4 Measuring Up: Knowing What It Takes

Measuring Up

Knowing What It Takes

What we attend to flourishes. What we ignore withers.

Perhaps the single most transformative moment of all is when a leader says, “I don’t know what to do,” and then goes about the hard work of leading the learning that will result in a new faithful action.

I love going to children’s ministry conferences. I love meeting people as passionate about this work as I am.

True confession: For years, I went to children’s ministry conventions with the secret hope that I would find the next great ministry idea. I jumped from balloon animals to bubble machines, from rotation models to puppet shows, from the hottest new speaker to the you’ve-never-seen-anything-like-this-before curriculum.

But a great conference can feel a little bit overwhelming—so much information, so many ideas, so many possible directions to pursue. So I’ve made it a habit, at the end of every conference, to identify my top two ideas—only two—to focus on when I get home.

If you’ve never tried to take three or four days of awesome material and narrow it down to just two big takeaways, you might be surprised how tough it is—especially for people who love new ideas! But without this kind of focus, I’m pretty sure I would attend conference after conference, spend lots of money, and wind up with nothing to show for it but a collection of notes I’d never look at again!

Of all the great ideas I have gathered, one of the greatest is this: There is no singular good idea that will transform a struggling children’s ministry into a sustainable, effective one. In other words, the next great idea will be absolutely useless without the kind of systems required for building a faithful, thriving, manageable children’s ministry.

Frequently changing direction based on the latest hot idea can be detrimental to our ministries. Every new direction requires time to work out the kinks. And bouncing from one great idea to another can prevent a ministry from getting traction. Churches that look for a quick fix to their children’s ministry woes will soon find themselves exhausted and eventually stuck.

Balloon animals (and the million other “cutting-edge” ideas out there) will never be enough to transform our ministries. Solid children’s ministries are based on something else altogether. So if we don’t focus on ideas, what do we focus on? To borrow from the Sound of Music, “Let’s start at the very beginning.”

A Place to Start

Jesus told his disciples a story about an ambitious builder who wanted to erect a tower. He started building, never taking the time to determine what it would cost to complete the job (Luke 14:28-30). It didn’t turn out well for him.

Building a thriving children’s ministry begins at the place most churches avoid altogether: being crystal clear about what we want. Though it sounds simple, it may be the most challenging part of the process.

Here’s the pattern we’ve seen. We ask the leaders of a particular church what they’d like to see in their children’s ministry; more often than not, they say “more kids!” Okay, most don’t start by saying more kids. They start—rightly so—with the desire to see children experience for themselves the love of Christ. But when we point out that this is very likely already happening, at least with a few kids, they eventually get to “more kids.”

To these churches, more kids means reaching more people with Jesus’ love, not just about having more kids than the church down the street. But when we ask, “How many more kids?” we see in the leaders’ countenance, That’s got to be the dumbest question in the world!

We push for an answer and hear, “Well, as many as we can get, of course!” Um, I’m going to have to say that’s not an answer.

What if a school district tried to build a school building for as many kids as they can get? What if a professional football coach made a primary goal of getting as many players as possible on the team? What if a builder started with no other plan than to build it as big as possible?

But most children’s ministries make that very mistake. They start building before deciding what size they want to be.

So let’s start here. Do not pass go until you’ve decided the capacity you’d like to have for your ministry.

The decision-making process starts with collecting information.

Once you’ve gathered that information, you can compare it to some national norms. Fortunately, Ministry Architects has discovered a few patterns that can provide a baseline that you can benchmark your own children’s ministry against.

Though these ratios are not statistically precise (these numbers do not come from academically refereed studies), we have good reason to believe that they can provide an accurate and faithful baseline for your church to consider its investment. Please remember that these numbers don’t guarantee health in a ministry. These are merely norms, meaning that many ministries see success with different levels of investment; however, the norms serve as a good way to see where your church falls in comparison with churches around the country. In working with churches of all different sizes, denominations, and complexities of programming, we’ve discovered these four patterns:

$1,000 per child. A good rule of thumb is that for every $1,000 a church invests annually in children’s ministry, it can expect to see one child participating on an average week. (There are a number of variables that can affect this ratio—geography, cost of living, size of the church, and so forth.) At first, this sounds like a pretty high number, but when you take a closer look at every dollar spent on the children in your church, you will see that the numbers add up quicker than you might imagine. Your actual line-item budget might not reflect this number, but the church may be spending more money on its children than what is stated in the children’s ministry budget. For example, if the choir director spends eight hours a week on children’s choir, you would add 20 percent of the choir director’s salary and benefits into money spent on children in your church. Add to that the cost of goldfish, diaper wipes, curriculum, photocopies, nursery equipment, and background checks, and the dollar signs begin to accumulate.

