“I just don’t have the resources.” I’ve said it. You’ve probably said it. Those of us in small churches think it is a great excuse because we often are working with little to no budget and few volunteers. I’ve also heard people in large churches say it, because they’ve either outgrown their kidmin resources or because the percentage of the church budget that gets funneled into kids’ ministry is pathetic. This is a universal problem. I rarely hear someone say, “I have more resources than I’ll ever need.” But are you really under-resourced? Or are you just looking in the wrong places for the wrong things?
In the digital age, there is a resource for everything and often those resources can be found or created for little to no cost. Sure, if you want the best of the best, you are going to have to pay for it, but until you have the financial backing to do that, other options are available. I just do not think that in this day and age anybody should use the excuse that they were unable to do ministry because of a lack of resources. Maybe your ministry is forced to look a little different because of what you can afford or because of the time you have to commit, but that isn’t an excuse to do nothing.
Do you wish you had a ministry website, but cannot afford to hire someone to build one for you and you have no money to afford the website hosting? Create a FREE Facebook fan page for your ministry and spend the money on a domain address that forwards to your site. Here’s a post from Samluce.com about designing a fan page and here’s a cheap place to buy domain names.
Having trouble affording curriculum but don’t have the time or skill to write your own. Check out ministry-to-children, kidology.org, Lifechurch’s OPEN, or SEEDs from Church on the Move. As you grow, you can look into a curriculum that is priced based on the number of kids in your ministry, such as the Orange curriculum.
Really wish you had a great environment for your kids, but don’t have the money to hire someone like Worlds of Wow to build it for you. Check out my post on what we have done for our kids. I really think our initial costs were less than $100.
I highly recommend that you check out my Free Resource page to see a sampling of the resources I have discovered online that are not only free, but are of good quality. Another great place for free kidmin resources is Free CM Stuff.
And if you still can’t find what you’re looking for, ask someone. Utilize a site like cmbox or just start asking around. You’d be surprised what some churches are eager to give away. We’ve gotten hand me down resources that worked perfectly for what we needed.
But those are just physical resources. What about getting people to help out? I wrote a post on Kidmin1124 about recruiting volunteers in a small church. Always remember, people don’t want to jump on a sinking ship. Show them why they should want to be a part of this ministry. To do that, you need to have something worth showing them.
I will never pretend like doing kidmin is easy. It isn’t. But I’m also not going to let a “lack of resources” keep me from doing what God has called me to do and doing it with excellence. I’d encourage you not to either.
**If you’re still not convinced that God has blessed you with kidmin resources, check out this post by Jamie Doyle. And here’s another one from Karl Bastian (the kidologist).
Recent Comments