Multi-Site Kids

Hello!

I feel so honored that Tammy is allowing me to carry the torch with this Multi-Site Kids blog.  So many times when I've gotten phone calls from people with questions about how to do Multi-Site Children's Ministry, I've referred them to this blog.  It has been such a valuable tool over the years to so many... and to myself included!

In the next few weeks we'll launch our 11th campus here at COMMUNITY (and our 10th Kids' City)!!  We continue to grow and learn more and more with each launch.  Some things have stayed the same, but over the past year or two we've also had some changes.  I look forward to sharing some of our experiences and I hope to hear about some of yours.

I guess the best way to start this blog is to tell you a little bit more about myself.  I am currently the Catalyst Director of Kids' City, the Children's Ministry of Community Christian Church. COMMUNITY is a multi-site church that will soon have 11 locations in the Chicagoland area.  Kids' City offers children's programming for infants through 5th grade during 19 services at these locations every weekend.

I joined COMMUNITY's staff in 2004 as a part time small group curriculum writer.  My current role includes leading the team of individuals that write, develop, create and dream about children's curriculum and products for COMMUNITY while assisting with it's implementation at all campus locations. My passion is developing curriculum and products for children and families that carry out the mission of helping people find their way back to God. 

Everyday I am blessed to work with an amazing group of dedicated Christ-followers who are committed to the mission of helping families raise growing, 3C Christ-followers.  The Kids' City Wonder Team (as I like to call them) includes our Champion Cathy Cuny & 10 Campus Directors along with many 5-10 hr/wk teammates.  Kids' City happens each weekend due to the commitment and passion of around 300 volunteers. It's an amazing team I look forward to introducing you to in the coming weeks and months.

Looking forward to learning and growing with you,

Christi Neill

Conspire Recap

Things have been so busy I haven't had a chance to write anything about last week's Conspire Conference.  I think this was the best Willow Children's Ministry Conference yet.  The main sessions impacted me more than in the past and I heard lots of good feedback from my team on the breakouts.  Good job, WCA!  Here are some personal reflections from the week...

• Kurt Bruner & John Trent's Main Session was probably my favorite.  I've been pondering their observation that the "minivan years" are the most critical in a child's spiritual formation yet are also the years when parents are most distracted and often least intentional.  I really want to think through their strategy where success equals intentional families.  What does it look like to cast vision for intentionality, create a culture of intentionality, and coach intentionality?  Some good stuff to think through regarding spiritual formation in the home.
• I love teaching in the breakout format and getting to interact with people who are hungry to learn and grow.  I especially love talking about Multi-Site Children's Ministry.  For those of you who were in the session, I hope it will be helpful to you in your multi-site endeavor.  Didn't Tony do a great job teaching?  This is the first time he's team-taught with me and I thought he did a great job.  (And, yes, having him teach with me was an intentional apprenticing move--in Multi-Site it's all about developing leaders!).
• If you lug a 400 pound backpack all over Willow while rushing from breakout to breakout, you're going to end up with some pretty bad back pain.  Just so you know.
• The other Main Session that spoke to me this  year was David Stall's.  It was simple, but his "Own a Burden" and "Love One Another" points were well taken.  I'm specifically thinking through the "Own a Burden" one.  I've been praying a lot lately about where I am to focus my time and energy.  I think it really is about better defining my "burden."

So those are my thoughts.  For those of you who attended, what impacted you most at this year's conference?  Oh, and one more reflection...

• The TV's in the bathroom mirrors at the Renaissance Hotel are pretty cool.

Many thanks to the WCA for a great week at Conspire.

Conspire

It's just about here!  This week I'll be attending the Willow Creek Association's Children's Ministry conference.  I'm thankful for the opportunity to participate in the breakout sessions again this year.  I'll be co-leading 3 sessions...  1) Multi-Site Issues for Children's Ministry (with Tony Escobar)  2) Leading Change (with David Weil and Angela Burke)  3) Aligning Ministries through the Big Idea (with Shawn Williams).  I hope to get the chance to meet some of you there!

Privileged

I've been reading and journaling through Ephesians and came across these verses a couple days ago...