For example, with an annual budget of $25,000, a church can expect to have an average weekly participation of around twenty-five children each week. The financial investment includes the children’s ministry’s program budget as well as staff salaries and benefits. Program budget includes everything from spare diapers to VBS decorations.

One wild card for many churches is paid nursery workers. Because there is extraordinary variety in what churches pay nursery workers, this number may have an impact on the $1,000 per child ratio.

Why does all this detail about money and ratios even matter? Churches that underfund their children’s ministries are often surprised to find volunteers, parents, and staff who feel discouraged, undervalued, and disgruntled. Churches trying to save a few dollars on their children’s ministry often shoot themselves in the foot, creating a kind of negative climate around the children’s ministry that repels new people and frustrates even the most faithful parents.

Does this mean that less affluent churches cannot have a sustainable children’s ministry? Not at all. Those churches simply need to match their investment to their expectations. If they have funding for five kids, they can create a marvelous ministry for those five!

One full-time staff person for every seventy-five children. The way a church staffs its children’s ministry can be a great indicator of the value the church places on this ministry. A typical church will have the equivalent of one full-time staff member for every seventy-five kids who participate in some aspect of the ministry each week.

For example, a church that hopes to have thirty-five children active on an average week can probably get by with a half-time children’s director. A church that hopes to have 225 children on an average week will need three full-time children’s staff people.

In calculating this number, you’ll want to include the total number of staff hours allotted to the children’s ministry. So if the music minister dedicates five hours a week to children’s choir, those hours are included in the total number of children’s ministry staff hours the church is providing. Here’s another way to think of it: for every seventy-five kids participating on an average week, the church needs to dedicate forty staff hours to keeping the children’s ministry running at a healthy pace.

At this point, we often hear this objection: “But what if we have more volunteers?” Apart from someone to coordinate the work of the volunteers, those volunteers will simply not stick around. They will be frustrated by the lack of support, by conflicting visions with other volunteers, and by the sense that serving in the children’s ministry can feel like a “life sentence.” For a group larger than a handful of kids, someone needs to be the point person, responsible for being the hub of the ministry and keeping all its components in good working order.

One adult volunteer for every five children. Another rule of thumb is to have one adult volunteer for every five children. Accordingly, you’ll want to take the total number of children participating on an average week and divide it by the number of volunteers serving weekly in your ministry. For example, if you’ve got thirty-five children and five volunteers on an average week, you have a ratio of one adult to every seven children.

Because one adult can successfully pay attention to about five children, we have observed that healthy children’s ministries have a ratio of one adult to about five children. If you’ve got rotating volunteers (not a best practice), you would use the number of volunteers serving on an average week. For example, if you have teaching teams of four people who each serve once a month, you would count that team as one weekly volunteer, not four. We might even consider four volunteers rotating in and out every week to be less than one person since they have much less opportunity to actually know the children and their families. (If you’re already struggling to hang on to the adults you’ve got, feel free to jump to

If you have questions about how many adults are required to care for babies, toddlers, and older kids, you can check your state’s guidelines for daycare. Sure, the children’s ministry is not daycare, but those standards can be a helpful for ensuring the safety of your children.

Fifteen percent of the worshiping congregation. In a typical church, the number of children who participate weekly in some type of program at the church tends to settle around 15 percent of the total number of people who worship on an average week.

So, if fifty people participate in worship on an average weekend, you can expect seven or eight children to participate in the life of the church. If one thousand people worship at your church on the weekend, you can expect somewhere in the neighborhood of 150 children to participate in your ministry on an average week. We know that churches can vary widely in their demographics. However, we have seen churches with significantly older congregations, who desire to minister to kids and who choose to make the appropriate investment in the systems and processes of sustainable children’s ministry, successfully incorporate more children into their ministry.

Of course, this number can vary widely, and all four of these norms work collectively. For example, a church of three thousand in worship may have just two hundred children involved on an average week, but they are also not investing in staff and volunteers at a rate that would be required for a healthy ministry to 450 (15 percent). Or a church of 150 in worship may find themselves with over forty children involved weekly because of a long-term full-time staff person with great volunteers.

What’s Your Capacity?

I’m not saying you should spend more money on your children’s ministry. I’m saying you should match your expectations to your investment. If you’ve only got the funds to faithfully engage ten children, then your church’s leadership needs to be crystal clear that they have decided to have ten children involved (and be happy about it). One surefire way to suck the energy out of a children’s ministry is to invest at one level and expect results that are twice (or ten times) as much as the investment would merit.

