River City Studios resources

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Walnut Hills

Dinese and Jamie reported on their experience with the Hopemobile at Walnut Hills (a Massillion area projects development). There is clearly a need to express God's love in this area of Massillon and the feeling is that a partnership with the Hopemobile's already existing presence may be best. We need to discuss how to turn this into something real. What types of activities and events will be most effective and most appropriate? Some ideas were interactive games, quick and simple theater type stuff (light and funny, but also focused on delivering Jesus' message - less about works/acts), magic with a meaning (spiritual). We also talked about effectively setting expectations with volunteers and to encourage them to really think through whether their children should come along (give them the points to ponder).

Team, fill in the blanks that I missed here and add your ideas. Let's start to make this actionable.

Servant appreciation ideas

What ideas do you have about servant appreciation? 2 each year? A big and a small? We discussed many random ideas last night but I don't think we made any decisions other than we need one soon. Soem of the things that were discussed were possibly partnering with the other ministries in the church to do an all servants event with a "bigtimer" like comedian Tim Hawkins. Steven James would also be amazing for children's but we'd need to schedule WAY in advance. We talked about many presentation elements including kid testimonials, teacher testimonials, and the possibility of getting some "big church" time to recognize our servants' efforts. What did I miss?

Brain dump here...

and add your thoughts, ideas, and suggestions. We need to start bringing this into some kind of actionable form.

Secular music/artists with Christian Themes

What songs do kids hear on the radio that they might not realize have a Christian message and/or what artists do they hear on the radio that they might not realize have a Christian singing background? And what ideas do you have about how to use these?

Johnny Rodgers event

OK - so let's use this area to talk about how this night is being planned. I think everyone liked the idea of starting our 3000 hours reminder here. We also talked about T shirt giveaways, and encouraging many families to attend. What else can we do to make the most out of Johnny's time at RiverTree?

ServeFest

We talked a lot last night about different ideas for children and their families to serve in the community. We talked about a recognition and idea sharing board too. Finally we talked about coordinating a "Free Carwash - No Donation Accepted" event.

Dinese - will you post the ideas you documented as a response to this post?

Jen - can you document our plans for the recognition/idea sharing board (or at least continue the discussion) here?

And here's a question for everybody - is "ServeFest" this whole concept of families serving together or is it a particular event?

Please join in the discussion on these topics!

9 week Summer curriculum

So where do we begin? First, what are the dates we're looking at and how quickly do we need to get something together? Is this where we want to try some creative new lessons and take a whack at applying some of the fun and innovative stuff we learned at our conferences?

I'm wondering if this is something that should be included in the vision sharing discussion that we're planning to have with the Drama and RCS teams.

Let's open this up and just get some conversation going about this topic. I'm not sure where to start, so Jamie or anyone else, maybe you can give us some direction on what we want to accomplish, and by when, etc.

April 6th Meeting notes

After tons of great discussion on many topics, here are the major takeaways from the meeting...

In an effort to focus our efforts on a smaller number of things we agreed to prioritize some of the many great ideas we've all been discussing. The items below are what we'll focus on in the near term...

• Drama - We all feel that many opportunities exist to use drama/performance arts to further engage kids. There are opportunities to use this in weekend services and in special event and family ministry events as well. As a first step, Dave will arrange a meeting with Dave Huthmacher, Dinese, and the pre-school team members to share vision, discuss ideas, opportunities, and next steps. Also, Dave and Dinese will arrange a meeting with others that have participated in, or have expressed an interest in participating in River City Studios and other Childrens' theatrics, to do the vision sharing, and to begin planning the June River City Studios Family Event. We'll include naming the event as part of that agenda.
• Family Ministry is a theme that we'll continue building. The first big event in that theme is the Johnny Rodgers event. We have a special opportunity to engage and teach families and should strive to make the very most of it. Team members agreed to challenge themselves to find at least one family that wasn't already planning to attend and encourage them to come. Also, many great ideas were discussed about making that a WOW night. One of those was that we could launch the 3000 hours tagline/theme. I'll create a seperate post for the team to collect ideas and further plan that event.
• ServeFest - We had lots of great discussion on how to build on the community service initiatives that Greg has propoted in "Big church" with the kids. I'll create a seperate post to collect and share those ideas. Steph and Lisa took action items to talk to folks about the car wash event. Jamie will be working with Michelle D. on communications.
• 9 week summer curriculum - we discussed taking 9 weeks off of Kidmo to change things up a little and to try some new things. Again, I'll creat another post to continue that discussion.

