LifeOS: Second Brain, PARA, and CODE Explained

Welcome to the KMC Collective Podcast where the KMC team brings you practical insights, creative ideas, and authentic conversations for children's ministry leaders. Each conversation is packed with strategies to help you lead with clarity, build strong teams, nurture families, and stay healthy in the process. Whether you're planning lessons, training volunteers, or seeking encouragement for the week ahead, this podcast is for you. We hope to make you laugh, cry, think, and maybe a bit of all three in each of our weekly conversations. This is the KMC Collective Podcast. Let's jump into the conversation. All right, so here's a question that showed up in the Kid Ministry Collective Facebook group recently, and I actually got to have a discussion with one of the leaders that asked this question. And honestly, it was a really interesting discussion and something that I have seen in multiple Facebook groups, not just the KMC. But the leader was asking about having kids in "big church" -- the main worship service. You know, "should they? Should they?" And if you have it, how do you get them out safely? What does that look like? And does it impact church growth? Does it hinder church growth? There was a lot of honest questions, and there's been a couple of answers that have been shared, and some interesting discussion. And we want to continue that, and I told them, I said, "You know what? You just gave me an idea for a KMC Collective Podcast episode." Because we want to know, what's it like? And should we have kids in worship? And all those kind of things. Because it's tough. And you know, you've got a leader and a church consultant behind this question saying, "Hey, you know what? Maybe kids in churches isn't such a great idea." "Oof, they hit hard." And so we're going to talk about this, and we're not here to tell you which model, because there's multiple models of this, is right. But we want to think through, and we want to have that conversation. And regardless of where you land on one of these models, we want your heart and your conviction and what God tells you to do to be the driver behind this. So let's get into it this week's conversation. Welcome to the KMC Collective Podcast. I'm Tom. I'm cool. I'm Ben. And I'm Vicki. All right. You guys ready for some fun? Yeah. Oh yeah. This is going to be a good conversation. I think a lot of people are like, one, they're going to want us to give them the answer. And like you said, we're not. There isn't one right answer. But I'm looking forward to just diving in and getting to the root of whichever one you decide to do. How to do that? Well, and who all you need to get on the same page. I think this is going to be really good. What about you all? It's funny. I went to Tom put the question in there and I was kind of thinking through it and I was like, man, I've worked at three different churches and we've had three for bottles like. I don't have any one of them is like so specific of like, oh, this is the only way to do it. And I think all three of them worked for our area, our culture. And so I think it's going to be interesting to hear from all of us. Yeah, I agree. I've been in all different models. But all I got to say is please don't make me sing Tom just like I don't want to demonstrate any kind of worship. Oh goodness. We would. We were. Hey, you just make a joyful noise. Been make a joyful noise. I have a cousin. That's all you go. There you go. That works. That's a noise. Yeah. So you know, there's a lot of models out there. I mean, I think correct me if I'm wrong. The main the main ones are you either have a service with no kids. And you have kids church. You have a model where you have kids that stay in for the entire service and no kids church. Or you have them in between where they're in with their families for worship and then partway through the service you dismiss them out. And and is this leaders experiencing they had a church consultant come in and they're a smaller congregation that's trying to grow, but they've seen a lot of decline. And and now all of a sudden they're being told that maybe part of the reason why is because they've got kids in church with their parents. And so, you know, I think instead of debating the model and what works best, why does this question matter so much that we talk about it? Why? Why does it feel like this is something that carries a lot of emotional weight for leaders? Cause I felt that from him. I felt that from the people that have started answering the question. You know, but in a positive way too, not just in a negative way, but why why do you think we should even have this conversation? Well, I think this conversation is important because teaching kids the heart of worship, which is what we're really talking about is important bringing kids before the throne of Jesus and teaching them worship no matter how you do it. Where you choose to do it should be our driver. And so I hope in this conversation today, people really hear that and feel that like our driver is what is best for your church. And I think we just keep on talking about it. I think we second guess ourselves. I think we have people who come in like we're not growing or we're growing exponentially and we have people saying, well, what if maybe you're not doing it