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How to Evaluate Your Children's Ministry

edward-smallBefore you can accomplish any of your dreams for your ministry, you first must evaluate your ministry to discover where it is now and where it has been before.

I love technology. It gives independence, freedom, and not to mention, more time. Probably, one of the most helpful devices recently popularized is the portable GPS system. It provides directions to just about anywhere in the U.S. I say just about anywhere, because, in spite of its helpfulness, occasionally it can steer you wrong. For instance, I remember when it directed me to the north-side of Oklahoma City when I should have been 45 minutes on the south-side of Oklahoma City but on the same street. Or how about the time when it sent my wife April and me onto a gravel road for 9 miles with a sign near the end that read "Keep Out" on a closed farm gate. I also remember going through Nashville once when it said to exit East on I-40, it really meant to exit West.

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7 Great Ideas for Teachers

The best teachers are teachers that never stop learning. Here are some ideas to enhance your teaching skills so that you might become more effective.

  1. A teacher should develop a mastery level of understanding for their subject. Quite often, college students pick their major because of their teacher's inspiration back home.
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Starting Off Right

Tips to help you improve your general assembly times.

abb-smallThe opening assembly is usually that fifteen to twenty minutes before all students go to their classrooms or tables for the actual lesson of the week. It’s a “pep rally”, it’s a “glad you’re here” time. This should be one of the most exciting times of each week, not the most boring place they have been all week. However, it’s not just a crazy-loud-fun time absent of any spiritual value. It is an informal teaching time as well.

Understand that some teachers (and all churches have some) are a “zero” for an enjoyable and exciting time. If children go directly into a “zero” class, then it could easily be the most boring place they have been all week from start to finish.

Ideas for an Exciting Assembly Time

Lively Song Time. Use the overhead to display words. Use children’s chorus books, cassettes, or words printed in large letters on a colorful marker aboard. Every week you will have children who do not know the words-and that’s not very exciting for them. Remind all of your workers often, this is not the local nursing home we’re running.

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Developing Your Creativity

Developing your Creativity!

abb-smallDeveloping your own creativity is a long-term mind-set for those who will “head the pack.” It’s not that the burden falls totally upon your shoulders, and everyone else just waits until that great idea drips from your lips. You must lead others to be a part of the process, whether that mind-set is in place yet or not.

You will find that occasionally you will come up with an idea, almost like a “discovery.” But, more often than not your “new” idea is an innovation of someone else’s idea. Albert Einstein said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” Creativity is a thinking process, where there are no boundaries to rapid thoughts, such as in brainstorming. Let the thoughts flow, many of them. Later, you can “weed out” all the ideas until the best ones are left. From ten ideas, bring it down to five, then four, then three, then choose the best, of the top two, and “go with it”! If it falters, you still have three or four other ideas.

Understand early on that you will sometimes swim and sometimes sink. That’s not all bad. Sinking will make you want to swim all that more!

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