I’ve been trying to start children’s church service preparation on Mondays. We have staff most of the morning and then a late lunch. By the time I get my workday started there isn’t much time left so I’ve been cracking open the curriculum and attempting to put my service together and done.

This has been working very well. First, I’m accomplishing something on a day that that otherwise wouldn’t allow me to. It allows me plenty of time to collect props, object lessons and recruit actors and even give away parts of the sermon to up-and-coming future children’s pastors in my volunteer staff. It also frees up the entire rest of your week to focus on other non-service stuff like policy, organization, brochures and (God forbid) planning.

I highly suggest doing service prep as early in the week as possible. It’s a little tough to want to jump into the next week just after getting done with a Sunday… but the payoff is worth it. The only negative I’ve found, if it can even be called negative, is that I find that I’ve got to add a couple of review times to my week so that I can keep the content fresh in my mind. The balance of it is that I’m giving more thought to the topic and scriptures over all then when I started on Thursday.

When do you do service prep? Do you have any tips to share? Add them to the comments!