Multi-Site Kids

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.

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.

Offering Projects

One of the things we've done the past two years in Kids' City is to designate the kids' offerings for specific projects.  We update the kids each month on how much offering we've collected toward the goal and the progress of the projects they're working on.  This year we designated $1500 to build a home for a family of orphans living in Rwanda.  Several years ago a couple from our Romeoville Campus started a ministry called Global Family Rescue that is helping the poor and forgotten in Rwanda.  Here's a picture of the family we're helping and the progress on the house we're constructing:

 

Currently we're working on our second 2006 project.  One of our curriculum writers started the Tolbert Refugee Assistance Foundation that helps refugees by paying for airline tickets to bring them to the USA to be reunited with family members living here.  We're working on collecting $2000 to bring 3 orphaned boys from Zambia to Michigan to be reunited with their grandmother.  When they arrive we'll be able to send someone to greet them at the airport and take pictures to show our kids.

I love focusing the kids' offerings on special projects like these for a variety of reasons.  First, we are expanding kids' hearts for the world.  They are learning that there are very different places in the world than the affluence of the Chicago suburbs.  Second, we are growing generous hearts in our kids.  I love the stories parents tell me about how kids want to bring their allowance to church to give back to God!  I firmly believe that if we can grow seeds of generosity in the hearts of kids they will grow up to be cheerful givers.  Having such tangible projects teaches kids about needs and how their contributions can make a difference to meet those needs.  Cool stuff.

But, third, I love the way these projects provide another link between our campuses.  So far we've worked on these projects together across campuses.  The updates are a part of our regular curriculum.  Every campus is contributing to the goal whether they are collecting $200 a month or $10 a month.  And together I think we're doing some pretty amazing things with nickles and dimes.

Staff Community

Trying to decide what type of relationship your campus children's directors will have with one another?  Let me share for a minute about my favorite part of today.

At 1:30pm I sat down in an upstairs conference room with our 7 campus directors.  We meet as a group twice a month for about an hour and a half.  We started today's meeting like we always do.  We spent several minutes sharing our wins...the good stuff that's happened since our last meeting.  Cathy shared a great story about one of the 1st graders at our Naperville Campus.  Tony had some encouraging news about a volunteer at our Pilsen Campus who is stepping up to take on greater responsibility.  We celebrated the successes we're seeing at each of our sites.

Next is a chance for people to share how God has been speaking to them.  I encourage every director to take one work day a month to step back from the tasks and meetings to retreat with God.  I always ask them to share at our meeting how God spoke to them during that day.  Today we were moved by Robbin's words as she read a small essay she had written chronicling what had been impressed upon her heart the previous Thursday. 

Our last act before jumping into business is to pray for 2 people on our team.  We rotate this time so that all 8 of us receive specific prayer during the course of a 2 month period.  Today it was Scott's and my turn to share.  We shared personal requests as well as specific requests for our areas of ministry.  It meant a lot to me to have Shannon and Cathy pray over us.

So by now it is pushing 2:10pm and we haven't tackled any business issues yet.  But in my opinion we have accomplished much.  There is a fullness that leads us into the rest of the meeting where we are able to work together to make important decisions that effect the present and future of Kids' City.  Did all of the business get done?  No.  It rarely does.  But the same would be true even if we didn't spend 40 minutes at the front of our meeting on other things.

I love the community we experience on our team.  I can't imagine doing it any other way.

Crossing Cultures

Christy from Calvary Church in Rosehill, Minnesota posed a great question:

"I read that you recently started a site with a Spanish service.  In addition to ethnic culture, do you see differences in culture between the sites?  How do you address this in your programming?"

First, let me say that we are beginners in the lessons of cross-cultural ministry.  The launch of our Pilsen Campus in the Mexican-American neighborhood of Chicago is forcing us to address issues that we've probably always had.  Even before Pilsen, our campuses were different.  Montgomery-Oswego and Hometown sit in communities with large Hispanic populations.  Romeoville has a significant African-American presence.  There are also socio-economic differences between our sites.  Some of our campuses are located in affluent cultures.  Others are not.  I have more questions than answers when it comes to these differences, but here are two thoughts...

Represent your ministry visually with who you hope to become.  I'll never forget a conversation I had with a friend of mine after a Sunday service.  She feels called to help us bridge cultural gaps.  We were talking about the pictorial slideshow that accompanied the teaching pastor's talk.  She mentioned something I hadn't even noticed...all but one of the couples represented in the presentation were white with the exception of one African American couple that was on the screen during the part of the talk that dealt with marital problems.  She simply wanted someone to notice so that the next time we might think differently about the visuals we select.  That simple conversation stuck with me.  I think about it everytime we make a flyer, PowerPoint presentation, website, banner, or video.  I want every child and family to see themselves in our ministry.  Make sure your visuals accurately reflect the community your church is in (not necessarily your existing congregation if that congregation isn't reflective of the surrounding community).  If you have campuses that are different but will be sharing a visual resource, take the time to collect pictures that show the diversity reflected in every campus.  Take the time to travel to a site to get a picture or video clip even if it would be significantly easier just to collect these images at one site.  It is important to demonstrate that you recognize and value all people.