right. And so I think social media plays a hand in that. They're doing it this way. So I think we keep having this conversation because right, we have the best mindset. We want kids to learn about worship. And when things aren't exactly right or we have people kind of in our ear, it makes us second guess ourselves. So I think this is going to be a good conversation, hopefully giving people some ideas, some thoughts to process whether you're doing it really well or you're in the same boat and you're considering what do we need to do do we need to do something different. I've been in a couple different models. I have loved both of them having kids in service and having them come out halfway through was a sweet sweet season and a really small church and I loved it. And then the church I sit at now, we are over that 70% threshold. And so our kids don't stay in service. They are with us the whole time. Love that model too. So let's get at it. Let's talk about some worship. I came from a small church and it is really cool to watch the adults watch the kids and then when there's like a dismissal time to see all the kids excited to run back to the back and follow the leader to the children's area like that sets a really cool bar for the adults to say, yeah, the kids can do it. We can do it. If the kids are excited, look at all the kids we got. Man, this would be a great opportunity to serve. These are these are things that are beneficial with that kind of stuff. But I also I work for a church where the pastor and the worship people they're ADD. And so when you got kids jumping around talking sitting there, drawing, eating snacks, it distracts them to the point where it becomes an issue with worship or with, you know, given the message. So I've seen both sides. But we fall in and I'm just as guilty. We fall in the act of comparison. Yeah. And we think because one church is doing it, that our church can do it. And that is the that is a no no that that's a bad part. You don't want to do that. And that's what when when you say a consultant comes in and tells you to do that kind of stuff. I question I have some flags that pop up. Like what makes the consultants way the right way. Because you've been at this church for years and you understand the that's where the consultant says this is more successful. You really do have to question and ask, okay, what fuels your church up? What what gets those adults wanting to serve? What gets those adults wanting to sing? And sometimes that's watching a kid and makes you feel guilty when the kids got their hands raised or seeing it to the top of their lungs, even if it's off. And they can sing loud. They can belt. I love watching kids. I recently had a conversation time with somebody online as well. She was in similar. Similar dilemma. And we talked about right the benefits and the challenges to this. And right, especially if you have like multi site where one mouth one campus is doing it one way and others doing it. different way and then you're asking to come in line with how somebody else is doing it. I think that's where we need to start. Is we need to start by talking to people about writing down the benefits and the challenges that you are experiencing to really get people to understand what should be their next step or should they be changing what they're doing? - So let's beat that around a little bit, around the round table. What are some of the benefits? I don't know, I guess everybody wants to jump to the challenges and the negative. I wanna start with the positive first. What are some of the benefits of having kids in worship? Can they really engage, especially when, I mean, the bulk of churches that I've watched online or been in personally are not super kid friendly? I mean, they're set up for adults in the room, not kids in the room. It's obvious where their strategy lies. So what are the benefits? If a family visit is a church, visit is a church for the first time, and they bring their kids 'cause they're not ready to put them into a kid's environment yet. What's the advantage? What's the benefit of having their kids worship with them? - I think it's really cool as a new dad. I'm not really new now, we're three and a half years in, but I think it's really cool when you as a father have the opportunity to show your child what it is to worship Jesus, whether it's singing in praise or it's listening to what the pastor's talking about and you're opening your Bible or you open your phone and your kid nudges like, what are you doing? You're like, when we show you, you open up the verse, just show 'em what they're talking about and things like that, I think that's just something really cool with that. And I will say as a kids leader, when I first started one of the churches I was at, I didn't have kids, and I didn't understand that our second service was, our kids ministry was only nursery preschool. There was no elementary, all elementary kids went into service, and I was like, that doesn't make sense. What are we doing? But after a year of observing this, I saw the benefit, I saw kids going into service and singing as Ben said, not singing great, but singing loud with their hands in the air, and it was just really cool to see a seven-year-old and the first row with their hands in the air, singing out to Jesus, and watching her mom