Unless you’ve been living in a hole for the last few months, you know that Toyota has had to recall millions of vehicles around the world due to mechanical problems. As you may also know, Toyota’s CEO, Akio Toyoda, gave a testimony before the US Congress several weeks ago about the situation. This series is going to feature some quotes from that testimony, and what we, as children’s ministers, can learn from what he had to say. So let’s begin.

I fear the pace at which we have grown may have been too quick.

-Akio Toyoda

In some Christian circles making this statement about any kind of ministry would be condemned as outright sacrilege. Surely if we’re growing it’s a good thing, so let’s just keep doing it! Unfortunately, this can’t always be true.

Businesses know this quite well. Take MySpace for example. They experienced explosive growth and hired a ton of people, but hadn’t planned for long-term success and stability. Now, they’re just a speck on the social media radar. Take Toyota as another example. They rapidly expanded their dealer base across the country and built plants and hired people to support this growth. As a result, they had massively increased sales of their products. However while they may have had more customers and more money rolling in, the company’s structure simply wasn’t ready for such a massive influx.

Churches are especially vulnerable to this. We may suddenly see huge growth in numbers and be simply overjoyed. Growth is good, and a sign of a healthy church. It really is a great thing. The trouble comes when suddenly our children’s ministry, already underfunded and understaffed, has suddenly swollen from 50 kids to 250 kids. What do we do now? We can recruit more volunteers, hire more staff, and throw more money into it, absolutely, but all of those things take time. If we need 50 volunteers next Sunday and we’ve only got 20 right now, you can’t train 30 more people in a week. Money and buildings and staff and volunteers and all of these other things can help, but they don’t get at the root of the problem.

The root is structure. Small churches tend to run like, well, small churches. They are set up structurally to be small for the rest of their existence. Ask any strategic planner and they’ll tell you: that just doesn’t work. You don’t buy a house with 1 bedroom if you’re planning to have 15 kids. Yes, you can remodel and add on, but it’s a messy thing trying to rebuild the proverbial “house” while we’re living inside of it. It may work, but your chances of getting frustrated are so much higher.  Yet ministries who want, someday, to have 5000 members still set up like a ministry with 50 members.

Your church, and especially your children’s ministry, must be structured to grow. Always be prepared for an influx of 25 more kids suddenly. Structure things so that as you grow, you’re simply filling in the structure, not rebuilding it.

I’ve started realizing there are a lot of sites that I come across that I find super cool. But I never tell you about them. So here are four awesome websites I’ve visited today that I think you should know about.

Magntize- No, it’s not misspelled. But it is awesome. Magntize is a free service that allows you to set up a free personal online profile. Everything about you goes here–websites, pictures, and more. It’s a bit like an online business card.

Movieclips- This one’s rather self explanatory: they have movie clips. The sweet part is that they have movie clips from movies made in this decade unlike a lot of other sites. Finally, a place to show your friends the movie clip you keep quoting. Every 5 seconds.

Standard Theme- Standard Theme is the theme that’s been powering this blog for about the last month. (I was a beta tester.) I must tell you, it is the most powerful, flexible theme I have ever used. Period. And it just launched today.

Yancy Devotional- Preteen music sensation and all around awesome person Yancy launched the companion devotional to her “Rock-N-Happy Heart” CD today. I think you need to check it out.

Watch the following video, then come back and join me.

OK. Did you notice something? That was nearly 3 minutes of adjectives and not much else. This isn’t the first time a video like this has been made, it’s just the most recent one. Apple keynotes are filled with adjectives that describe and give life to what Steve and the other presenters are saying. They could completely eliminate the multimedia from their presentation and chances are they would be just as amazing, because the adjectives draw the picture for you. However, take out the adjectives and pretty much all you have left is a boring, drab bunch of techie speak.

It’s amazing to me what adjectives can do to transform a speech or lesson. Everyone, and kids especially, loves adjectives. We like having pictures drawn for us in words. A little adjective can take a story, lesson, or presentation from snooze-worthy to exhilarating.

So why do we ignore them so often? Because they’re extraneous. In a day and age where we’re all about speed and getting info out quickly, adjectives take up space and time we don’t want to use up. Twitter lends itself to the lessening use of adjectives due to space restrictions. The same with texts and many other forms of modern media. But we need them. Adjectives help us connect the visual and speech centers in our brains, connecting our learning in ways that we simply cannot any other way.

Don’t neglect the poor little adjectives. Give them a home when you teach a story to the kids in your ministry. Give them a home when you’re trying to persuade the pastor to let you use the auditorium for a sliming event. Give them a home in your everyday speech. Love your adjectives.

I learned something very interesting in a communication class last fall. The Latin root for both the words communication and community is communis- to make common, to have a common faith, or to experience together. Communication is literally the art of making a message common, or shared. Of sharing what you believe to be true. It’s also integral in community. Without communication, community can’t exist. The two are nearly synonymous.

So I decided to do a little research. For those of you who don’t know, I’m currently a freshman at Indiana Wesleyan University double majoring in Christian Education and Public Relations. I visited IWU’s online catalog and looked at the bachelor’s programs offered by the School of Theology and Ministry. Of the 12 ministry-related majors IWU offers, none of them include any communication-related classes.

I’m sure it’s the same at other Christian universities as well. We have devalued what good communication means to community-building, which is sad. Our goal and passion as the church is to build the community that is the church as well as the community around the church. Without communication, we can’t do either. I wonder at times how the effectiveness of the church would differ if we would learn to communicate effectively in a Christ-centered manner.

What does your church do to train its leaders in communication? Have you taken any courses or learned anything at a conference about ministry communication that you found especially helpful? Do you think I’m totally off base with this whole “communication is vital to community” thing? Talk to me in the comments.

I’m spending this week at Children’s Pastor’s Conference with KidzMatter (the company I work for). It’s hosted in the Gaylord Opryland hotel in Nashville, TN. One of the major features of the Opryland is its sheer size; it’s the largest American hotel and convention center under one roof outside of Las Vegas. This place is a maze of hallways, staircases, doors, and dead ends. It almost needs its own version of Google Maps.

Another thing the Opryland is known for is its lush indoor gardens. The interior of the resort is full of tropical plants and rushing waters. Inside this tropical paradise, it’s always sunny with a high of 75º and about 80% humidity. All the time. It’s crazy. You begin to forget after a time that you’re even inside. It feels like you’re wandering through a tropical forest that just so happens to have paved walkways, giant Christmas trees, and $20+ buffets. They’ve created an entirely artificial environment. When you step outside the doors of the Opryland, you realize that you’ve been missing reality. Reality is that it’s 20º, cloudy, and buffets are just $5.99 across the street.

The sad reality is that many churches have created the same artificial environment. I read an article earlier today from Time Magazine about the segregation of the American church. They cite a survey which revealed that just 8% of American churches have a significant racial mix. If I based my view of American society solely on your church, would I know there were such people as African-Americans, Asian-Americans, Latin-Americans and even Native Americans; or would I think that we were a nation that was solely Caucasian? Would I know that sometimes people struggle in life, or would I think that everyone here has a perfect life? Would I know that you care about people, or would I think that Americans are cold and heartless? Would I think that America loves every era of its worship music or would I think that all of our songs were either written 150 years ago or 15 days ago? Would I see the diverse heart and soul of Jesus Christ reflected in your church or would I think that people had forgotten who He was and what He had done?

Reflect on your church. What artificial environments have you created? What falsehoods do you need to break down? What doors do you need to let a blast of cold air through? How are you going to break through the glass ceiling that supports the artificial environment? How does God want you to break through?