We agreed that Fall might be a good time to look again at how to involve children in serving on the weekends. And, while Dinese has some responsibilities for the August Jackson Park event, it's really being handled by another group and shouldn't require much attention from our team.

The next meeting will be at 6:30 on May 3. In addition to discussing progress on our action items, we'll discuss the success and lessons learned from the Johnny Rodgers event.

Did I miss anything?

March 17 meeting

Here's what came out of our meeting last night...

Dave will create the team blog - DONE!

Each team member will continue to pray for direction and guidance over this ministry - ONGOING

Team members are challenged to build an awareness of pop culture trends, entertainment media, and marketing that engages, persuades, teaches, or motivates kids. What is it that get kids' attention and what s it that makes these things "stick?"

Did I miss any?

Suggested links

You can put links in any of your blog comments, but in addition we may want to keep a running list of valueable links/references in one place. We can do that here...

Misc. cool ideas forum

Some thoughts just can't be categorized. Use this thread to throw out your random ideas that just don't seem to fit anywhere else. Also, feel free to suggest new threads or just create them yourself.

Using this Blog

We'll see how effective this is as a communication tool for this team. To me, it kinda provides a forum for a meetings without meetings. Each discussion thread can continue a discussion on a particular topic among us all, whenever it's convenient for each of us. It doesn't replace the need to meet "live" every couple weeks as we discussed, but in the mean time we can continue to share ideas and document thoughts before they evaporate.

I view each thread as just a very informal discussion. Don't worry about whether you sound like a genius or whether you made spelling errors, or anything. Just participate. The more participation we have the further we'll progress faster.

For those who haven't blogged before, all you need to do to participate is click on the message you want to read and if you want to post a response, just click on comments, type your message and publish.

If you have general questions about blogging, post them as comments under this message.

Actually, just to verify that everyone knows how, will you each post a comment (however long or short you want) under this message?

Performance Ministry discussion

We all seem to agree that some kind of Family Theater production is something that is working great for family ministries at places like Willow and Northpoint and that we'd like to do something similar here. So, what are the pros and cons of adopting someone else's "product" versus creating our own? What's our short term and long term thoughts on this? What can we do now and is that any different than what we see on the 3-5 year horizon?

Family events

What is our strategy with regard to "family events?" Are they "just for fun" or are they "teaching events for the whole family" or are they "family outreach events" or some combination of that or something completely different. Let's talk about that strategy and also kick around some ideas in this thread...

Mission and strategy discussion

We feel it's important that we all share a common purpose. The Mission statement is still being developed. We can use this area to talk about the mission and the strategy we're employing to achieve it...

Childrens' Wish List

OK - so if money was no object, what do we wish we had to engage, entertain, teach, and make memorable, our interactions with the kids and/or their families. Let's focus on "stuff" here (we'll talk about process stuff in another post). What tools, devices, gadgets, materials, etc. do we wish we had? People sometimes ask what they can donate to Childrens' Ministry. Or maybe the church says "hey THK - we see what you're doing and want to support that further - what do you need?" Maybe it's stuff that we aren't going to run out and buy today but that we might consider as the church grows. If possible throw in some ballpark guesstimate of the cost for each item, or state that you have no idea.

What we learned in Atlanta!

Hello THK Underground! We're back from Atlanta and here's a semi-complete brain dump of some of the biggest ideas and themes we took away...