and dad kind of like, you know, out of the corner of their eyes, you're doing that too and going, man, there's just something really cool about that, that not that that can't happen in kids ministry, but our kids ministry service usually aren't geared in that type of way to see that with a seven-year-old, or something like that. And I just think it's a really cool testament as a parent to walk alongside your child and show them, this is what it means to follow Jesus on a Sunday morning with our community. And so there's some good value there. Yeah. I love the idea. Oh, go ahead, Ben. Oh, it's gonna say, and it's biblical. First Corinthians, he's chapter 11 verse one, says, "Follow me as I follow Christ. Kids are the biggest imitators you'll ever meet." So if they wanna be like a rock star and they watch really closely the guy with the guitar or the drums, or they are sitting there watching their parents sing, or the teenager that's right down the pew from the other people, they look up to them. And so they will watch and they will want to be like that person. And so like, let's just lead them to Jesus. It's biblical. That's a head. For those who are in this model, I also, like you're probably seeing this. I love it done well when kids get to see what their parents are doing, right? Just learning from observation. Kids are sponges. Yeah. So that kid who is coming in and they're coloring in the back and another mom might be thinking, "Oh, are they paying attention? They are sponges. They are getting everything." I know for some of our kids, the parents drop them off and they're like, "Okay, we're gonna go to big church." And they're like, "Big church, what do you do in big church?" So I love the idea that kids get to see what the parents are doing. It's a great way if you have this model that you are getting to be the spiritual discipleship leader even on Sunday morning. So yeah, those are some real benefits to it. I think so too. I think so too. Okay, so then let's go around the table here and talk about the challenges. 'Cause obviously I think there's a lot of them. Do you wanna know our challenges or senior pastors who send us emails on Monday morning challenges? 'Cause those are two different challenges. Yeah, hypothetical, think about the logistics, think about just the general sentiment from people. Because again, there's a lot of churches out there that I served in a church that I know the senior pastor did not want kids in the service because it was a church that streamed and they wanted the stream to be clean, audio-wise, and they didn't wanna pick up those little sounds. Now, again, I'm not here to debate whether that's right or wrong or whether I like to or do. No, no, no. You might hear a little bit of snirking as to my voice and you'll know. In time, never. We never have to. No. But I'll start. So for us, this is very real. We've hit the 70% threshold. We've been there for a while. So there came a time where even if we would want the kids in, it would have been very, very hard. And you never wanted to feel like there's not space for a visitor or a new family. And so logistics, right? You get to that point where you're like, you either have to make a decision. If we want kids to stay in, we need to add more services. Yep. Or. We have to figure that out. So logistics. Another challenge is you might have a segment of your congregation that just doesn't like the kids in there. They maybe want a more reverent type of worship. They don't want noise. And I'm not, I'm not here to judge, but we, we understand that to be the case. And that is a challenge is that if you're the children's director, you have somebody coming to you. Why do we have kids? They're disruptive. I can't worship because there's kids in here. And I know there's a lot of people out there going. Sure. Yep. The church I came from had kids that would roam during worship. They go from one road to the other and just hang out with everybody. And of course, that's distracting, but it's also small town, you know, small family feel. And as a challenge, because you're trying to connect with God and sing to, to, with 100% of what you got. And you got a kid that comes over to visit you and they're cute. And you just can't, you can't, you know, say, say, hey, ignore me. I'm singing right now. Yeah. And everybody's attention is on the kid not listening to, you know, right? I mean, I was in a, one of my first churches. It was a very small little country church out in the middle of the sticks. And on the one half was where all the younger families sat with all their kids and the babies and everything. Because even the room we had for a nursery was not very big. And, and so there wasn't a lot of room. And sometimes that room was full. And so parents brought their kids in with us. At that time, I was new to the church and they had, we hadn't started a kid's church program. So the kids were just in service. And it created a sound. I mean, it was hard to listen at times. And the sound guy had to turn our pastor up, which was terrifying because he was an old country pastor who his eyesight wasn't very great. So he would get real close to the microphone. And then he would talk really, really loud. So the sound guys pulling down on the volume. And then he would stand up and start talking again. And he'd come back up