our community. So if you're in a church of 50 or less, or starting out in a house, or that is your preferred. You're always going to be in a house we love you. And tons of things that we talk about really are going to overreach every single size church, because we talk about relational ministry. We talk about doing ministry like Jesus. We talk about, you know, loving your volunteers as friends and not cogs and wheel who are meant just to do work. And our guest with us today, Lauren Jackson, has actually planted churches from living rooms. Okay, so she's been involved in that. She's also been involved in big church, like really big church, mid sized church. I'm going to let her share a little more about her experience, and also how she helps small churches, mid sized churches and big churches, even right now in her life. So wherever you're coming in from, pastors, volunteers, Kid men, leaders, women's ministry, whatever you do and whatever size church you're in, we love you and we're here for you. So Lauren, how was that for an intro that went a little longer than I thought? So how are you do you want to introduce yourself really quick to everybody and even just a little bit about your kiddos and where you're located. Let's, let's get everybody getting to know you.

Lauren Jackson: 2:44

Yeah, let's do it. Thanks for having me on the podcast today. I am so excited to be talking small church ministry like you said. I have been in the kids ministry world for over 15 years, kind of in a number of different environments. I've done the church planting thing, I've done the multi site mega church thing. I've done the medium sized church thing. I feel like I've been in a number of different spaces, and each one of them has had really high highs, and it's a few lows in between. And it's been such a joy to be a part of just the family of God and the church and and doing all of that stuff. And we are just about to jump into the church planting season. Again, we are planting a church that will launch in September, and so we're kind of thrown into this planting phase. Once again, it is such a sweet season of just seeing people really excited to be a part of a church that's going to be in their neighborhood. And so one of the things that I love to do is just come alongside kids ministry leaders, whether they've been in ministry for 30 years or whether they're in their first year of Ministry of just like, hey, how can we better equip you to love and serve your local church? So whether that's small church, big church, medium church, we try and look at what I like to consider foundations of kids ministry that you will see in every church you experience, no matter the size and things that are they may look different, but the foundational components are there. And so that's what I hope to do. That's what I strive to do. We all know that being in ministry is not all exciting seasons. Some of the seasons are hard, and so this kids ministry circle organization was kind of built out of seeing a lot of my friends who are in the church planting world just feel undervalued under Resources, under resourced and under equipped to do their job. So we're trying to step in the gap and help some leaders grow.

Laurie Graham: 4:45

Yeah, I love it so much. And right before we went live, you know, as we were talking, it's so funny, because we, like, half have a conversation before we go live, and then I'm like, Oh, they didn't get to hear that part, you know. But I love what you said, when you said, you know, the one, one of. Your messages to small churches is that it's not less ministry. Do you want to talk about that just a little bit as we get going? Yeah,

Lauren Jackson: 5:08

I think it's really easy to compare in the world of ministry, and even my husband's in the worship side of things, and and even this, it's not just a kids ministry thing. It's a ministry thing in general, of just it's so easy to think, oh, they have this many people, or look at their beautiful new building, or look at this event that they're running, and how many kids are at their and, like, at their event, or VBS, or whatever, it's just so easy to look and compare. And what I've learned being in a number of different churches is that God has you right where he has you for a reason, no matter how long the season is, and when you live in that space, when you live in that truth, that gosh, I am being obedient to what God has asked me to do, and I'm going to serve the people who are right in front of me. Yeah, and it like you're being obedient to what God is asking you to do, like, end of discussion, like that is where God shows up and meets you. And so I just think we as ministry leaders just need to stop comparing as much as we possibly can. I know it's so easy and it's like, sometimes it's our second nature, but instead, like, look at the people right in front of you, and look at your church where it is today, and just say, like, Okay, God, what are you asking me to do right now in this season? Where are my feet planted? And how can I glorify you with the way that you've provided and the opportunities that you've given me. And so I think it's just, I mean, everyone says, like, comparison just wreaks havoc on our spirit and our intentionalities. And so anytime we can just, like, squash that bug of just say, like, Hey, this is not something that we want to be a part of and not something that we want to have a part of our church culture is just so important, because God is doing incredible things in your people. And just because you're a church under 50 or under 200 it doesn't mean that the gospel is moving forward, yeah? And I think that is what we just need to remember.