When George began as the Christian education director at his church, he was energetic and passionate. People were amazed at his energy. Now, after just two years in his position, he seems on edge more often than not. What started as a joy has begun to feel more like a prison he endures “for the sake of the children.” He was stopped short recently when his youngest daughter asked, “Daddy, when did you grow those angry eyes?”

It’s easy to blame pastors, parents, or congregants. But upon closer inspection, you’ll likely find what we call a crisis of capacity. This sounds pretty nonthreatening, but don’t be fooled. It is the cause of so much toxicity and dysfunction in so many churches.

Here’s a way to think about it. Imagine I’m planning a trip from sunny Texas to New York City for Thanksgiving. I have a brand new suitcase, and I’m excited to take it on its first trip.

I have packed enough to keep me well-dressed for my four-day trip. Everything is humming along smoothly until I get to step five, “Closing the Suitcase.” It just won’t zip. I try sitting on it. It doesn’t work.

I bring in my husband to sit on it. It still won’t zip. My blood pressure is going up. As I am stomping around the house, my husband points out that this particular suitcase has an extra zipper that can expand its capacity 4 to 6 inches. (I hate it when he’s right, even in imaginary stories.) It works! I unzip that handy little zipper, and suddenly my shower gel and running shoes have room to breathe. What a relief!

I can relax. I’m excited about the trip again. But then it hits me. I forgot a coat! No one goes to New York for Thanksgiving without a coat! But there’s absolutely no room left in my suitcase. Panic sets in again.

What’s my problem? I have a crisis of capacity. I have a choice to make: spend Thanksgiving in New York without a coat, or get a larger suitcase. This suitcase simply does not have the capacity to get the job done.

Here’s another way to think about it. If you are a children’s ministry staff person, you are hired for a finite number of hours a week. In addition to those hours, you do an impressive job juggling things like housekeeping, bill paying, eating, sleeping, caring for your family, maintaining friendships, and keeping your body and soul healthy.

All the while, it is easy for church members, parents, boards, and committees to assume that you should be able to accomplish everything the church needs in the allotted time. The problem is that programs, responsibilities, and relationships are being added to your ministry suitcase. It just won’t fit.

Every now and then a church calls our Ministry Architects team to help with a general sense of disorganization or lack of direction in their children’s ministry. One of our discoveries over the years is that in many instances simply replacing the “disorganized” staff person with someone “more organized” doesn’t really solve the problem.

The problem may not be with organization at all but with a crisis of capacity. When a church expects more results than their investment can produce, that church will see a contagion of blaming, advice giving, and discouragement, none of which really moves the needle.

It’s when a children’s ministry balances its resources and its expectations that we have a solid starting point for building a thriving ministry. When these are in balance, anxiety dissipates, creativity blossoms, and everyone begins to relax and get to work.

It can be hard to talk about money for children’s ministry. In most churches, there is little sense of urgency about children’s ministry. A leaky roof in a church creates a sense of urgency. A broken air conditioner in a Texas summer creates an immediate action. But underinvestment in children’s ministry is accepted in many churches as something we’ll just have to live with. However, the high cost of the discomfort of living without air conditioning doesn’t hold a candle to the cost of burnout, frustration, and loss of members created by chronic underinvestment in children’s ministry.

The Job You Didn’t Know You Had

If you are tempted to put this book down right now and run to your finance committee to prove that your ministry is underfunded and understaffed, you might want to first think a little more deeply.

Before you launch a campaign to go after your church’s finance committee, remember that every church has to make choices. After all, there are only so many resources to go around. There is a good chance that those making the financial decisions in the church value children and know that having a thriving children’s ministry is essential to the church’s long-term health.

Why, then, are most children’s ministries underfunded? Sometimes it looks like this. A mom (let’s call her Stacy) is one of those “rock star” volunteers who was asked a year or two ago to coordinate the children’s ministry because “there is no one else to do it.” With a passion for kids, a love for Jesus, and a large carton of Goldfish crackers, Stacy enters the world of ministry.

Juggling supply lists, volunteer emails, curriculum decisions, and lots of meetings, she is determined to make children’s ministry experience a great one for the kids in her church. As a high-capacity mom, she is used to shouldering a heavy load of unrelated responsibilities for her family, and she does the same thing in her volunteer roles. She is so careful about money that she is admired for her frugality.

Naturally, in her ministry work, she rarely asks for help, especially when it comes to money. What Stacy doesn’t realize is that if she doesn’t champion the children’s ministry cause, it is unlikely that her ministry will obtain the kind of funding support it needs to thrive. Quietly and faithfully shouldering the load alone likely will not move the ministry forward.