and then he'd start shouting again. He'd be back down. And then you had six babies all of a sudden start to cry. And the sound guy, I felt really bad for the sound guy because he couldn't make anybody happy in there. So I get that challenge. And then honestly, when we started doing kids church at first, nobody wanted to not have the kids in there. And they wanted us to dismiss them partway through, which created a safety nightmare. Because now I've got all these kids just leaving their parents and following the leader, like the Pied Piper down steers to the basement. And I'm like, how do I, you know, and there were times I'm like, did we get everybody or did somebody stop at the bathroom or go out the front door because we had some runners. - Hurting cats. - Do we have all of them? - Exactly. So I can get why some people are like, absolutely, I don't want to deal with having kids in the service. Because I don't want to deal with the fear of losing somebody or having somebody with malintent getting around the kids on their way to the kids area. So I get the challenge. on there too. And I think that can really be a tough one. And then, you know, I get it, you know, yeah, that standard rule of church growth, if you're at 70%, it can hinder future growth and stuff. But we really do need to think about, you know, what can leaders do? And I want to pivot for just a second. If you're, if, because if we're going to lead up, and if the church is going to take the approach of, will we want kids involved? Again, the issue is a lot of the churches set themselves up for adult worship, not kids worship, not family worship, on a given Sunday. Right. What do we do to help those listeners out there who are saying, yeah, my church wants our kids involved, but they don't want to do things that appeal to our kids. What do we do? How can we help impact some change so that kids feel an integral part of the service, not just you're here to observe what the adults are doing? I would say get some people in a room to have a discussion, right? Maybe not even make decisions, but who do you need to bring to the table to have a discussion to go over where you've been, where you want to go, like real conversation. So this could be leading up and bringing your worship leader, your pastor, whoever are the key people that might be decision makers, have a conversation. You know, what is it that we really want to win? Yes. The the worship. What do we want it to be? Why are there in there? I think that's just asking those questions. Maybe even going so far as to do a for helpful list. What's right, wrong, missing, confusing with the way we have kids in worship and just really working through that together. I know it's like when people are brought into a room and can do it together, sometimes you can get a lot further. If you even ask, can I do this? Hey, senior pastor, can I bring people to the table? Can we have a discussion? That's what I would suggest. Yeah. That's a great idea. Especially when, you know, I mean, when I was thinking about this leader with the consultant, I would really want to know how that consultant arrived at their conclusions and what biases they have because we all have biases. We all have our preferences and there's a difference between conviction and preference. And I think the power of what you just said, Vicki, of getting multiple generations in the room, multiple people in the room and asking, how do we worship together in the best way? How do we make sure that everyone in the room, regardless of age, feels comfortable? Because, you know, we see it in a lot of churches, Pendulum's shift and swing from side to side. And we often go to the extreme and, you know, in either direction and that can hinder church growth right there. There's a lot of issues. And I said that to the leader in our low conversation was, I don't necessarily know having kids or not having kids in worship is a huge key factor that I would put in the top five things of why your church isn't growing. Yeah. Now potentially, maybe it could be like number six or seven on the list. Sure, I get it. But I do think having a conversation and asking families, but asking kids, but then as you're leading up, having, having a discussion with the worship leaders and the senior leaders to say, Hey, how do we make sure that everybody in the room feels like they're part of the body? What can we do? Can we sing? You know, and I'm glad, you know, between Nancy and Dylan arms and Kid Cardia and there's so many seeds worship, there's a lot of great worship music that is stuff that adults could sing and not realize that they're doing quote unquote kids worship music. And there's a lot of worship music that kids are singing that adults are singing too. And I think that in itself could really help lead up if we presented and showed them some of our senior leaders aren't aware that that stuff is out there. And we need to show them because maybe we can get some of that brought into the big church so the kids feel more comfortable there and want to be there. You know, I would like our kids to do that, but sometimes that's not always a case because they just feel like it's six miles over their head, which causes discipline problems. It causes chaos because if a kid doesn't feel connected, they don't feel part of it. They don't feel