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Leading KidMin: How to Drive Real Change in Children's Ministry
Want to see your church’s kids transformed for Jesus? Struggling to get the whole church on board? Know what you want to see happen, but not how to make it happen ?
Leading KidMin is about what it takes to achieve big-time change. Moving past the “why” and getting straight to the “how,” Leading Kidmin provides tools and strategies for actually leading, influencing, and implementing change on a local church level—all from the vantage point of the children’s ministry director. The mission of Leading KidMin is to create a movement of change-agents who don’t just know that change is needed, but are equipped to make it happen, leading their churches in becoming more aligned, effective, and geared for growth. Pat Cimo and Matt Markins, veterans of KidMin, are prepared to make you the change-agent you want to be—and that your church needs you to be. Are you ready?
Leading KidMin is about what it takes to achieve big-time change. Moving past the “why” and getting straight to the “how,” Leading Kidmin provides tools and strategies for actually leading, influencing, and implementing change on a local church level—all from the vantage point of the children’s ministry director. The mission of Leading KidMin is to create a movement of change-agents who don’t just know that change is needed, but are equipped to make it happen, leading their churches in becoming more aligned, effective, and geared for growth. Pat Cimo and Matt Markins, veterans of KidMin, are prepared to make you the change-agent you want to be—and that your church needs you to be. Are you ready?
176 pages, Paperback
Published August 2, 2016
5 people are currently reading
46 people want to read
About the author
Pat Cimo
1 bookPAT CIMO has led a dynamic children's ministry and coached children ministry leaders domestically and internationally for nearly twenty-nine years. She is currently the director of Marriage and Family Life at Willow Creek Community Church in the suburbs of Chicago, and for many years this included direct leadership and oversight with Willow's Children's Ministry. She has a deep passion to own the game she most wants to win: influencing and developing champions of faith. Pat and her husband Dave live in the northwest suburbs of Chicago near their two married children and four grandchildren.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
April 14, 2017
Why I Choose this Book:
I help out with the children's ministry at church, and therefore I thought it would be helpful to read about the subject.
What I Thought about this Book:
Currently I'm not at the place where the information was incredibly helpful - I don't do enough with the kids ministry, and our church is rather small when compared to mega churches. At the same time I'm glad I read the book. It gave me a broader view of children's ministry in churches around the USA, as well as giving me ideas of things that I can avoid in the future if/when I do get more involved with the ministry.
Despite being sick and rather apathetic about words in general as I read Leading KidMin, I found it interesting and enlightening, so that's a big shout-out for the book. It was a bit confusing trying to keep track of which one of the authors was writing, but other than that, the writing was fairly straight-forward and easy to understand. It also struck me as being practical which is always a great thing, but then again, I'm not exactly in the correct position to state that with authority.
I appreciated the spirit of the book - the authors shared triumphant as well as trials, sharing humbly where they'd messed up and what they had learned from their mistakes.
There were pie charts and surveys throughout the book, and despite not being into math in the least bit, pie charts, surveys, and percentages make my little heart happy. The book was also pleasing to look at altogether - some of the information was in orange-shaded boxes, there were pie charts as I mentioned, headers that helped me stay focused, and several other small things like that which added to the ambience of the book.
Conclusion:
This probably isn't a book I'll be re-reading for a long time - simply because it's not where I am in life. I would recommend it to people who are very involved in kid's ministry.
Rating:
I’m giving Leading KidMin 4 out of 5 stars, and 6 out of 10.
*I received this book from Moody Press
I help out with the children's ministry at church, and therefore I thought it would be helpful to read about the subject.
What I Thought about this Book:
Currently I'm not at the place where the information was incredibly helpful - I don't do enough with the kids ministry, and our church is rather small when compared to mega churches. At the same time I'm glad I read the book. It gave me a broader view of children's ministry in churches around the USA, as well as giving me ideas of things that I can avoid in the future if/when I do get more involved with the ministry.
Despite being sick and rather apathetic about words in general as I read Leading KidMin, I found it interesting and enlightening, so that's a big shout-out for the book. It was a bit confusing trying to keep track of which one of the authors was writing, but other than that, the writing was fairly straight-forward and easy to understand. It also struck me as being practical which is always a great thing, but then again, I'm not exactly in the correct position to state that with authority.
I appreciated the spirit of the book - the authors shared triumphant as well as trials, sharing humbly where they'd messed up and what they had learned from their mistakes.
There were pie charts and surveys throughout the book, and despite not being into math in the least bit, pie charts, surveys, and percentages make my little heart happy. The book was also pleasing to look at altogether - some of the information was in orange-shaded boxes, there were pie charts as I mentioned, headers that helped me stay focused, and several other small things like that which added to the ambience of the book.
Conclusion:
This probably isn't a book I'll be re-reading for a long time - simply because it's not where I am in life. I would recommend it to people who are very involved in kid's ministry.
Rating:
I’m giving Leading KidMin 4 out of 5 stars, and 6 out of 10.
*I received this book from Moody Press
August 22, 2017
[Note: This book was provided free of charge by Moody Publishing. All thoughts and opinions are my own.]