In most congregations, children’s ministry can be “out of sight, out of mind.” It’s not that people don’t care. But unless someone is a parent or a children’s ministry volunteer, there’s a good chance they’ll never set foot in a children’s ministry classroom. Sure, they may see VBS decorations once a year or walk past a colorful bulletin board, but they will naturally assume that until they hear otherwise the children’s ministry has everything it needs.

If Stacy stays quiet and waits for the church leadership to figure out what the children’s ministry needs, she will likely be waiting for a long time. We’ve seen way too many exhausted children’s directors grow resentful and complain about the church’s lack of support. Little do they know how much power they really have.

Once Stacy recognizes that it is part of her job to speak up and advocate for the needs of the children’s ministry, she can be as intentional about communicating those needs as she is about her VBS programming. With a spirit of humility and gratitude, she can share the stories of the life-changing work happening in the church’s children and their families.

She can figure out how budgeting decisions get made (committees and staff people need to be consulted). And she can make the case for the church appropriately investing in its future through the children’s ministry. Though it may not produce immediate fruit in the current budget cycle, it is very likely that after a few years of working her plan to advocate for the children’s ministry, she will see significant results.

If you are the point leader for your church’s children’s ministry, it all starts with recognizing that you are responsible not just for the day-to-day programming of the ministry but also for insuring that the church’s expectations match their investment.

No one else in the church thinks about its children’s ministry and what it needs as much as you do. If you don’t sing this song, no one else will. And you won’t likely get the support you need to run a sustainable children’s ministry.

You may start out as the sole champion for the children’s ministry in your church, and you may wonder, Why doesn’t the pastor or the youth minister or the music director champion children’s ministry? I know I had those thoughts more than once. They have young kids. They know how much it matters to their family. Why was I the only one banging this drum?

I did not realize that it wasn’t just because they have their own causes. It was primarily because I never asked! I could have said, “John, in staff meeting today, would you mind sharing a little about how our take-home devotions last month affected your family?” I could have had everyone on our staff write down the name of a child “on their hearts” so I could pray for them. After one month, I could give them back, let them write a prayer update, and then redistribute them so they could pray for each other’s children.

The Cart and the Workhorse

At one level, it is easy to throw money at a problem, assuming that more cash will solve any difficulty. When a relationship is rocky, we might purchase a gift. When we feel guilty for the time we aren’t spending with an estranged family member, we might send a little bit nicer Christmas present. It’s simple.

So it’s tempting to take the same approach in ministry. Churches who want to attract young families decide that to compete with big churches with big budgets they need to invest in the bells and whistles, rather than identifying investments that can make a ministry unique and inviting, both to church families and those in the community.

Let’s say your church wants to boost Sunday school attendance. The bustling ministry across town has a sparkling indoor playground and coffee shop teeming with young families. But an upgrade in facilities alone will do very little to revive a struggling ministry. Believe me, we’ve seen plenty of lousy children’s ministries in awesome facilities.

As one piece of the puzzle, your church will definitely need facilities for children that feel safe for parents and inviting for kids. But expensive facilities are not the right starting place. Allow me to play devil’s advocate.

Let’s say that your major facilities upgrade brings in dozens of new families to check out the church. Is your children’s ministry ready? Are there processes in place to connect with those families and integrate them into the life of the church? Are there processes in place to communicate a compelling vision for your ministry?

An indoor playground won’t recruit, train, and inspire the volunteers you don’t yet have. Colorful murals won’t support parents in the faith development of their children. Don’t fall into the trap of trying to put up wallpaper before pouring a strong foundation.

I love developing engaging, creative, and well-designed children’s spaces! But our ministry becomes a cheap, flimsy imitation when we focus our first energy and resources on “wallpaper,” while ignore major cracks in the foundation.

Here in Texas, when the soil doesn’t get the moisture it needs, the foundations of buildings begin to crack. And those cracks have a way of showing up in the rest of the house, which is unsightly.

I have seen massive cracks in walls, from floor to ceiling, some wide enough to fit your finger in. Doorframes are no longer level. Floor tiles crack. I’ll never forget the night our family was awakened by a cracking tile. It is so loud we thought we had just heard a gunshot!

It doesn’t take a construction expert to know what would happen if we used beautiful and expensive wallpaper to cover up the cracks. Here are a few ways we’ve seen churches invest in wallpaper before they attended to their foundation:

In the short run, it’s almost always more fun to hang wallpaper and buy cute furniture than to tend to the foundation. As we turn to the next chapter, I’ll unpack for you exactly what I mean when I use words like systems, structures, and foundations, and how those terms can be translated into the first steps toward a thriving, long-term, sustainable children’s ministry.

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