Laurie Graham: 7:19

Yeah, I love it. And if you're listening right now and you're like, wait, wait. Lauren Jackson, kids ministry circle, I already know her. You may have already been introduced to her. She partnered with us at our kid men conference earlier this year, and so she had a free download. She was just a wonderful supporter of us. So if you're like, wait, wait, I know her. You might already know her. I know I said I was introducing you to our community, but, but you've already been around helping people already. So do you want to talk a little bit about goal setting? I know that was kind of linked to the resource that you gave for free at our conference. And as we talk about goal setting in the smallest of churches or, let me say that differently, because it's not always smallest churches. Sometimes we have an anti thought of goal setting, like we're we're so small we don't really need to set goals. Or we don't want to set goals because we want to make room for the Holy Spirit, like there is truth in a lot of areas. But can you give me your philosophy for goal setting? Because when we're talking goal setting as you're listening in, we're not talking goal setting of getting a certain number of kids in your ministry. That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about some year planning, that type of thing. So Lauren, can you give us some of your philosophy around goal setting before we lose some of our listeners,

Lauren Jackson: 8:41

yes, yes. So I like goal setting. I am the type that has like lists everywhere. I am a visionary by nature. And so I'm always like. They say people with my like personality are always asking the Wonder question. And it's true. It's like, Well, I wonder if we did this, or I wonder if this happened. I wonder if we could do this down the road. And that's just how my brain functions. And I know that there are a lot of people who don't function like me and sit down to do goal setting and they're like, this is not what I want to do, yeah. And we know, like, from our previous five years, that sometimes we set goals and then the world shuts down, and so sometimes people, well, there's that, right, there's that. And so sometimes people will be like, Oh, I don't want to set goals, because who knows what's going to happen. And I think goal setting is so important for anyone, whether it's personal, professional, ministry goals, fitness goals, whatever you want to do, because it just allows us a lot more freedom than we think. Yeah, and when we set goals, we are heading in the right direction. And if you are leading a team, whether it's a staff team or a volunteer team, you want to be all together, moving in the same direction and working to accomplish whatever vision you have and what. Whatever it looks like for you to move the gospel forward in your community. And that means you have to think for you have to be a forward thinking church. Yeah, you have to think about the next six months. You have to think about how you want to gather your people. You want to think about how you're going to reach your community in different seasons and and so when I think about goal setting for me, it gives me so much freedom to say, Okay, I know we're gonna do this thing in December because it's Christmas season. Here's what we're gonna do. And you know what? Then when I get to October, it does give me some freedom to say, Oh, wait, I didn't pre plan anything for November. We have a lot of kids that just happen to have this day off of school. I'm gonna do a park day or whatever, like you can add some that you want, some of that spontaneity, because that's where some of the best ministry conversations happen, is dinners and park days and women's gatherings. But when you kind of plant your flags, as I like to say, of like, put those non negotiables on the calendar, and then you can work around those and leave some space for the Holy Spirit to move, or someone to come into town and host whatever they want to host. And so especially if you're in a setup and tear down situation, you gotta ask sometimes for permission to use the building, and so it's helpful to think ahead. Yeah,

Laurie Graham: 11:27

I love that you're talking about goals giving freedom, because that is not what comes to mind for many people. So I'll just speak for probably a good number of listeners right now, and for myself, there's times when we get burnt out of the goal setting mentality, like, I think some of the personal development and some of our, if we've had business experience or even church experience, our experience with goal setting is not freedom, it's, it's very limiting. It there's a lot of failure feelings that come up when we think about goals, you know, even when we think about like setting, you know, New Year's resolutions. You know, we set these goals and and so goals become, I think, become sometimes more related to failure. And in churches, sometimes we push back like we're not going to set goals, number one, because they never happen anyway. Or number two, because we don't feel like maybe they're spiritual, which I know you and I have a different mindset, right? Like, I think when we invite God into the vision planning, and so I just want to give everybody permission as we talk more about goals. Right now, as you're listening, if the word goals, if that concept bothers you, just think vision. Think Forward Thinking. Think like, you know, what could we imagine God doing? I always think of that Ephesians verse, right where God will do more than you imagine. Well, if he's going to do more than we imagine, we have to imagine something like we're supposed to imagine, because he's going to do greater. He's going to do more. And so if the goal setting thing is is bringing up anything negative as you listen right now, just replace that word. It's not about the word. It's not about the word goal setting. It's about the concept of having something in mind for our future. All right,

