I wanted to take a moment to tell you about a great new site called Effective Children’s Ministry. They are really starting to get some great content. Keep it up Catherine and Lin!

Also, I’ve extended the Brent Weber DVD contest for another week. Be sure to get your name in the hat soon!

Amanda Cooley

…from Cresset Baptist in Durham, NC which is coincidentally my town of ministry!

I promise, there was no rigging, I randomly selected the winner through the Interactive Fruit Machine.

Here’s a screenshot for the skeptics! Amanda (the winner) is highlighted in orange.

You can, however, still get a discount on the Handbook and a Kidology membership. Just take note of the discount codes in the WGA post.

This month’s Wednesday Give Away (WGA) is generously provided by the Kidologist, Karl Bastian. I had not met Karl until a few weeks ago at CPC. He is an awesome leader in CM and continues to do great things for our field of ministry.

Karl has made several arrangements for Free CM Stuff readers. Here they are, take advantage of them all!

1. One free copy of the Kidology Handbook. Find out more info on the hand book from the video below. After watching the video, submit this comment: “Gimme tha’ Handbook!” and I’ll put your name in a drawing. The more times you comment, the more times I will enter your name in the drawing. The winner will be announced next Wednesday January 27th.

2: For the many unlucky enough to not win it here, you can still get a $5 off discount for the handbook. Just put in the code: FRCMHND at checkout. This offer is valid from 1/20-2/20/2010.

3. Karl is offering one final deal. Join or renew your Kidology membership, place the code: FRCMKDY in the promo box and get two free months added to your membership. Again this offer is valid only from 1/20-2/20/2010.

Start commenting!

Church budgets always seem to be tight no matter what the state of the economy. However, if you can prove to those in your church that you are budget-minded and tenacious at being frugal with church resources, they may just crown you as the King or Queen of Savings! Here are a few tips across the various areas of your ministry that can save you money:

Events

• Get several quotes from equipment providers (buses, inflatables, t-shirts, entertainment). Getting a few quotes takes a couple of extra minutes and you can often save hundreds of dollars. When I came to Grey Stone, I did this and cut the VBS t-shirt budget in half!
• Partner with other ministry areas to slice the costs in half. We did this for a volunteer banquet. The education ministry and children’s ministry did a somewhat joint thank you banquet for our volunteers. We got a better deal on the food (b/c of volume) and we split the entertainer fee.
• For camps or events that require parents to pay for their kids, many of us build a portion of this into our budget to subsidize the one’s who can’t afford it. I have found that a simple announcement in the bulletin explaining the need for scholarships draws a good bit of money. I explain exactly what it would cost to send one kid to that event so they have a concrete figure. I also have several “givers” in my contact list who have been very gracious in the past that I can call on for assistance. Try this one for extra camp spending money for needy children too!

Large Projects

• Sit down for 20 minutes and brainstorm about volunteers who can help you get the project done. We did a $10,000+ renovation project for our elementary worship room for around $5000 b/c of volunteers in our church who did things for free or at cost.
• Do the work yourself. Plan on spending 60-70 hours a week at church over those 2-3 weeks and show the church some hard work ethic!
• Schedule volunteer “work days” to help get the grunt work of large projects done. Schedule them at key times in the project plan and on days and times which working people are easily available.

Curriculum

• Use free curriculum, especially for short run programs, like Wednesday nights in the summer, or for Christmas/Easter lessons. Go here to find out about links to many of these free curriculum resources. Another great resource for this is Open from LifeChurch.
• Partner with a local sister church to alternate the sharing of curriculum. This would cut your budget in half. Even with dated curriculum, a few tweaks would make this very doable.
• Have teachers meet weekly to discuss their resource needs. They may find that someone else has what they were going to ask you to buy the next day!