"By God's grace and mighty power, I have been given the privilege of serving him by spreading this Good News.  Though I am the least deserving of all God's people, he graciously gave me the privilege of telling the Gentiles about the endless treasures available to them in Christ.  I was chosen to explain to everyone this mysterious plan that God, the Creater of all things, had kept secret from the beginning." Eph 3:7-9

I was struck by Paul's gratitude.  He felt it an absolute privilege to be given the responsiblity of ministry (and keep in mind he was in jail as he wrote).  I can hear Paul saying, "Can you believe I get to do this?!?  How lucky am I!?!"

It makes me think about how often those of us in vocational ministry lose sight of the joy of our calling.  I know we all go through hard times at work (although I've never ran into a fellow minister who had done jail time for helping people find their way back to God).  But if we feel "burdened" or "put out" by our responsibilities then perhaps we've allowed joy to be stolen from us.  Maybe we've forgotten what a privilege this is.

But I don't think this is just a word for vocational ministers.  I have a friend who serves during all 4 services at our church.  When he first started doing this 6 months ago I thought he was a bit crazy.  After all, shouldn't he be concerned with "burning out?"  Now of course we all need to have boundaries and times of rest in our lives.  I know too well the dangers of taking on too much.  But when I asked this friend the other night if he wanted to go down to serving just one Saturday night service instead of two he said, "Are you trying to take this away from me?  I love being here.  God has done so much for me and I just want to serve him as much as I can."

He is someone who gets the privilege of serving.

I love that after 13 years of vocational ministry I still feel deeply grateful that I get to serve the church for a living.  If I ever feel this joy slipping, I take time to make a "gratitude" list in my journal.  I write out all the things I'm thankful for...all the opportunities God is giving me that I love...all the reasons why I love doing what I'm doing.  It is a privilege to serve. 

New Campus!

Another exciting day here at Community Christian Church!  Today we launched our 9th Campus in Plainfield and saw 642 people come through the doors.  I was so proud of the amazing staff and volunteer team that launched this campus.  They were so well organized and ready to receive all the new families that poured through the doors.  As we sang "You are Good" to close the second adult service, I was overwhelmed by what God is doing in Plainfield.  Last week there wasn't a church in JFK Middle School.  Today 642 people were celebrating God in this building...and several hundred of those are people who were not attending church anywhere the weekend before.  I love knowing hundreds of people are going to find their way back to God because this new church opened today.

Here are some pictures from Kids' City at Plainfield.  We stole the idea from one of our NewThing Affiliate Churches, 242 Community in Brighton, Michigan, to transform a cafeteria into this fun white environment for our infants through kindergarteners.  The set up was great (and is saving us lots of money in room rentals!).

Great job, Cathy Cuny!  Cathy (pictured left) is the Kids' City Campus Director at this new campus.  Years ago Cathy began serving in Kids' City at the Welcome Table.  Eventually she became a Small Group Leader, then a Coach.  3 years ago she joined the staff in a 5-hour-a-week Service Coordinator role.  2 years ago she became the Associate Campus Director at our Naperville-Yellow Box location.  And today she launched a new campus!  Next to seeing those new families pour through the door, the greatest joy for me was watching Cathy take this next step in her leadership journey.  I love watching people develop into greater levels of leadership influence and responsibility!

Congratulations to everyone on the Plainfield team!

New Documents

I get a lot of requests for our role descriptions so I finally took the time to upload them on the site.  To the right under "KC Role Descriptions" you will find a role description for every staff and volunteer role in Kids' City (except mine, I guess!).  I must really love you guys because this was tedious Typepad work! :)  Enjoy!

A Story of Generosity

I'm pretty passionate about teaching our kids to be wise financial stewards.  We celebrate "giving back to God" every week as a part of our large group experience.  See I think money is probably the biggest cultural obstacle to discipleship for American Christians.  Sure there are lots of other things different ones of us struggle with, but money tends to be something all of us struggle with on some level.  What if we can teach kids to be wise stewards before they even have a significant financial income?  Could that set a pattern of generosity in their lives?  Could it help them avoid the pitfalls of this discipleship struggle?

Like I said, I'm pretty passionate about teaching our kids to be wise financial stewards.  That's why stories like this one from Jen Ripsch, our Yorkville Kids' City Campus Director, make me smile:

Had a big moment of generosity this past Sunday during the giving back to God moment in Kids' City that I thought I'd share... 