Level the resource playing field with a centralized budget.  I think the decision the leaders of CCC made to structure our multi-site church with one shared budget has helped us negate economic differences between our campuses.  Our offerings from 8 locations go into one centralized budget.  And every year that budget is divided up based on the number of attenders at each campus (as opposed to the amount of money each campus collects in offerings).  The truth is that CCC campuses that are in wealthier neighborhoods undoubtedly contribute financially to the campuses that are in less affluent communities.  Everyone ends up having an equal chance to provide quality programming and to buy necessary supplies.  Not only do I think this is great, I think it's Biblical.

Those are just two thoughts.  We're starting to wrestle with cultural questions related to the curriculum we write but I don't have any insights there yet.  Does anyone else have suggestions? 

Flexible Grouping

Do your campuses vary in size?  At CCC, we currently offer children's programming at 7 sites and 16 services.  The number of children at any given service ranges from 20 to 140.  Since one of our goals is to provide a similar Kids' City experience with branded language at every location, we had to come up with systems and structures that were flexible enough to accommodate these difference. 

One system we had to address was how we were going to group kids into small groups.  The school system method (1st grade, 2nd grade,...) was working at our larger sites where the number of kids was great enough to support it.  But at a service with only 10 elementary kids total it seemed crazy to try to split them up into grade-specific groups.  Yet, we didn't want kids at these smaller sites to feel like they didn't have an experience that was crafted for them.  No 3rd grader wants to join a group labeled "2nd grade" because he's the only 3rd grader at the service.  And parents didn't want their 4-year-old in a classroom that was labeled for 3's.

So we decided to organize our ministry into 4 zones.  Since our ministry is called "Kids' City" we decided to name these zones fun names that fit our city theme:

WiggleWay (Infants through 2-year-olds)

JumpStreet (3-year-olds through Kindergarten)

Uptown (1st through 3rd Grades)

Club 45 (4th and 5th Grades)

Within each of these zones we can have one or multiple small groups.  At a smaller service there may only be one Uptown group made up of 1st through 3rd graders.  At our largest service we may have 5 Uptown groups.  Within each zone, we give groups a color name to distinguish between them. 

Some of the additional benefits of this system:  1)  More flexibility in grouping individual personalities and learning needs.  2) JumpStreet small groups stay consistent for an entire year.  When we were using an age-based system for grouping, preschool parents always wanted their child to "move-up" to the next age group as soon as they had a birthday.  We prefer to move everyone up once a year in the fall so that kids stay with the same small group leader all year.  Since our small groups are no longer labeled with an age, parents are perfectly content to keep their child in the "Red" group all year.  3) Small group leaders within a zone began functioning more as a team.  Rather than seeing themselves as individual leaders with an age group, they see themselves as a zone team that together care for a span of ages.  Teams are always more fun!

"Two are better than one..."

What relationship do your sites have to one another?  Do you try to maximize the partnership or do your sites run predominantly independent of one another?

Here at CCC, we've decided to keep all our children's ministry sites on the same page.  We are working under the same mission statement.  We are employing the same strategy.  We have the same leadership development structure.  We utilize the same curriculum at every site.  Now certainly there are some challenges because of the diversity between our campuses, but we believe the benefits of this synergy are too good to pass up.  Here are a some of the benefits we are experiencing...

1. Supportive Partnerships between Campuses. Our Campus Directors feel "in this together."  They feel united in our mission and strategy.  Our multi-site team really feels like a team because we are all moving in the same direction.  Using the same curriculum at each site is key to this synergy.  Everyone comes to our all-staff meeting on Wednesdays talking about the same video, sketch, or project.  I love how our Campus Directors overtly root for each other to succeed.

2. Sharing Best Practices.  Our campuses are all working towards the same goals so there are lots of opportunities to collaborate.  For example, Robbin, our Naperville Campus Director, had an idea for a recruiting program that fits great into our Kids' City culture and will align with an upcoming series we are doing as a church.  In our last Campus Director's meeting I asked her to share her idea with the rest of the team.  What happened?  Now 7 sites will be using the program because it fits right into the strategy they are already employing.   

3. Economizing Efforts. What if instead of 5 people having to complete a task you could have 1 person complete it and all 5 benefit from it?  By sharing curriculum and other products needed to carry out children's ministry, we are maximizing the expertise and capacity of our staff.  One of our Campus Directors edits the Preschool Curriculum we use at every campus.  Another plays a central role in developing the Elementary Large Group that is carried out at every site.  Another has developed our Community Recreation ministry that is expanding to multiple sites.  We tap into the unique strengths of each person and let everyone benefit from their efforts.

4. New Sites are Set Up for Success.  It's always easier to start a new enterprise with a proven product.  When we start a new site, it starts with a leadership development strategy that has been working for years.  We start with systems that are already successful in a half dozen other places.  Why reinvent the wheel over and over again?  Use what your current sites have already worked out to set the new sites up for success.

I think two are better than one.  And for us 7 bundled together seems a lot more effective and fun than 7 separated.