wanted. I'd act out too. I probably did when I was a little kid. We struggled with kids connecting. You know, there's like, do we have to and we sat down like said, go into the room with people and like, how can we get the kids to do it? Because we really do feel like this is helpful to the transition from children to students to adults. Like they're not changing. By the time they become adult, they've seen it. They understand what it means to worship. And so I understood that. And so like, how can we get a kid? Well, a kid is, I said, can be bribed. And so what we started doing was one word in the worship on the screen was green. Whatever that one word is, when the kids came back to the back, they let us know they get a free piece of candy. And it could be easy as saying Jesus or grow or whatever that one word is, the worship pastor just changes the color of that one little word. And then it's probably a third third song to the kids who are looking the whole time and they're paying attention because they want free candy or free gift or whatever that is. And we saw that super helpful, super successful. And kids were like, instead of coloring or wanting to eat snacks and making a mess on the carpet, they were actually engaged in the screen. Even if they couldn't read, they were still looking for that green word. And when they found it, they look up, what's that say? You know, asking mom and dad. And so, yeah, our worship guys, for sure. I love that idea, Ben, because our worship guides that we used to make for our kids was a note page. And they could fill in the blanks of the pastor's outline. And we would often say, Hey, if you finished, if you filled in all the notes, and yeah, there was usually a word or two that was highlighted in a different color on purpose. And then they brought that back to wherever one of our leaders was in the back of the room. And they showed him the note page. Then yeah, they got a little treat for for participating in worship. And it got them engaged in there. So yeah, if you're going to do it, you know, get them engaged, get them, get them doing something. I think that's a better way to word it than um, broad. You know, I like that one. Both of the same. I also love churches who do this that have like student takeover weekends, Kidman takeover weekends. And so, yeah, talk about, you know, giving some responsibility away. What would it look like a few times a year to have a couple teens takeover or pray and even Kidman, what would it look like if once in a while you did a song with motions with kids up front or a fourth or fifth grader got to read the prayer, including kids can be simple and easy and it doesn't need to be all or nothing. Just once in a while. So even if somebody's listening and they're like, I have no idea where to start. Maybe start there. Yeah. Just the little little pieces that you can draw, help draw kids in. I know for us, we did. So when we hit that 70% mark that you talked about Vicki and we did have to create space in our second service at that church, we were creating a kids ministry for KT5 and I remember the first Sunday, like four kids, like it's kind of crazy. And um, we ended up working out a hybrid model a little bit where we talk with parents and we're like, what is it your kids really love about upstairs with you? And 80% said, oh, they just love the music. And I said, so what if you check them in, they go with you and do music and then they come downstairs and we do the Bible story and go into small groups. And that worked. And I mean, now, not now, but eventually what ended up happening is it just became Kid's ministry second service and there's less kids that went up there for the music. But at the same time, it was offered both services first and second because we created, we had that conversation. We said, what is it that your kids love about being up here? Is it what our pastor's talking about? And you know, him up there on stage or is it they just love listening to the music and worshiping with you and it for us at our, when our culture was we love worshiping with our parents. Okay, then check your kid in after worship and a dozen kids would come back downstairs and there you go. As long as I think starting those conversations and having those conversations and don't assume what you think is the answer before you have those conversations is actually the answer. Don't make the assumption. Yeah. All right. I've got, as we get ready to wrap up, I got one serious question and one that's not to wrap it up. So I want to go around the table. Yes. Yeah. No, no. I'll take the non-serious question. Now, we're going to do the serious one first. I'm going to end with the goofy one for the second one. Well, I'll go around the virtual round table. What's one thing that you would say to the leader that's going through this situation right now that it looks like things are going to change and they're struggling with how do I lead without losing my team and all this kind of stuff? What would you say to them that what's the one thing? Lighting round go. I think as you go through this season being extra specific with your volunteers and communicating so that they're on, they're in the know as things are shifting or as things are moving forward. That's good. That's good. All right. Go. Go, Vicki. Ladies. I would say