Do you want to join a team who is passionate about creating a church that people love to attend, and reach out to the needs of its neighborhood? Do you have a desire to develop a healthy, growing children’s ministry that impacts the entire family? Then we encourage you to apply for our Children's Ministry position.
Leadership and Management
Our Children's Minister takes the leadership role in the administration and management of all activities and classes in the Children’s Ministry. This involves spending time planning, budgeting, and taking care of the facilities where children meet. The Children’s Minister should be aware of liability issues involving the care of children, overseeing items like permission slips and screening of adult volunteers, sign-in and check-out system for all programming, mandated reporting, and all other safety protocols.
Recruiting and Team Building
One of the great myths about children’s ministry is that it’s all about kids. Yes, it is for the kids, but your primary work is with adults.A Children’s Minister role is always recruiting, encouraging, inspiring, and training volunteers. The leader must love these responsibilities and learn to be good at them.
Let me be candid, the success of your children’s ministry is not based on your choice of curriculum. The curriculum is essential, but the best material in the world in the hands of unmotivated and untrained volunteers will not build a world-class children’s ministry. It will not result in children falling in love with Jesus. That is the result of highly motivated and well-trained volunteers who care about kids. A children’s ministry is only as good as its volunteers!
Equipping/Teaching/Training
A children's minister also plays the role of educator, incorporating life lessons that are biblically based into enjoyable activities for children, such as crafts, games, plays, summer camps, field trips, concerts, and volunteer events. Though the aim is often for children to enjoy themselves, our Children’s minister is expected to weave spiritual formation into these activities to help prepare them for life outside the church, such as serving the community. The curriculum for education, Sunday school, should be based on the overall mission and values of the church itself. The Children’s minister is responsible for the curation and outlay of all curriculums.
Culturally Relevant Innovator
Kids are learning, growing, and changing rapidly, just like the culture they live in. They are accustomed to creativity and ongoing innovative change, particularly through new technology. It’s natural to them. If your children’s ministry is boring, they will check out. To lead the next generation, it’s vital that you not only can keep up with that generation, and see life through their lens but stay out in front.A great Children’s Director is innovative in the way their teams connect and communicate with kids so that it reflects relevance to current culture.
Relationship Building and Outreach
Building relationships is an important role for a children's minister, as it entails the development of trust between children and authority figures, as well as the strengthening of relationships between kids, other kids, and their parents. You will Develop and implement the strategy for whole-family discipleship; working with families to equip and empower parents/families to form and nurture their children.
The Children’s minister facilitates strong bonds within families and connects them with other families as part of a community. Managing people -- such as with children's and families' activities and volunteering -- is a huge part of what children's ministers do. Fostering good relationships with other adults is just as important as with the children.
Care
Children should be able to turn to their Children’s minister and Adult leaders for spiritual and emotional guidance to help them deal with life's problems, such as divorce in the family, bullying, and other social issues that take place in the classroom and the neighborhood. Part of the caring role involves being able to recognize children with special needs and offering resources to their families for assistance. Most importantly, the role of a Children's Minister and adult leaders is to provide encouragement for children to rely on their faith for all things they may face in life, and how to ask for help when needed.
Strategic Children’s Ministry Champion
It is essential that the Children’s Minister can cast vision, and inspire people about the value and importance of children’s ministry. You are the chief storyteller of the beauty of what is happening in the children’s ministry.
If you are searching, saved, black, brown, white, gay, straight, sure, unsure, doubting, older, younger, peace-filled, pain-filled, able-bodied or differently-abled, no matter how many moms or dads or divorces or kids or chromosomes or failures or successes or questions you have, no matter your gender or status or where you are from know that you are welcome in our community and you are loved and you are welcome at Saint Matthew. We are a community centered in the Grace of Jesus Christ. A neighborhood Church making a world of difference.