Lauren Jackson: 13:08

yeah. And I think goal setting sometimes we link it to a number, right? You kind of mentioned this earlier, like sometimes we think, Okay, our goal is to have 100 people at our Easter egg hunt. And I think that's where failure comes into play. But if you link a goal or a forward thinking idea to your vision and mission, then it's so much easier to get behind, because if you then turn your Easter egg hunt goal into Hey, we really want to reach our community through the Easter egg hunt, even if one family shows up from the neighborhood, yeah, that makes that event a success,

Laurie Graham: 13:47

yeah? It's almost aligning it with a purpose, right? Yeah? Like, instead of saying we're going to do a service project, maybe one of the goals is that we develop a partnership, like we find that neighborhood, that city, organization that that rural outreach, whatever we our goal is to find somebody we want to partner with, and maybe that means having a couple projects. So I love that you just, you just kind of flip the script on that. So even in the smallest churches, or the mid sized churches, or are, you know, smaller big churches pushing 200 where do you start? Because you do some coaching. We'll talk about that at the end, and you have some cohorts and some really cool things that you do with with your organization. I want to make sure we talk about that. But before we get there, where do you start with churches, smaller churches, Kid men with goal setting like, give us. Give us your give us your best knowledge. You know, the next couple minutes.

Lauren Jackson: 14:41

Let's do it. Okay. So in order to think forward, you have to think past.

Laurie Graham: 14:46

I love you so much. Can I just say that? Like every time you say something, I'm like, I teach that. I do that too. I Yeah, this is, this is when we know we're like, aligned, right? Okay, I'll try really hard not to interrupt you go.

Lauren Jackson: 14:58

So we always have to think. About what happened last year, or what happened the year before, and where did God work? What was, what are you defining as a success? What didn't work? Like, even the things that I know of a church off the top of my head, who are like, Hey, we planned this great parenting event, and it was not a success. Okay, write that down. What are the God stories that you heard from this previous year, what were some really sweet seasons as a church and what were the hardest times for you as a leader? When I think about previous things, I think about ministry, but then I also think about myself as a leader. Did you overbook yourself? Did you plan too many things? Did you feel like there was a season where you didn't have enough time to connect relationally with your team. Okay, make a note of that. Write that down, because that informs how you plan for the next year. And so you always want to think back. You want to name what worked, what didn't work, and what do you want to do again? Maybe you have a really hard conversation of saying, Hey, I don't think VBS is for us next year, that's okay. You kind of have to name some of those things, and sometimes it's leaning into the hard conversations with people who just assume you're going to do the same thing every year. And you kind of have to make the decision of like, okay, if this didn't work, if this is no longer serving us, just because you say no once, it doesn't mean you're saying no forever, and it's always okay to reevaluate. And so start with looking back. Write some key findings down, write some core ideas, some thoughts. Maybe you went to a conference and you heard a really good idea. Write that down that you never heard of before, and you're like, Oh, I definitely want to see if we can add this into our annual calendar. And then I tend to start big picture. And so what I like to do is I like to plant my flags first. So what are the non negotiables? Well, here's when our church barbecue is every summer. Here's when our Christmas choir performs every year. Here's when Ash Wednesday, or whatever big thing you have every year that's not moving. So do you have go? I'm

Laurie Graham: 17:05

gonna totally interrupt you, because I love what you're saying, and I just want to broaden this for everybody listening. We teach this concept in our planning parties 100% but we also talk about like, not having silo ministries. So some of those big things are the church, things, like, your children's ministry is not independent. So when you think of like you mentioned, like Advent or Lent, or, you know, the big church things, it could even be, y'all, if you're in kids, man, it could be the men's barbecue. Like we've got to look at what is happening so that we're not competing and planning around. So yes, okay, keep going. I just like, my brain is like firing I'm taking notes. I'm so excited.