prayer. Yeah. And if you're not on board with all of it, trying to find places or pieces that you are totally invested in. You can't get around the whole picture. What little pieces can you be totally invested in to share like close up with your volunteers? But pray, pray, pray again. That's good. Well, you can't beat that one. So my little piece of advice would be think inside the box. God has given you. This is the box you're dealt. This is the situation that you got to deal with. How can you make it successful for a kid and a family to worship together? So don't think outside the box. Don't try to get super creative. But with what you have, make it effective. And so think inside the box. That's what I would say. Ben, you are dropping all of the wisdom in this. I was like taking this like deep. I mean, I was fully going. He's going to go say think outside the box. And he goes inside the box. Totally got me. Ben, it's good. I gotta keep you thinking. You did. You did. You did. Keep on us. All right. Lightning round. Fun question. What's the best thing? The wildest thing. The craziest thing. That is a preschooler jumped off the three foot ledge that is our stage onto the carpet. Like a superhero and he was super pumped. That's like dedicated. Yes. Oh no. His sister was giving dedicated. He was not giving. Oh. He had enough reading. And enough of our testimony. It's about her. It's about. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Somebody else could. For me, it was Christmas services, pastor reading the Christmas story from the Jesus storybook Bible. And this is two elementary school kids just climbing all over him the whole time and wanting to get close and like over his back. And you know, Pastor Dan, Pastor Dan. And like he is trying to just keep his composure to continue reading. And this is the most introverted pastor we had on strap at the time. So I'm sure inside he was just dying that like all the kids were really close to him anyway. And they're just all over not preschoolers, elementary kids. And we're all just dying and we're like, what's more like what's going to be worse? Letting them do it for the next 30 seconds or having somebody go up and like remove them. Anyway, there you go. Yeah. This one's a hard one because I've seen a couple. So I would say I have a tie breaker or a tie for one kid standing on the pew lifting his shirt over his head like this and just showing everybody behind them. You know, that he wasn't wearing anything underneath that shirt that during worship to the kid that decided to start at the front of the auditorium and roll underneath the pews all the way to the body. No way. Yes, during worship and all the floor dodging. That's hilarious. I'm not to step on this kid. And yeah, so I'd say that was a tie for some crazy stuff. That's awesome. That's awesome. That's awesome. Yeah. We had a kid who decided to step out into the center aisle up at the front and start flossing and that was the thing. There you go. During worship. He just the spirit was moving. So he decided to move. And yeah. And but the probably the the the thing was we had a guest pastor who made a reference about talking too long and when he got done and said, Amen, there was just that moment of quiet before anybody else and this one kid said, well, it's about time. Oh, no. I think we've all had that one or something where it's like, yeah, it's about time. He was done. Yeah, he was done. All right. Well, hey, if this conversation has stirred something in you, hopefully good, bad. Maybe I don't know. Maybe it's gotten you more confused and you just need some help. Come on over to the Kid Ministry collective Facebook group and let's have some conversation. We'd love to know what model are you running? How's it working? How is it affecting your growth? Is it affecting your growth? We would love to do that. Or maybe there's another question that's burning inside of you that you would love for us to talk about on a future episode. We would love to hear from you, but just know regardless of whatever season you're in, whatever changes are coming your way. Just know that you're not alone. If you're feeling stuck, if you're carrying the pressure from the weight of leadership and you need someone in your corner, hey, just consider given one of us a call, set up a clarity call at KMCcoach.net. We would be honored to serve you. So it's just that take five seconds of insane courage, hit the clarity call button, set it up. And maybe the next step you need to help you break through because here at the KMC, we believe healthy leaders build healthy teams that build healthy ministries. And we want to see you do this, but not alone. So thanks for listening to the KMC collective podcast. I'm Tom. I'm cool. I'm Ben. And I'm Vicki. Until next time. See you. See you. Hey, friend. That wraps up the KMC collective podcast for this week. Thanks so much for listening. Today's episode sparked something, an idea, a heartbeat or a fresh start. Drop us a line at tombump.com or reach out on social media. We'd love to hear your story and keep the conversation going. Remember, you're not just doing kids ministry. You're shaping the next generation's fate with intention and care. Be encouraged, be creative, and take a breath. You've got this. Catch you next time on the KMC collective podcast.