From time to time I am amused as a reader when I see books end up being corporate strategies when I expected them to be Bible-based. Such was the case with this book. I have no objection in principle at least to statistical based methods of managing behavior, but I am often puzzled by the way these books work out in practice when it comes to issues of churches and the practice of Christianity [1]. My great-great-uncle, for example, wrote his doctoral dissertation on the ineffectiveness of Sunday School education about 90 years ago, and I am amused to be reading about this issue still, even more so as someone who is involved as a volunteer in my congregation's Sabbath School program [2]. In reading this book, therefore, I do so as someone who was not asked to participate in the survey this book is largely based on, but someone for whom this book is definitely personally relevant.
In terms of its contents, this book is a fairly short book of under 200 pages. The authors seem to assume that the reader is someone who wants to lead change within their children's ministry, which suggests an attitude that may be part of the problems discussed in the rest of the book concerning alignment of goals and so on. The first part of the book contains three chapters that encourage the reader to help others see what the reader sees. The second part then looks at how leaders of children's ministries influence the grander vision of a church through alignment, carefully studying the senior minister, and building partnerships that work. The third part of the book looks at how people in children's ministries lead from within by listening to aha moments, using their leadership voice, and focusing on winning. After that comes some notes, a look at the journey forward, as well as some notes about the research shown throughout the book, which consists of 5-point Likert scales arranged in fairly basic pie charts. This is not particularly deep data with vivid visual presentation, not in the least. A discussion guide, acknowledgements section, and some notes about the authors close the book and keep it around 180 pages or so in length.
For long stretches of this book the authors sound like they are writing to people engaged in corporate strategies of change management. In my view the children's ministry of a church has a rather simple and straightforward mission--to assist parents in teaching God's ways to children and in helping to prepare those children to participate in the events and ministry of the larger congregation. Neither of these tasks would appear to demand a great deal in the way of change management, and neither should be especially problematic when it comes to aligning the goals of children's ministry with the larger congregation as a whole. What is it that children's ministries are trying to do that the people who run them feel like division leaders of a corporation concerned with strategy and how to butter up a lead pastor in order to provide the political capital necessary to engage in massive change efforts that require going to conferences and implementing a lot of new programs. Perhaps the issue is that the people who run children's ministries are often just way too ambitious and forget the rather limited nature of their mandate--they are not educating children in place of parents, but in addition to parents. This should not be that complicated.
[1] See, for example:
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2015...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2017...
[2] See, for example:
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2017...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2017...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2017...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2016...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2016...
From time to time I am amused as a reader when I see books end up being corporate strategies when I expected them to be Bible-based. Such was the case with this book. I have no objection in principle at least to statistical based methods of managing behavior, but I am often puzzled by the way these books work out in practice when it comes to issues of churches and the practice of Christianity [1]. My great-great-uncle, for example, wrote his doctoral dissertation on the ineffectiveness of Sunday School education about 90 years ago, and I am amused to be reading about this issue still, even more so as someone who is involved as a volunteer in my congregation's Sabbath School program [2]. In reading this book, therefore, I do so as someone who was not asked to participate in the survey this book is largely based on, but someone for whom this book is definitely personally relevant.
In terms of its contents, this book is a fairly short book of under 200 pages. The authors seem to assume that the reader is someone who wants to lead change within their children's ministry, which suggests an attitude that may be part of the problems discussed in the rest of the book concerning alignment of goals and so on. The first part of the book contains three chapters that encourage the reader to help others see what the reader sees. The second part then looks at how leaders of children's ministries influence the grander vision of a church through alignment, carefully studying the senior minister, and building partnerships that work. The third part of the book looks at how people in children's ministries lead from within by listening to aha moments, using their leadership voice, and focusing on winning. After that comes some notes, a look at the journey forward, as well as some notes about the research shown throughout the book, which consists of 5-point Likert scales arranged in fairly basic pie charts. This is not particularly deep data with vivid visual presentation, not in the least. A discussion guide, acknowledgements section, and some notes about the authors close the book and keep it around 180 pages or so in length.
For long stretches of this book the authors sound like they are writing to people engaged in corporate strategies of change management. In my view the children's ministry of a church has a rather simple and straightforward mission--to assist parents in teaching God's ways to children and in helping to prepare those children to participate in the events and ministry of the larger congregation. Neither of these tasks would appear to demand a great deal in the way of change management, and neither should be especially problematic when it comes to aligning the goals of children's ministry with the larger congregation as a whole. What is it that children's ministries are trying to do that the people who run them feel like division leaders of a corporation concerned with strategy and how to butter up a lead pastor in order to provide the political capital necessary to engage in massive change efforts that require going to conferences and implementing a lot of new programs. Perhaps the issue is that the people who run children's ministries are often just way too ambitious and forget the rather limited nature of their mandate--they are not educating children in place of parents, but in addition to parents. This should not be that complicated.
[1] See, for example:
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2015...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2017...
[2] See, for example:
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2017...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2017...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2017...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2016...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2016...
August 12, 2017
Does ministering to children burn in your heart? Yet are you unsure how to go about this calling? If you answered yes to these questions then, Leading in KidMin, by Pat Cimo and Matt Markins and published by Moody publishers, is the book for you.
