Monday Makeover: Kids Pointe, Tupelo, Mississippi

Where: 
Cross Pointe Ministries, Tupelo, Mississippi

Who:  
Children's Minister, Jeremy White, and the Kids Pointe team.

What I love about this:
These guys had a lot of real estate to cover.  Just look at the sheer amount of square footage this team flipped for their kids.  Jeremy said they got a lot of mileage out of an old, broken down fence they salvaged because it was already rough and worn looking and covered a lot of space.

No professional theming companies were used, just volunteers and a boatload of creativity and sweat. This team took a simple space, and with some hard work, made it kid-friendly and cool.

How Much:

• $1,200 building supplies
• $500 paint/stain
• $250 antiques (shovels, buckets, barrels, shutters, etc)

Big Ticket Item:

• $3,000 80 inch TV (the cheapest "big" TV they could find to work in a really bright room)

Miscellaneous supplies:

• Burlap (donated) 
• Rope and barrels (found at garage sales)
• Old broken down fence (found)
• Mining cave made from a repurposed Easter prop the church had in the garage.

What's left?

• Water tower finishing touches
• Entrance sign with logo

Check out these before and after shots:

Back of Room

Stage Area 

Stage Area, House Right

Here are some detailed shots of the welcome desk, entrance and the rest of the  new space. 

Way to go, Kids Pointe!  You guys created the kind of space that builds excitement, engages kids' imaginations and reminds them kids matter at Cross Pointe.

Creative Seating for Children's Ministry

Seating for children's worship space is always tricky.  You need a place for kids to land to give them structure and keep the room organized.  However, if they're jumping up and down and dancing during worship, it's also nice to have plenty of flexibility to spread out.  

How about chairs for worship space?  Here's just a few reasons they're on my bad list:

• They get in the way during worship. 
• They're distracting to the kids.  
• They're an accident waiting to happen. 
• They're noisy.   
• It's hard to keep them in neat rows.
• They really limit your options when it comes to how you use your space.  

So what do you do?  

The best option we've found is this removable carpet floor tape.  We use it in our preschool environments at our two largest campuses.  

It sticks to the floor with industrial-grade Velcro, looks way better than gaffer tape or duct table and is super durable.  It comes in four-inch wide strips in plenty of kid-friendly colors: yellow, blue, white, red, orange and green. 

Once you stick this stuff down to your carpet, it's not going anywhere (though you can remove it and stick it down again if needed).  I was convinced our kids would pick it apart in a matter of weeks, but after months of use, they haven't even made a dent in it.

  

It has a hard, glossy finish which looks great and makes it super easy to clean or sanitize if a kid gets sick on it or if a large group lesson gets a little on the messy side.  

At our church kids check into color-coded breakout rooms (orange and blue), so we've used the same color to show where kids from the two different rooms land when they come to large group worship. This makes dismissal easy because we can call the kids out by color.

If you'd like to try this awesome carpet tape for yourself, you can order it online at Stop-Painting.com.

Kidmin Make-Over: Fountaintown Christian Church

When it comes to effective Children's Ministry, facilities aren't everything.  They're no substitute for passionate, empowered leaders, transformational teaching or helping parents to get excited about discipling their kids at home.

But, let's be honest, awesome decor sure can make a difference.  It shows kids that they're so special you've designed a place just for them.  It shows parents you take the care of their kids seriously.  And it shows prospective leaders that Children's Ministry is a fun, exciting place to serve.

That doesn't mean, however, that you have a have a huge building or million dollar budget to make it happen.  It just means you need to be intentional.  You have to make a decision that you're going to make the most of the space you have, and will make the most compelling case possible to your leaders to invest strategic dollars in your rooms.

Here's a great example.   My friends Josh and Debbie Hahn lead Fountaintown Christian Church near Indianapolis.  The church averages around 120 people on a Sunday, but they are serious about reaching kids and families.