Consumable Resources

• Three times a year, make a wish list known of items needed for your nursery or resource room. Put this list in your bulletin or newsletter. Want to make it even more successful, have some adult Sunday school classes adopt a particular area of “resource needs” and do a two week drive toward the end of the summer to get ready for the new school year.
• Steal them. Just kidding…I wanted to see if you read this far!
• Cut out the amount you feed children at church and have a rotation of families provide that snack or breakfast.
• Buy wholesale. Get a Costco, BJ’s, or Sam’s membership. You really do save a ton on things like cookies, cups, napkins, and plates there.
• Lock the snacks up so the youth don’t eat them!

I came across a site that is a little bit like Free CM Stuff. It’s called Cool Kids Ministries. Steve Harney has a few things on his site that you may find helpful. Of particular interest to me was the Lesson Plans and Magic Tricks. I also plan to build that Wind Tunnel for VBS next year!

You may also be interested in:

1. Free Kid Leadership Book Offer
2. Coldwater Cafe: CM Resources, Articles, and Provider Directory
3. Free Curriculum-over a year’s worth

Subscribe to the Free CM Stuff RSS feed here.

If you want a good site for a Children’s Ministry resource directory, interesting and challenging articles (by Roger Fields), and some children’s ministry humor, go to Cold Water Cafe.

Also…don’t forget about the Jim Wideman Leadership CD’s that I’m giving away. You can find that post here.

Have a puppet ministry at your church? You can get free scripts at PuppetResources.com. They have Christian and non-Christian skits. They can be used with puppet ministries or as general skits to help you teach various Bible lessons or points of life application.

I love it when an organization will give their hard work away for free! It’s all about the kingdom work, right!

Alright friends, it is time for another Wednesday Give Away (WGA). My friend Jon Slone has written a book of poems called Riggleberry Bloke. Many of them are Christian in nature and the rest are just downright fun. I like to say that his work is a mix between Dr. Seuss and Shel Silverstein. Jon is very talented and I pray the Lord will take him very far with his work.

I use his book in my own home and in my ministry. After reading a Bible story each night with my two preschool daughters, they always ask for a “siwwy pwum” (translated, silly poem!). They love the whole book, but some of their favorites are “Stormie Mol Bean” and “Homemade Traps.” In ministry, I’ll use a poem that is pertinent to worship or a funny one that might make a good lesson illustration. It’s also a handy book to have around if you have an extra 10 minutes before parents pick all your children up from your mid-week program!

Here’s how you can win this book. All you have to do is comment with the words: I want Riggleberry Bloke! Didn’t win the book, buy one, they’re less than $11 at Amazon.com, Half.com and BarnesandNoble.com. Next Wednesday I’ll put everyone’s name in a hat (or basket, or pot, or iron cauldron, or carved out watermelon rind) and draw out a winner. You have one week to submit your comment. Go!

If you have not stumbled upon Max 7 yet, you are really missing out. They have forms, curriculum, audio and videos. You must take a look at the video: Aim Lower. If your pastor would let you show it in “Big Church” during recruitment time, you should take him up on it!

If you have not stepped into the world of online registration for your ministries, then JotForm is the site to get you started! Having parents sign up for your camps, VBS or summer events online can really save you a lot of administrative paperwork and headaches. I mean, why should you input all of that computer data? Let the participants do it.

With Jotform’s basic (translated free) edition, you will most likely not push its limitations. With the free version, you obviously get no technical support apart from the forums, but you get 100 submissions per month, 10 MB of uploading, downloading results in various formats and the ability to run secure financial transactions (i.e. PayPal, etc.). Of course if you feel that your needs would exceed the allowances for the free version, you can pay $9/month for the more versatile account. I have been using Survey Monkey for some of these same purposes and paying around $19/month.

Something about JotForm that amazes me is its user-friendliness. All of the form creation is drag and drop. It allows you to email the forms, code them into your website, display real time results of the results on your site (for polls) or link registrants to a web page containing your survey/form.

A tool like this is handy for a variety of functions. You can certainly use it for registrations, but other uses could include:

• Parent/Volunteer feedback survey for various ministry events or programs
• RSVP forms for volunteer banquets or ministry events
• Questionnaire concerning volunteer intentions to renew commitments

Can you think of other uses? Know of any other free tools similar to this one? Let us know by commenting below!