Thoughts from a Youth Minister

9 Things They Didn’t Teach Me In College About Children’s Ministry: A Book Revie

April 12, 2011 at 3:25 am (Uncategorized)

A simple book you can read in day, 9 Things They Didn’t Teach Me In College About Children’s Ministry, is a must for any one who is serving in Children’s Ministry.  A few weeks ago I received a copy of Ryan Frank’s new book, knowing I had to give a review I put it aside and pretty much forgot about it because I was trying to finish up two other books, thank goodness Frank’s book is only 100 pages long, because in just a short amount of time I was able to get read not once, but twice.  Being a short book, I thought I would try and keep the review short and sweet.

First of all for the bad news… well that fact is there is no bad news.  This is a great read for Children’s Ministry leaders, volunteers, and Pastors to get a better handle on Children’s Ministry in 2011.

Now for the good stuff… Like I mentioned earlier I want to keep this review short and sweet, so I only going to pull out 2 chapters that really grabbed my attention.

• Chapter 2: People Over Paper

Man, talk about a duh moment, but sometimes we just have those.  In this Chapter Frank reminds us that no matter how good we are at teaching, coming up with cool concepts, making incredible videos, and doing everything else that Children’s Ministry Leaders are to do, nothing is more important than PEOPLE!  Frank says this, “When it’s all said and done, the ting that matters most is making a choice to put others first.” Frank goes into good detail about some ways how you can treat your volunteers like heroes, and to that I say “YES, YES, YES”  Without volunteers you can’t do ministry and we need to do our best to appreciate them.

• Chapter 7: Movement Causes Friction

As with any thing in life you are going to have times in your life when you have conflict.  Before I say anything else about this book let me say this,  if you are in Ministry and everyone is happy then chances are so is Satan and you are not reaching your potential nor are you doing everything to serve.  You can’t keep everyone happy all the time.  Frank covers a lot of ways to handle conflict and how to deal when you meet people who oppose you.  One thing that really caught my attention was Frank speaking about “Picking Your Battles Carefully” Frank gave an example at his church about a battle he didn’t have, but he won the “war”.   Now, I know that seems simple, but lets be honest for a second, when someone confronts us we can get defensive.  Just because someone questions you or has a conflict, you can’t take it personal and sometimes you need to let the other one win, you might just need that person in your corner for a bigger conflict.

This book is worth it just for these 2 chapters, but the great part is there are 7 more that are just as good that will help anyone grow in their Children’s Ministry.

OMT (One More Thing) did I mention I was given 2 copies of this book, one for myself, and one to give away.  It’s really easy to win it (I will even pay the postage to get it to you) all you need to do is post a comment and let me know why you need to read this book for yourself.

Disclosure:  A complimentary copy of this book was provided by Standard Publishing for purposes of review.