A few years ago, I got to hang out with their kidmin team and talk about possibilities of what they could do with their space.  And guess what?  They did it.  They renovated this youth area into a really cool Children's Ministry room.

It's amazing the difference some paint, carpet and a vinyl graphic can make (not to mention ditching old furniture).

In the picture below you'll see that by removing this kitchen area, the Fountaintown team was able to capture a great corner for children's worship, complete with stage and flatscreen TV.

So how about you?  Even if you can't afford the TV or the carpet, can you throw away old furniture, clean out the clutter and get some fun colors on the wall?  How about a vinyl graphic?  They're much sharper and easier to maintain than murals or paintings.

Whatever you can do, whatever space you have, whatever your budget, just take a step.  Follow Fountaintown's example and make your kidmin space a priority.

Decor isn't everything, but when done right, it communicates that Children's Ministry is an awesome place to be.

Leveraging the Wow Factor

When Andrew came into the breakout room, I could tell he was going to have a rough time.  It was promotion weekend, the weekend when the new 3 year-olds move up to Animation Station, our large group/small group environment for 3's-Pre K kids.

Andrew looked sleepy and clung to his dad's neck with no sign of budging.  His parents tried to coerce him to stay but weren't having much luck.  They were already running late for service and kept apologizing, obviously embarrassed.

I assured them that it was a big change for all the kids and tried to put them ease, but I knew I had to do something to win Andrew over or he'd end up in the adult service for the night.  The breakout room had blocks and puzzles on the floor but none of that was working.  I had to go big.

"Hey, Andrew," I said.  "You like robots?"  He looked up for the first time.   I said, "Come check this out, guys.  I think you're going to like it."

I led the family into our large group theater which is pretty awesome.  It's loaded with over-sized art supplies to help kids understand that God is a big artist who made them special.  And for this weekend's lesson we had a robot.

When Andrew saw it, he was sold.

But then I clenched the deal.  I showed him the coloring book.  Our coloring book is eight feet tall and ten feet wide.  When the kids walk in for the large group program, it's closed, but the storyteller opens it during the lesson to use as the backdrop for where kids are going to pretend to go that day.  It's a cool effect.

When I opened the coloring book, Andrew totally forgot about mom and dad.  They went to church, and he had a blast.  It meant the world to the parents because instead of leaving their kid crying, they got to leave him in a place he loved.   That's the magic of an amazing environment.

I pulled that same stunt several times this weekend and had 100% success rate.  Why?  Because kids couldn't wait to see what was going to happen on that stage.  They could see we'd built a special place just for them.

The cool thing is once the kids stayed, they weren't disappointed.  I saw one of hesitant girls gushing to her mom and dad after the service, "It was awesome!  You should have stayed!  It was really, really awesome!"   The parents (who an hour earlier were in the same boat as Andrew's parents) were smiling and laughing, obviously thrilled that their little girl LOVED church.

Honestly, when we built these environments, we were primarily thinking about how to use them for worship and storytelling, but since then, we've learned to leverage their wow factor in all kinds of ways.  The wow factor helps us win over new kids on special weekends like this and shows parents that we value their family so much that we put the time and money into crafting an unbelievably fun setting for their kids to discover God.

So, what about you?  What are you doing to create a wow factor in your church, and are you using it for more than just worship and teaching?

Okay, so not everyone can have a stage with a giant coloring book, but that doesn't mean you can't crank up the wow factor in your ministry.   For you, the wow factor could be as simple as a fresh, kid-friendly paint job or decking out your room with an outrageous prop.  One weekend I was teaching 3rd-5th graders about Peter walking on water and borrowed a kayak from a guy in our church.  Free wow.  The kids couldn't wait to see what we were going to do with it.

The point is, whatever resources you have, inject your environments with as much kid-appeal as possible.  Not only will it set the stage to bring the Bible to life but it will communicate tremendous value to kids and parents alike.