Diary of a New Campus: Discovering New Leaders

In the wild world of Children's Ministry we live or die by our leaders.  If we have a healthy, vibrant leadership culture, there's nothing we can't do, but during those lean seasons when our team gets stretched, it can be, um, interesting.  

In my last post I gave you a snapshot of our leader situation now that we are just a few weeks into this whole three campus church thing.  You can check out that post here to see the score card.

Long story short, we have a strong core of committed leaders, but also some big needs to fill.  Our new campus launch has maxed out our leader reserves and forced us to get creative on how we move forward.

So how do we  fill those needs without sounding needy?  How do we discover new leaders without settling for just anyone?

Diary of a New Campus: Recruiting Wins and Challenges

Ten days ago we launched our third campus and a brand new Children’s Ministry along with it.  The first two weekends were a rush, and we were focused on the key essentials to providing a great first impression for our guests.

Now that the blur of the first two weekends has passed, it’s time to start living in a new reality.  A new three campus reality.   It's one thing to launch a new campus.  It's another thing to lead it.  As we approach our third weekend, we’re no longer launching a new ministry.   We’re nurturing a newborn ministry and helping it to take its first steps. 

First priority?  Leaders! 

This week we’re taking a hard look to evaluate our leader situation on all three campuses.  Where have we been?  Where are we at?  Where do we need to go?   Truthfully we have a lot to celebrate and a lot of work still ahead. 

If you haven't evaluated the state of your volunteers lately, I'd encourage you to sit down and honestly process where you're at.  

Proverbs 27:23 says, "Be sure you know the condition of your flocks, give careful attention to your herds."  The writer of Proverbs knew the value of assessment and evaluation.  That's why we've been carefully tracking our numbers, including leader numbers, kid numbers, room ratios and the number of leaders we're adding to our team each week as well as reflecting on what those numbers mean. 

Here are the facts:

We have a strong core.

God has raised up an incredible core group of Children’s Ministry Jedi who are already committed and serving at the new campus.   They are phenomenal.  They get the vision and are “all in.” 

We need more.

We never want to position ourselves as a “needy” ministry.   We see volunteering with kids as a “get to” not a “have to.”  Ultimately, though, even as we keep our standards high, we still need to place about 30-40 new leaders to be fully staffed.

The launch team is on their way out.

We have a group of short-term temp leaders, called the launch team, who we recruited to buy us some time to identify those long-term committed leaders who will round out our core team.   We only have those leaders for a few more weeks.  These launch leaders are awesome and have been having a blast.  Hopefully God will call some of them to stay.

Our attendance is in flux.

It will be several weeks before we really know who is attending the new campus and which service they’ll choose to camp out in.  This means that kid numbers will continue to fluctuate as well as the pool of potential leaders. 

God is providing.

God is bringing us new leaders every week.  We placed 8-10 brand new leaders last week alone.  But not only is God bringing us new leaders, He’s bringing us new kids.  We registered 150 guests this past weekend.  No, that’s not a typo.  150!   

Oh yeah, we have more than one campus.

Even though we’ve had to focus a lot of attention on the Richmond Road campus for the launch, we are keeping the other two campuses high on the radar.  After all, we sent several leaders from our original campus to staff Richmond Road, which means that we need to identify new leaders to bulk up our teams at the original campus now that these guys are gone. 

You may think these sound like big problems, but our team chooses to see them as big opportunities to watch a big God at work.   In my next post, I’ll layout our plan for growing our leadership core over the coming months.  

In the mean time, what does your leadership reality look like today?  What do you have to celebrate?  What challenges are you facing?  Where are you expecting to see God show up?

Diary of New Campus: Saturday Night Week 2

Well here we are in the middle of the second weekend of launching our church's new campus on Richmond Road in the old Lexington Mall and the weekend is off to a big start.

Going into tonight I encouraged everyone to consider this another launch weekend. Just because we had one weekend of services, which went incredibly well, doesn't mean we knew what to expect this weekend.

The new campus had over 4,700 opening weekend. Would we have about the same number or 1,000 more? If so, what would that look like in the kidmin world? Would we have the leader coverage and space to handle it?

Of course tonight was also a home game for UK, which in Lexington means lower attendance on Saturday night and bigger numbers on Sunday.

Okay, here's what we ended up with:

All in all, in preschool through elementary we were down from 141 to 126, but it still felt busy.  We had several leaders out at the last minute with the flu so those 126 kids kept us hopping.  Keep in mind that this number doesn't include the 53 babies in the nursery (down from last week's 63.)