Lauren Jackson: 17:43

Yeah, okay. So once you have your kind of non negotiables in the big things, the church wide things, the other ministry components, then you can think about, okay, where do we want to go this year? And that's why I recommend taking a day, or a half a day if you can just like out of the small tasks of ministry and just sitting with the Lord and saying, Okay, what do you want us to do? Where do you want us to go this year? Where are you asking our families? What are you asking of our kids? Maybe there's a specific thing you really feel called to teach the kids in your kids ministry this year. Maybe there's a service project you really want to do, or just like, create some space to think, to reflect and to listen. And I just feel like that's such a good reminder, because sometimes we want to go through our goal setting process. We want to go through our annual planning process and be like, Oh, easy, done. Check it out the list. When really, you really want to listen to where the Holy Spirit is leading you as the leader and as the vision keeper of the ministry, whether you're a volunteer or a staff person. And so I always recommend taking some time away and just listening. And maybe this is getting some scripture from your senior leadership and saying, Hey, lead pastor, where are you taking the church next year? Are we going through an entire book of the Bible? Most pastors have some sort of idea on what they're going to teach on now, I know that sometimes they don't, but I would say a good percentage of them has have some sort of idea. And you can say, okay, maybe going through the book of Matthew is going to impact what we do in my ministry. So let's, like, brainstorm that a little bit. So I always start big picture, and I always do big dreams. What do you want to do? What would you love to do? If, like, no budget, no, yeah. Things can, like, hold you down. What would you love to do? And then you kind of slowly bring all of those ideas, like, to the ground. I like to say they're like, floating way up high, dreaming big. And then you have to, like, slowly work them to the ground. And so I start big picture, and then I like to go seasonally. I i. Sometimes people go quarterly. Seasonally is a little bit different than quarterly, just because I tend to think fall, winter, spring and summer, because that's a lot. That's how a lot of times the kids ministry calendar functions, yeah, like we do an event in the fall, we do an event in the winter. And so I like to think seasonally. And this is where I get a little bit more practical. One of the best tools you could ever do is try and make something as small as you possibly can. And so if you are planning like we're in the middle of summer, so if you are planning a fall kickoff, okay, you've got fall kick off. You've got a calendar date for it. You know, it's not competing with other ministries. You've got the church on board. You're super pumped about it. Now, the Now is the time where you can say, Okay, what would it look like for this event to be a success? And then you say, then you ask, what? Who do I need to help me? So who do you need to bring into the conversation? Do you need to build a team? Do you need to make sure your senior leadership is on board? Do you need a band? Do you need the production guy, like, who needs to help you? And then how much time is this going to take me? And so being really realistic on do I need to set aside two hours a week? Do I need to set aside a full week before this event comes. And so those are some three questions I ask now I'm blanking on the questions of like, Oh, what is this event? What it will look like to be a success? Who do I need to bring into the conversation, and how much time do I need to set aside for this event? Yeah,

Laurie Graham: 22:06

yeah. And as you're talking, you know, as you're talking, a lot of our listeners are volunteers. They're not kid men leaders. They're not paid. They don't well, they should say they don't consider themselves kid men leaders, but that they are just in a different context. So a lot, one of, one of the concepts we talk a lot about, is having planning parties, like planning together. So for some of you, you're not going to take a day and come up with your own dream. You're going to include other people in it, because that's so powerful. But Lauren, before you get even more into details, I just wanted to bring up the fact that I love that you, you kind of said this like, this isn't the goal setting. Isn't checking it off the list. It's, it's a conversation. It's a conversation with Jesus, it's a conversation with your pastor. It's a conversation with others. It's, and I think that concept alone takes so much pressure off, like, this is a conversation. Even you and I on the podcast today, we're like, we're going to be successful, because it's a conversation. Like, it's a conversation, you know. And I think I love that, like, I love that it's like, you, you take the pressure cooker off the whole thing and say, this is we're having a conversation here. And so I love it.

Lauren Jackson: 23:14

Keep going, yeah, so kind of once you ask those three questions, then from there, you kind of, I would do that for like, your whole annual planning of like, okay, what events do we have on the calendar? Is there something new we want to try? Okay, where does that fit in? When I'm putting events on the calendar, I always like to think through a couple different categories in terms of maybe some vision behind certain events. So I like to think of outreach. So are what are we doing to reach our community with the gospel? I like to think of connecting. So what are we doing to connect our families to other families in the church, maybe you run two services, or you just have families that only come once a month, but you know that they would be really good friends with a family that comes on opposite Sundays that they come. And so we want to do the Christian life in the context of community. And so how are you helping connect other families to each other? So outreach, community and then discipleship. And now discipleship can be one of those elusive terms that I think we like throw around. And so another word that you could exchange with discipleship is equipping. So what are we doing to equip parents to be the primary disciplers? And those are different things. An outreach event is probably not going to be an equipping event. And connection event is probably not going to be an outreach event or, I mean, it's going to have like, various levels of each but I always like to remind people of like, if you're going to do in a connecting event and you're going to try and connect other families to each other, you need to have something planned for the kids. Every parent knows you cannot have meaningful conversation if there are children running around everywhere. Amen. So that helps you plan strategically, and it helps you understand, Okay, how are we going to define success for this event? What category we putting these events in? Do we have only outreach events? Do we need to add equipping an equipping event in the calendar so that we have a well rounded annual calendar. So those are just some categories that I like to think about.

Laurie Graham: 25:17

Yeah, no, I love it. And you know, July, it to me the summertime is such a great time to stop, to envision the year, to pull back, to have the conversations, even the conversations with Jesus. What? Do you see, you know, and and doing that reflection time, I love being able to do that in these summer months. So this is just perfect timing for us to have this conversation. And Lauren, you have something special happening right now too, and I know you wanted to invite people and talk a little bit about the ministry that you have.

Lauren Jackson: 25:49

Yes. So through kids ministry circle, we have seasonal cohorts, one in the fall and one in the spring. And in our seasonal cohorts, a group of 20 ish depending on the group of kids ministry leaders, specifically meets once a week for nine weeks, and there's no like cap on who can be a part of it. So we've had volunteer kids ministry leaders join, we've had staff members. We've had large church, small church, medium church leaders join, and we go through what I like to call the five foundations of kids ministry. And so we just talk kids ministry very broadly, but also we have guests come and join us to talk about specific things that have been incredibly helpful over the last couple years, and it's just a time for you to connect with other ministry leaders. And something that we've added last in the spring is we started doing these mini meetups, so we kind of create smaller groups for people to talk about specific things. So we did a mini meet up this last spring that was all for set up and tear down churches on how do you do that well, and how do you be more organized. We did Mindy meetup for kids ministry leaders who were leading staff teams, or small church kids ministry leaders. And so they could really engage with people who are in a similar season, in a similar situation with them. And so that was a really fun add on. And so if you want to learn more about the cohort, they can go to next gen ministry, network.com/cohort, to learn more. And then we do offer scholarships. I want to make sure your people know that we do offer scholarships, and so reach out to me if you are interested in that or just want to learn more.

Laurie Graham: 27:27

Nice. And that's This isn't open all year long, but right now it's open, correct? How long is it open for sign ups? Or maybe you don't know the end date

Lauren Jackson: 27:36

yet, we start the second week of September, okay? And which, now I'm thinking about it. That's like also our launch week for the church. So I don't know if that's the beginning, but you know what? Maybe it

Laurie Graham: 27:49

is awesome. So people can always go to that to that link, though that website, and see when the next cohort is starting, in case they're listening to this a year down the road. But What perfect timing, really, to have you here, and if you didn't catch the link, we'll make sure it is in the show notes. And you're also on Instagram, I think, and Facebook, and you want to give your handles a little bit or they should they just look over in Jackson? Or is it kid ministry circle?

Lauren Jackson: 28:14

It's your kids ministry circle on Instagram and Facebook and on YouTube.

Laurie Graham: 28:19

Awesome, Lauren, thank you so much for being with us today. What a great conversation for everybody listening in. We'll talk again next week and in between now and then, as I always say, just keep being a light. The world needs you, no matter where we're at, no matter where we're walking around. So be a light. You