Servant Stuff…
Growing servants spiritually – together – accountability
Honor servants with specific recognition as you see them – look for opportunities – say their name
Surprise a servant with childcare sometime to thank them for what they do
Servant Appreciation – Steven James, Tim Hawkins and Dennis Lee and Richard Hight
When a team is going good, raise the bar and motivate them to do better – do a servant appreciation, then about a month later, step it up – celebrate the success First
Servant Staging Rooms
Have a place where everyone in your servant pool knows where the "need list" is – on Blogs? Or in the Staging areas?

Strategy Stuff..
More strategic planning
Goals for kids in the different age groups – focal points for each
What do we want children to leave ministry with? – focus points
Steps to Real Change – from Mick Ukleja’s talk – how could this apply to ministry areas? i.e….. transforming into doing more family ministries Also review the change Leadership documentation that Dave sent out.
Communicate the mission with the kids
Grow your strengths
Special Events – 6 to 8 weeks before the event, we do all the hard stuff up front
Less is More!

Family Ministry…
Family Ministry Concept
Our job is to equip the parents so that they can own it like the Bible says
Involving Parents more when the children are taught the salvation lesson – parents in the room
Lobby to have THK integrated into the DNA of the church – materials gathered to Don and Gary
All ministries on the same page – educate servants, and parents – team building with the servants
Ministering to kids because they need Christ now, NOT because they are our future
Give kids talking points on the hot, controversial issues to be able to defend their beliefs
Parents going into the room for the first 5 minutes to pray with THK Servants before service begins
Family Greeters
Kids in the rooms greeting kids coming in
Performance Ministry (as part of Family Ministry)…
9 weeks in summer – What if we did KidStuff? Pilot or own or adopt theirs?
Brainstorm KidStuf vs RiverCity – what works, what do we need to do differently
What’s effective in delivering a message? Make it stick
Consider using high school and college art, techie and drama resources.
God’s tool box – people’s gifts are the tools – find the tools First
Amanda Show Concept
Drake and Josh Show Concept
Getting into the kid’s culture (listen to music, watch shows, books, magazines, cartoons – like…hip radio stations… 98.1, 92.5, 96.5, Nickelodeon Magazine, SI Kids, Discovery Kids, Kid’s Bop, All That, Fear Factor, Hillary Duff, Movies, Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, McDonalds, Chuck E Cheese, Disney, X-box, Nintendo, Bratz, Lizzie McQuire, Fashions, Slime Time, Endurance program, Teen Titans, Pokemon, PowerPuff Girls, Harry Potter, SpongeBob, RugRats…etc)
KIDS Language – verbal, signs, IM lingo, etc.
More sensory engagement – media stuff – lights, sounds, imagery, environment design, etc.
Media equipment purchases
Blogs and other Communication Tools with servants, parents and community – Demo Blog created

Outreach Ideas…
Easter Egg Hunt as an outreach? – get people to our campus – more than an Easter Egg hunt – potential to get many on our campus, then what to do with them?
Pull all Stark County Church resources together – what could we join to do? ex. Joint advertising campaign to promote "Stark County wide come to church day" where the 244,000 are encouraged to go to any church, and churchs will be prepared to put their best foot forward and to talk about their church’s mission, etc – maybe all participating churches give a sermon on the same topic like Expanding God’s Kingdom or "all are welcome" or something
DINO-Day – Themed event centering around Dinosaurs, escavation, creation vs evolution

MISC.
Photo document things – videos and stills of things that you are doing in order to promote for the next time you do it
More offerings to Children with special needs
Dads mentoring Dads
What would it be like if….?
To Don’t List!
Black light painting with neon – using muslin, shadows to tell stories
Game "Whose Parable is it Anyway"
Messy Games!
Wacky Games
Kids love bodily functions
Grandparent Days
Don’t be afraid to fail
Turn a problem into an opportunity
Remove distractions to keep kids focused
To much information bogs down innovation
Apollo 13 – team building (good team building exercises)
Kids mentoring kids – teaching kids
Kid baptism testimonies – show the video to other kids
Colored clippy things for climbing – concept…what are you taking with you?
Leadership issues – training – How to handle Confrontation – and handle issues while they are small
Empower others
Categorize First, then Prioritize, and then Simplify down to 3 or 5 major items (tools, learnings, etc)