5 Things You Can Do Today to Make Sunday Easier

Sunday Mornings. They are game day for us KidMin folk.

Growing up, I loved Sunday mornings. I could sleep in. My school started at 7:50AM, so I had to get up early. But on Sunday mornings I could sleep in a little. There was no traffic on Sunday Mornings. They were so chill.

Somehow between getting married and having kids, I was shocked at how crazy Sunday Mornings had become. Some one in our house has a melt down every Sunday Morning. Wether it is my daughter who cannot find her favorite pink socks, or myself, who cannot finish getting ready without a little one asking for a cup of milk.

Scouring Pinterest and mommy-blogs, I soon learned that I needed to start getting ready for the day the night before. I started laying out my daughters clothes the night before. I would pack the diaper bag with everything we need for the whole day.

As a KidMin Pastor, how can I make Sunday mornings easier when I get to church. I can hear one Pastor that I had in my head right now, “If you can do it before Sunday, do it!”

So, here is my list of 5 things you can do today to make Sunday easier.

1) Call your volunteers.
The volunteers in your ministry have so many things going on. Take 2 minutes out of your day and text, or call your volunteers. You actually accomplish two things by doing this.
A) It reasures you that the volunteer will show up on Sunday.
B) It lets the volunteer know that you are thinking and care about them.
Now, be sneaky with your words, you do not need to come right out and say, are you gonna be there on Sunday? No, that is rude. Say, “I am so excited about Sunday, we are going to be teaching about (fill in the blank). Hope to see you there.”

2) Pray
This is pretty obvious. But pray through your morning. Pray for all of your volunteers helping you. Pray for every child who walks in your building. Pray that your pastor does not preach too long (JK), but seriously pray that your pastor preaches exactly what needs to be said. Pray for the greeters that they are extra perky. Pray for the parking lot attendants that they direct the cars perfectly. Pray for the people who make the coffee that they make extra strong coffee on Sunday.

3) Set up.
If you are able to, set up for your service today. Fix chairs, get check in supplies ready, etc.

I have been at 2 different churches where that is not possible, a mobile church and a church where our room was a multi-use room. But there are things you can do to make the set up easier. Organize your stuff to make it smoother. I know when we set up and tore down everyday, our boxes of stuff grew with a bunch of stuff that we don’t use every single weekend. Take out everything that you don not use and put it in a separate box, a just-in-case box.

Label every single box with what comes in each box.

If you are not organized, find someone who is! I am not, so I ask my mom to come over every couple months to help me organize all the toys that are taking over my house. She thinks differently then me and it is amazing how organized my house is when she leaves.

4) Make a check list
Think through every thing you do on a Sunday morning, get as detailed as you can. Do you say hello to the greeters? (maybe you should – just to make sure they know where to bring the new kids)
Do you check that the bathrooms are clean? Do you refill the check in desk supplies? Do you have a 10 minute huddle?

Write everything down, so you won’t forget anything. All of my professors in college would tell us to take handwritten notes, even though everyone had a laptop. The reason for this is that when you are physically writing things down you will remember it better. Something about the act of doing and seeing it.

5) Delegate
Take that list you just made and start assigning them to other people.

If the service falls apart when you are not there, you HAVE to change that. I can only think of one thing that only you can do every week, and it may surprise you.

Teaching – You should be mentoring someone else. Don’t have any volunteers that want to teach? Find a high schooler that loves to talk, and have them start with an object lesson. I am not saying you should never teach, just that at least once a month you NEED to go into the adult service and sit under your pastors teaching. You need to have a pool of teachers that you can pull from. Will they be able to teach as well as you? Maybe, Maybe not. But here is the amazing thing about God – He can still use people who are not as talented as you!

Cleaning – someone else should be cleaning. And it should not be done on Sunday morning. Find someone who wants to serve, but they don’t want to be up in front of people.

Getting supplies stocked – again something you should not be focusing on during Sunday morning. If you are focusing on trivial things, you will not be able to focus on the big God things. Please don’t misunderstand me, stocking supplies is very important, but it should be done on a different day, not Sunday morning.

Greeting – This is the one thing that no one else can do for you that I mentioned earlier. Trust me, I have tried to find someone to do this for me, to no avail. There is no replacement for you getting out and talking and greeting people.

You have to be greeting people, not just the kids as they walk in the room. Go out of the kids area and greet adults. Let the parking lot attendants see your face! Go chat with the greeters. Say hello to the coffee people and thank them.

I know your title is Children’s Pastor, but you need to talk to adults too.

There you go! There are 5 things you can do right now to make Sunday go smoother.