My CPC takeaways

An important part of every conference is "What did you take away?" Well, besides from free t-shirts and a bag full of advertisements (not that there's anything wrong with that!), here are the major things I took away from CPC:

1. Renewed focus on prayer--Larry Fowler asked us "When is the last time you, as a Children's Ministry team, prayed together. I'm not proud to say I had to think about it. Yes, we pray before AWANA on Wednesday nights, and our Large Group team prays each week before we sing and tell the Bible story. But as far as our leadership team, and small group leaders, we committed to praying each Sunday before the kids and volunteers get there, and to make sure we meet weekly for prayer first, then whatever else we need to talk about.

2. Constant recruiting--I knew this, but have recommitted along with our team to recruit every single week, 52 weeks a year, whether we need people or not. Also, one thing I heard that I'm going to implement is holding our staff (including myself) for who they have asked to join the team that week. Everyone needs to be asking at least 3 people a week to join us in ministry.

3. The work is for the seeker--Jonathan Cliff said this in his breakout. "We need to stop getting frustrated when parents don't take home the junk we give them." Sometimes I get frustrated when parents don't buy in immediately, or leave the take-home sheets that we've made for them in the classroom (or garbage), or take their kids home in the middle of our Family Experience (major pet peeve!). We need to keep doing these things to reach the families that are looking for help. The families that don't want or need it aren't going to come (or take the stuff), get over it! Keep doing a great job for those families that the work is going to benefit. The rest will come along eventually, maybe, but you're not doing it for them anyways. You're doing it for the person coming into your church that wants to know that someone cares about them and their kids.