The interesting thing is even with these lower numbers we had several first time guests tonight.  During check-in I was stationed in our 3rd-5th grade environment and personally talked to four families that had never even been in the building.  

The great news is that we placed seven brand-new leaders this week.  Yay, God!  Now that people are starting to realize we really are open for business, they're seeking us out to get involved, which says a lot to me about how excited people are about what God is up to in Children's Ministry.  This is awesome because even though we have a strong team in place, we still have some major ground to get our groups covered once our launch team's commitment ends in February (the launch team was a group of extra leaders who came in to fill in the gaps while we finishing building our permanent leadership team).  

So the big question on my mind tonight is wondering what tomorrow will bring.  Will we make up for our slight dip in Saturday night attendance with larger crowds tomorrow or, after the rush of opening weekend,  will the numbers stay consistently lower?  

More importantly, no matter what numbers we have, what divine appointments does God have planned for tomorrow? Who will He bring our way? Who are the special families who need a word of encouragement or a personal connection that could make a difference for eternity? Looking forward to another morning watching God work!

Diary of a New Campus: Orienting Families to the Space

One of the biggest things we noticed launch weekend was how hard it was for people to get oriented to the building. Even though we'd had an open house the weekend before launch, which was attended by hundreds of people, many families still looked a little confused.

Part of the confusion, I think, came from the fact that at the new campus our environments are so close in proximity. Our parents aren't used to that at all.

At our original campus the Children's Ministry rooms are located far apart, very inconvenient for families dropping off multiple ages.

At the new campus, however, they are all in the same section of the building,
laid out in a logical and orderly design. Once people get used to it it will be incredibly easy for them, but it's a big change.

Also our three environments and the two hallways that separate them look very similar to each other. It's easy to get turned around.

One thing that helped, though, was that we designed our rooms so that they function in a very similar way to our Harrodsburg Road campus. Each environment (preschool, K-2nd & 3rd-5th grades) has a check-in lobby that feeds into breakout rooms which are connected to large group theaters. Parents drop off in the check-in lobbies and pick up in the theaters - just like we do at our original campus.

And yet, it's still hard to get used to new space, not to mention the fact that we had dozens of first time guests.

We're still evaluating signage - both the placement and wording, but think it's wise to live with it another week or so to get a better feel for what we really need before we make changes, if any.

If you find yourself in a start-up, multi-site campus or new building, here are the things we did right:

1. Host an open house to give people a sneak preview of the space.
2. Design our check-in and check-out to be a similar to our original campus as possible.
3. Have plenty of extra Children's Ministry leaders on hand to point people in the right direction.

It will be interesting to see what happens this weekend - how much better oriented last week's families will be in the building and, of course how many new people God brings our way. More lessons to learn along the way!

Diary of a New Campus: First Look at Numbers

We all know ministry isn't about numbers.  It's about people.  But if we want to take care of people who come to a weekend service, especially kids and families, we have to understand the numbers we're dealing with.  Numbers help us make sure we have enough space and leaders to provide a safe and unforgettable experience for our kids so that they can encounter the love of God.

Going into this launch weekend the numbers were a huge mystery.  Everyone told us to plan for 2,000-3,000 people, but really it was educated guess at best.  None of us knew who was going to show up and what God was going to do.

Would we have 1,000 people that first weekend or 8,000?  Would we have the room we needed?  Would we have adequate leader coverage? Would we be able to efficiently check families in and out of our environments?  At what point would the rooms begin to feel crowded?  

Well, launch weekend has come and gone and now that the dust has settled I've begun the process of taking a hard look at our weekend numbers.  Here's what we had in Nursery and Children's Ministry:

Nursery (birth - 3):     219
Preschool (3-PreK):  140
K-2nd Grade:            201
3rd-5th Grade:          156

Total:                       716

First of all, wow!  716!  Yes, it when it comes to spiritual matters bigger isn't always better, but this isn't about bigger.  It's about 716 individual kids.  716 bundles of eternal potential.  716 kids who God wants to know just how special they are to Him.  Each one of those kids has an unique place in God's big story, and we got to help them write the beginning of a new chapter of it this weekend.

It was so much fun to see so many kids packing out the place.  The good news is yes, we did have enough space and enough leaders - for now.  Some of those leaders, however, are a part of a special launch team (thank goodness for them) who we recruited for January just to get us off the ground and to buy us some time to identify who exactly would be attending the new campus.  Others are our permanent, fully invested Big Picture Show team who committed to going to Richmond Road months before launch.  

So the trick is, of course, praying for God to reveal those new leaders who will come in behind the launch team at the end of the month to make sure we're fully staffed.  I'm not worried there.  We've kept the bar high on the caliber of our leaders we're looking for and God has been faithful to provide.  It's only a matter of time.

To complicate matters, we know it will be months before we know how many people are really attending and which services will be the fullest.  What are our recruiting needs truly going to be?  I expect those numbers to fluctuate until late February or so before people really start to settle in to the new campus.

Also, did I mention that the auditorium has an unfinished balcony that can be completed down the road to accommodate more seats - hundreds of more seats?  What does that many more people in the auditorium look like in the Children's Ministry rooms?  How much more space will we need?  How many more leaders?

More numbers work tomorrow as we get ready for next weekend's guests!  The adventure continues!

Diary of a New Campus - Photo Tour

We had an incredible launch weekend, but honestly, I'm too tired to write!  So instead, here's a quick photo tour of our new Richmond Road campus.  More good stuff to come later this week.

Steel plate welded to a beam in the building
- pretty much says it all about Children's Ministry, right?

Entrance to Animation Station preschool environment

Animation Station large group theater

Animation Station Breakout Room

Entrance to K-2nd Grade Drive-In environment

Drive-In large group theater

Entrance to 3rd-5th grade Backlot environment - steel plate with individually cut wooden letters

Backlot large group theater

Smoke and lights for plenty of atmosphere

Backlot Check-In lobby - movie memorabilia in the frames

More movie props in the Backlot lobby - Children's Ministry is an adventure!

Nursery Check-In

Lobby 

The vault where we keep Children's Ministry offering

Lobby

Hallway leading to the Backlot and Drive-In

Auditorium

Diary of a New Campus: Opening Night Check-In Drama

Wow.  It's hard to believe, but after more than two years of planning, our first worship service at our new Richmond Road campus is history.  More highlights to come, but tonight I wanted to tell you about the biggest excitement of the night that occurred right before the service.

Check-In Lobby of K-2nd Drive-In Environment

Imagine you're about to open the Children's Ministry in a brand new campus with a 2,000 seat auditorium and you have families lined up at your doors waiting for you to open check-in.  Now imagine you find out just seven minutes before the doors open that your fancy electronic check-in system isn't printing any security tags.  Not in preschool.  Not in K-2nd grade.  Not in 3rd-5th grade.

None.  Nada.  Zero.  Zilch.  

Now you can imagine how I felt for a few minutes tonight as I watched dozens of people line up at the doors while our resident genius IT wizard worked feverishly to save the day.

It was a high stakes race against the clock.  Five minutes left.  No tags.  Three minutes left.  No tags.  One minute left.  No tags.

Then - I am not making this up - at exactly 5:15, the time we open check-in, Justin worked his magic.  The  printers fired to life and we opened check-in right on time.  Okay, preschool opened one minute late as we verified their printers were working too, but for awhile, it looked a little hairy.

Moral of the story, always have smart friends like Justin hanging around during crucial ministry moments like tonight's campus launch.  Also, make sure you have plenty of old fashioned back-ups for every tech dependent part of your ministry.  It wouldn't have been pretty, but if we'd had to go manual, we could have checked everyone in using our old school adhesive labels with pre-printed numbers.

We had a few other glitches, which I'll go into detail about in future posts, but they were minor.  God blessed our socks off tonight.  We had about 50 kids in the nursery, 120 in preschool through fifth grade and tons and tons of guests.

I know that that smooth of a night is simply the grace of God.  But His grace wasn't just in the form of miraculously healing our check-in printers.  It also occurred months and years before as He built a phenomenal Children's Ministry team who went above and beyond to prepare the way for tonight's launch.

In future posts I'll be going into detail about some of processes our team went through to make tonight such a great experience for our families.  But for now it's off to bed to prepare for two more launch weekend services.  Sunday promises to be busy with plenty of kidmin lessons to learn along the way.

How about you?  Have you had any epic fails or near misses with technology that threw a wrench in a big event or weekend service?  How did you deal with it?  

Diary of a New Campus: 4 Hours Before Launch

I was reading Joshua 1 last night with my seven year-old for bedtime devotions.  We talked about how scared Joshua must have been taking over for Moses after his death.  We talked about how overwhelming it must have felt to be the one God chose to lead thousands and thousands of people into the promised land - a place of beautiful possibility and terrifying conflict.  We talked about how scary it is to do something for the first time.  Sleep overs.   Dentist visits.  And yes, launching a new campus!  

Maybe that's why God told Joshua over and over again in that chapter to be strong and courageous because God would be with him, and God Himself would give him the land.

We are four hours away from launching our newest campus.  Four hours.  

When we launched our first new campus in Danville more than three years ago, they told us to plan for 200-300 people.  800 showed up.  

For this campus, we're planning for 2,000 - 3,000.  If the same math holds true, this time around, it could be a very interesting weekend.   

I've had butterflies all day.  The good kind.  Anticipation.  Expectation.  My head is swimming with details and my heart is full of promise.  

Out on a limb is the place my faith comes alive, and I figure out if I really believe everything I say I believe.  This is the place I love to be.

The bottom line is that for any of us in Children's Ministry, it can be scary stepping out into the unknown, until we realize that none of it is unknown to God.  And as long as we're following His voice, we're never stepping out alone.  

I can't wait to watch God show up tonight and do what only He can do.  It's one thing to build a building, but only God can build the church.  Looking forward to sharing the adventure with all of you as we go.

So, how about you?  When was the last time God called you to step out into the unknown?  How did it turn out?  What did you learn along the way?

Diary of a New Campus: Pre-Launch

In less than 24 hours we will be launching our third satellite campus at a renovated mall here in Lexington.  I thought maybe some of you would like to come along for the ride.  Each week I plan to post on the latest challenges, surprises and break-throughs in the birth of a brand new Children's Ministry.

The last three and a half years of multi-site Children's Ministry has been one of the best experiences of my life.  It's stretched me and challenged me like nothing else in twenty years of ministry.  It's forced me to think through what effective Children's Ministry really is and how to replicate that in widely varied settings.  Most of all it's taught me dependence on God and the value of team in a way I'd never experienced before.

We've spent more than two years preparing for tomorrow's launch, but honestly, none of know exactly what to expect - except the fact that God is up to something big and that He will do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine.

To hear the full story behind the campus and to check out some cool video and pictures, check out this story that was just posted by the Lexington Herald-Leader on Kentucky.com.  

See you back here in a few days with updates about the opening weekend.

Multi-Site Ministry Grows the Church in More Ways Than One

Have you ever made a bunch of photocopies for a special project only to later find a mistake in the original?   If you’re a perfectionist like I am, this kind of thing drives you crazy because then you have to decide if you’re willing to live with it or if you need to take the time to go back, fix it and make the copies all over again.  The bigger the copy job, the bigger of a deal it is to go back and fix your mistake. 

If you’ve spent any time in ministry at all, you know that we are in the replication business.   First and foremost we want to replicate the life of Christ in each and every Jesus follower who is part of our church.  This is why we do what we do - so that God in us can help our lives to match up to Jesus’ perfect example more and more each day. 

But it doesn’t stop there.  Multi-site churches aren't just replicating disciples.  We’re also replicating campuses.   Of course multi-site campuses, just like disciples, are not identical photocopies.  They are unique expressions of the body of Christ in multiple contexts. 

Our Danville campus does not and should not look just like our original campus on Harrodsburg Road.  Our new campus on Richmond Road will not and should not either.  However, even though they are unique expressions, each campus shares identical DNA.  We are replicating the core of who we are and how we function as a church.

In Children’s Ministry this means we are replicating our leadership culture, programming and safety procedures in a way that works on all three campuses.  Since we are copying these core practices, we know it’s a big deal that we get it right.  You don’t want to copy a flawed original. 

That’s why we’ve spent the last several months putting our Children’s Ministry under the microscope, evaluating, modifying and tweaking it to make sure we’re replicating the best possible model. 

Some of the improvements are internal and behind-the-scenes, and parents of kids in our ministry may never notice them.  Others are more external, such as family discussion cards now available in each environment, stage remodels and tighter check-out procedures.   

Ironically, being a part of a multi-site church forces me to practice simple children's ministry.  It forces me and my team to look at the essentials of what really matters in our ministry.  We have to look at every program, every procedure, everything we do and ask, "Does this make sense on other campuses?   And if not, why are we doing it here?"

In the end it leads our team to implement best practices that we would want to do even if we just had one single campus.  Multi-site just makes it obvious what those best practices are.  

That’s why I love being a part of a multi-site church.  Not only do our multiple campuses give us huge opportunities to reach more people, they also refine the way we do church.  Each new campus makes every campus better.