Multi-Site Kids

Feudango!

Here's another way to tell Bible stories.  Our current series is all about families.  We called it "Family Feud" and we're dealing with some of the tough stuff related to families...sibling rivalry (Cain & Able), hard times (Abraham & Sarah), and parenting/discipline (David & Absalom).  The teaching moment in our elementary large group includes these short clips spoofing the Fandango commercials.  Here are the first 3 videos... WARNING: The first one might be a little shocking...and as you can guess the 4th & 5th grade boys loved it.

Tough Questions #3

Here's one more Bob Blaugblaub gem for you addressing the tough question, "What is heaven like?"

Environmental Branding-Mobile Site

A couple posts ago I mentioned that we are starting to figure out our Environmental Branding for Kids' City and posted pictures from one of our permanent facility locations.  Here are a few pictures from our most recent mobile campus launch that meets in a junior high school.

Directional signage continues the transportation theme mimmicking the highway signs we have at our permanent facility.

We're recreating some of the scenic graphics using these panels.  Here is a version of the mural that was behind our check-in center in our perrmanent facility recreated on 2 panels that we use for our elementary large group backdrop.  These panels fold down and fit into a carrying case.

 

And the symbols for our area zones are used in these free-standing directional signs.

Tough Questions #2

Here's the second installment of our Tough Questions series.  In this one Bob Blaghblaub struggles with the question, "Why doesn't God always answer our prayers the way we want him to?"  He gets some help from another recurring Kids' City character...Paul the Appossum, the foremost Bible scholar in all the woods.

Environmental Branding

One of the things we think a lot about in multi-site kids' ministry is "branding."  What is our "brand" of children's ministry?  How do we plan to reproduce that brand from campus to campus?  This brand has to do with vision and strategy, culture, leadership structure, curriculum, value, etc.  One thing we've been working on this year is creating our environmental brand.  This has to do with what Kids' City looks like.  There are several reasons to think through your environmental brand:

1. An environmental brand is one more way to align your children's ministry across campuses.
2. An environmental brand communicates to parents that their kids will be getting the "Kids' City Experience" no matter what campus they attend (not to mention communicating that your church cares about kids enough to create inviting spaces for them).
3. An enviromental brand helps you reproduce welcoming, kid-friendly spaces without having to reinvent the wheel every time you launch a new site.

The third reason is the one that motivated me in this process.  In the past it seemed every time we launched a new site we panicked a couple weeks before trying to figure out signage and such to be both functional and inviting.  I'm hoping our new visual brand will make this an easier process. 

It will take us a while to roll all this out at our campuses (unless someone out there feels like giving large sums of money to the cause!), but here are some pictures of the new look Kids' City.  We used the same design at our Plainfield Campus when we launched it in March.  Next time I'm there I'll post some more pictures to show you the same theming plays out at another (portable) location.

Tough Questions #1

We're in the middle of a 4 weeks series called "Tough Questions" here in Kids' City.  For this series we polled our elementary kids and asked what questions they would ask God or the leaders of the church if they could ask anything.  Of course the questions ranged from "Who created God?" to "Can we have snacks in Kids' City?"  Always interesting to see what's on kids' minds!  We picked 4 of the most frequently asked questions and tried to tackle them with this series.  Of course, once you try to write curriculum addressing tough questions you realize why they are tough questions to begin with.  We didn't try to have all the answers because we don't, but we did try to help kids navigate some of these issues.

For this series we brought back several of our recurring characters.  The main one is Bob Blaghblaub, our iWitness News anchor.  In this video Bob wrestles with the tough question, "Why does God allow people to do bad things?"  Enjoy!

p.s. Another fun piece of the multi-site world...  The places mentioned in the first 3 news stories refer to locations near 3 of our campuses.  Just small ways to connect with our multi-site kids.