As a minister to Children and Families I am constantly on the lookout for new and Innovative books on leadership development in children’s ministry. Leading Kidman is 1 of the books I will read again and again for its impact on my life as well as the lies of those I minister to is incalculable. This book does not assume that’s the reader knows much about children’s ministry yet if you are a veteran, such as myself, you will still find this book and impactful read. In just shy of 200 pages Pat Cimo and Matt Markins demonstrate truly how to drive real change in your church children’s ministry. The Arthur explain this through three major tenants, helping others see what you see, influencing the grander vision of your church, and leading from within. These basic tenants must be at the core of what your leadership embodies for division of children’s ministry.
The authors do make it clear that this transformation will not be quick and it will not be easy yet this long and somewhat tedious process will change not only your view of how leadership must act but how children are impacted for Christ so that they may go and share the gospel with others as the Great Commission commands them. I dare not say that this is the only book you should read on children’s ministry yet it is one of the few that you should have in your possession in order to build a successful God honoring children’s ministry.
As a minister to Children and Families I am constantly on the lookout for new and Innovative books on leadership development in children’s ministry. Leading Kidman is 1 of the books I will read again and again for its impact on my life as well as the lies of those I minister to is incalculable. This book does not assume that’s the reader knows much about children’s ministry yet if you are a veteran, such as myself, you will still find this book and impactful read. In just shy of 200 pages Pat Cimo and Matt Markins demonstrate truly how to drive real change in your church children’s ministry. The Arthur explain this through three major tenants, helping others see what you see, influencing the grander vision of your church, and leading from within. These basic tenants must be at the core of what your leadership embodies for division of children’s ministry.
The authors do make it clear that this transformation will not be quick and it will not be easy yet this long and somewhat tedious process will change not only your view of how leadership must act but how children are impacted for Christ so that they may go and share the gospel with others as the Great Commission commands them. I dare not say that this is the only book you should read on children’s ministry yet it is one of the few that you should have in your possession in order to build a successful God honoring children’s ministry.
September 29, 2016
My husband is a children’s ministry coordinator. I have worked in children’s ministry in various capacities, but never been the head of a children’s ministry. So, as a good wife, when I received the opportunity to review Leading KidMin: How to Drive Real Change in Children’s Ministry, I thought it would be an excellent book for me to read and share my gleanings with my husband.
The authors of this book have written this book to help children’s leaders to transform their ministry. However, the plan for transforming children’s ministry is to transform the leadership first. It’s an inside-out approach to working with children and to creating a children’s ministry that changes lives. The issues that this book deals with include: (1) Leading from a secure identity. (2) Facing challenges with courage. (3) Identifying and leveraging “aha” moments. (4) Building partnerships with senior leaders and (5) Finding your leadership voice.
There are a lot of great ideas in this book, and many of them really come down to having perspective on your ministry. As a children’s minister, you are a part of a whole. What your ministries have to do is to be a part of the composite vision that your senior pastor and other staff have of the church. In other words, a thriving children’s ministry comes from being aligned with the goals of the church. This book is filled with ideas to help children’s ministers study their pastors, communicate with church staff and still allowing for those “Aha!” moments where the children’s ministry can change the direction of children’s lives.
This book also shows survey results from surveys of children’s ministers, and those can help you determine how your ministry compares to those around you. Another thing that I really enjoyed about the book is that it discusses how many children’s minsters are reactive and jump on the next trend as they see it. Instead, Cimo and Markins propose that children’s ministers would be better off seeing how the newest trend lines up with their church’s vision. Then, the newest trend can be adapted to the reality of what your church wants it to be.
Disclaimer: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
The authors of this book have written this book to help children’s leaders to transform their ministry. However, the plan for transforming children’s ministry is to transform the leadership first. It’s an inside-out approach to working with children and to creating a children’s ministry that changes lives. The issues that this book deals with include: (1) Leading from a secure identity. (2) Facing challenges with courage. (3) Identifying and leveraging “aha” moments. (4) Building partnerships with senior leaders and (5) Finding your leadership voice.
There are a lot of great ideas in this book, and many of them really come down to having perspective on your ministry. As a children’s minister, you are a part of a whole. What your ministries have to do is to be a part of the composite vision that your senior pastor and other staff have of the church. In other words, a thriving children’s ministry comes from being aligned with the goals of the church. This book is filled with ideas to help children’s ministers study their pastors, communicate with church staff and still allowing for those “Aha!” moments where the children’s ministry can change the direction of children’s lives.
This book also shows survey results from surveys of children’s ministers, and those can help you determine how your ministry compares to those around you. Another thing that I really enjoyed about the book is that it discusses how many children’s minsters are reactive and jump on the next trend as they see it. Instead, Cimo and Markins propose that children’s ministers would be better off seeing how the newest trend lines up with their church’s vision. Then, the newest trend can be adapted to the reality of what your church wants it to be.
Disclaimer: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
August 31, 2016
An easy read - but powerful message of how we need to change our approach in Children's Ministry!
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews