Episode 16: How to Share Vision with Parents

Do the parents in your church know what your Children’s Ministry is all about?  How do you communicate vision? If you want some ideas on how to get better at it, then check out this episode of the Simple Kidmin podcast.




Listen right here on the blog or in iTunes.

In this episode I talk about five reasons you need to share the vision of your Children's Ministry with parents.  Then, I go into seven different vehicles you can use to share vision.

One of the vehicles I mention is strategic events such as Parent Dedication, 5th Grade Celebration and KidSplash.  You can learn more about each of those in previous episodes of the podcast.

Another vehicle I talk about in this episode is starting a parent email newsletter.  You can check my church's parent newsletter here.

How to Set Up a Parent Email Newsletter

If you're interested in starting your parent email newsletter, which I highly recommend in this episode, you can use a service like Mailchimp.  There are others out there, but Mailchimp is the one I'm most familiar with.  Best of all, Mailchimp has a free option that allows you to have up to 2,000 subscribers and send up 12,000 emails a month (as of the time of this post).

If you want to set up your own parent newsletter on Mailchimp, here are four easy steps:

1. Set up your account.  Start here.
2. Create an email list.  Basically this just means creating a group of people (like Children's Ministry parents) you want to send an email to.
3. Ask parents to sign up.  I would do a big push at first and then make it a part of the process for enrolling a child into your ministry.  Here's how to create a signup form.
4. Send your first email!  Mailchimp calls each email you send a "campaign."  Here's how to send one.

For more tips on how to use this awesome tool, check out Episode 16 of the podcast.

Speaking of newsletters, you can sign up for the Simple Kidmin newsletter so you don't miss a post or episode of the podcast.


How to Set Up a Parent Blog

It's a good idea to post your newsletter content to a blog as well so you can refer parents to previously published posts.  You can just put part of your content in your newsletter and link to the blog to read more so your email is relatively short or you can publish all of your content on both.

There are several free blogging platforms.  Wordpress.com is an easy one to start with.  Here's a great tutorial to walk you through setting up a blog from scratch.

How to Create Vision-Packed Recruiting Videos

Also in this episode I make a reference to our annual recruiting video/announcement and how these are a great tool for casting vision, not just for potential leaders but for everyone in the church.  Here's a post  I wrote talking about how we create those videos (along with a few examples).