The story actually begins on Saturday at my son's birthday party that we had at Chuck E. Cheese.  One of the girls, who is 9, was standing in front of the token machine with money in her hand, just staring at the machine.  She was there for a minute or so when I went up to her to ask her what was the matter, also telling her that I had tokens for her and the other kids.  She said she was trying to decide if cashing in the money for tokens was a good idea or if the money could be put to use better somewhere else.  At that point I thought she was thinking about buying herself something with her money, not for what came next.  I asked her where she got the money from and she said from doing chores around the house and from Christmas.  She forgot her purse there when they left and made her parents call me to ask me to pick it up and bring it to her on Sunday.

On Sunday during the giving back to God time, she stood up and went to give a $10 for the offering, saying she wanted it to be split in half over two projects [Note: We usually have our Kids' City offering go to tangible "projects" to help the kids understand how their giving is making a difference].  As she stood over the offering box, she said that that wasn't enough, so she took out a $20, asking if anyone had change so that there would be two $10's.  She inspired the KC Tech and the Communicator to also give money to the cause since she inspired them, as well as her father, who is the leader in that room (he was the KC leader on the video at the end of service who "mistakenly" signed up for KC).  I can only imagine how proud he much feel about his daughter's generosity.  They ended up gathering $50 between the three of them for our offering this week.  She feels really good about her decision to give the money to kids who are less fortunate.  That's generosity at its best!

Willow's Children's Ministry Conference

I'm excited that our team has been invited back this year to participate in Willow's Children's Ministry Conference.  The theme for this year's gathering is "Conspire" and it will take place April 23-25, 2008.  It looks like they have some great speakers lined up for the Main Sessions.  I'll be participating in 3 of the Breakout Sessions. 

CCC's Student Ministry Director, Shawn Williams, and I will lead a breakout on the BIG IDEA.  This breakout will highlight a family ministry approach that aligns adults, students, and kids on one central theme for the week(end).  We've been following the BIG IDEA for years here at CCC and we're looking forward to sharing how it has been working for us.

Our Pilsen Kids' City Director, Tony Escobar, and I will lead a breakout called "Multi-Site Issues for Children's Ministry."  This is the breakout our team presented last year at the conference.  If you missed it, you have a second chance to join us!  We'll look at 5 key issue areas you need to consider in your multi-site endeavor.

I'll also be participating in one of the 3-in-1 sessions on "Leading Change."  This is a session where you get to hear 3 different Children's Ministry Leaders talk on one topic.  I'm sure it will be a fun discussion!

I hope many of you will be able to make this great conference.  I love what Willow has done these past couple years by bringing in churches from all over the country to share best practices at the event.  I'm sure there will be lots to learn there for all of us.  To register, follow this link and I'll see you in April!

Exciting Times

We have some exciting things happening here in Kids' City.  Here are a few things I'm excited about...

1)  We'll be launching our 9th Campus in Plainfield, IL on March 2nd.  There is such great momentum around this coming launch.  We have a core team of over 125 ready to go and hope to see that number double in the next 2 months.  Cathy Cuny, the friend and staff member who I've worked closely with for the past year at our Naperville Yellow Box location, will be leading Kids' City at this new site.  I love sending out great people to start new things!

2)  Early in 2008 we'll have a brand new Preschool curriculum product.  After a long search I am thrilled that we hired Angie Meus as our Preschool Catalyst.  She will be responsible for developing a BIG IDEA Curriculum product for our Toddlers and Preschoolers as well as developing training systems, products, and teams for these age groups.  I love Angie's heart and spirit and the vision she has for this new product.  If you are a NewThing Affiliate or Associate, get ready for some good stuff starting in March of next year!

3)  We are working with Plain Joe Studios and Visioneering on a new logo and environmental design for Kids' City that we can reproduce at all of our campuses.  I'm really excited about this "branding" process.  Kids' City is definitely ready for a makeover and I love that we'll be able to develop some consistency in the look of our ministry across campuses.  I'm all for aligning!

Those are just a few things I'm excited about.  I love that there's never a dull moment around here.

The New Yellow Box

For the past several weeks we've been consumed with getting the addition we built onto our Naperville-Yellow Box Campus ready for this weekend's Grand Opening.  We still have some work to do with environments and signage, but here are some shots of our new space.

As part of the Grand Opening celebration, we had a Family Fun Fest in the front parking lot.  Everything was free and we had tons of families stop by to join the party!  Kudos to my co-worker Cathy and her team for making this event a smashing success!

Finally it was time to open the doors for our first service in the new space.

572 kids and leaders enjoyed this space this weekend.  The best part is we had at least 25 new families.  God is doing some great things at the Yellow Box!