David Reneau: What to Measure in Kids Ministry
How do you measure success in kids ministry?
For many leaders, talking about numbers feels uncomfortable. Ministry is about people, not metrics. But ignoring the numbers can actually make it harder to serve families well.
In this episode, Jeremy sits down with longtime kids pastor turned lead pastor David Reneau to talk about the role data can play in healthy ministry. David shares how tracking the right metrics can help leaders identify what’s working, spot problems early, and steward their ministry more effectively.
They discuss practical things like attendance trends, visitor return rates, spiritual milestones, and why dashboards can help you tell the story of your ministry to senior leadership. They also talk about the balance between numbers and the heart behind ministry. As David explains, numbers shouldn’t replace the mission, but they can reveal whether the mission is actually being accomplished.
If you’ve ever wondered how to evaluate your ministry without turning it into a business, this conversation will give you practical tools and a healthier perspective.
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Transcript:
KIDMIN U Team (00:00)
David, welcome to the podcast.
David Reneau (00:02)
Hey, thank you so much for having me, Jeremy. This is a pleasure and I'm excited to help you launch this podcast. I think this is gonna be super helpful for people out there and just to help people learn more about children's ministry and how to do this thing that we do, Reaching Kids for Jesus.
KIDMIN U Team (00:16)
Yep.
Yeah, it's an incredible privilege we have. And the fun thing for you, you are a longtime kids pastor, but actually these days you are a lead pastor. So you're on the other side of this relationship that is a mystery to so many kids leaders. I think you're probably what, maybe six months in. How are things going so far?
David Reneau (00:31)
Not even,
not even, I am three months in. So I'm three months in. So I am super new to this thing. And I had a weird experience. ⁓ My kid's pastor that was with me when they hired me, he was already on his way out. So after I'd been there for two months, he took a step away. So I had to hire a new kid's pastor. And sitting in that interview process was just...
KIDMIN U Team (00:36)
wow.
David Reneau (00:58)
the weirdest thing. just had to keep telling myself, don't answer the question. Like, let her answer the question. Because it's like, they would ask the question, like, I know what I would say, but we're not, they're not asking me, they're asking her. So that was a unique experience of really just sitting on the other side of the chair, because I've seen a lot of kids, I've, you I've been a kid pastor a lot of different churches. And so sitting on the other side of the table was a unique experience for me. So
⁓ But you know, I'm liking what I'm doing. ⁓ I've been in ministry for 17 years. 15 of that was in children's ministry. And so I just, after doing that for 15 years, I really felt like God was calling me to more and to do, know, just step up my leadership and do that. And so that ultimately led me to be a lead pastor. So it was a two year journey to get there, but I'm loving what I'm doing now.
KIDMIN U Team (01:48)
you've been doing this a long time. What I love to actually do with our guests is talk about their origin story. I don't know if you're like me but I love finding out like how people got their start even in like movies. Like if there's a an epic franchise like Batman or something my favorite one is always gonna be the origin story.
David Reneau (01:54)
Mm. Mm-hmm.
KIDMIN U Team (02:06)
listen, people, know you now, you've written a book, you've been doing all this stuff, but I would love to hear how'd you get started in kids ministry?
David Reneau (02:10)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Yeah, so I got called into ministry at 14. I'm a similes of God is my denomination. So I grew up in Roarangers, which is kind of like Christian Boy Scouts, if you don't know what that is. So we were at a camp in Springfield, Missouri, or Eagle Rock, Missouri, it's outside Springfield. And God called me into ministry and it just right before I started high school. And so I kind of fought the call all throughout high school. I really thought I was gonna do the military thing.
And then when I got out I got invited to I decided to go to a ministry tech school again I'm a symbol of God so that was called the ministry tech school was called Masters Commission Some of your old school AG people would know what that is But the best way I can describe it is a ministry tech school when I went into it was like I'm gonna be a I'm gonna be a youth pastor and Because I just got out of youth and like let's go be a youth pastor. I did youth pastor for
The first week of being a youth pastor, I had a 14 year old cuss me out and I was like, I don't think this is for me. So this is not what it's gonna be. So I kind of floated around, I played with the idea of being a lead pastor, working in administration and then children's ministry was, people kept asking me to do children's ministry because I had done VBS every year of my life.
KIDMIN U Team (03:13)
Yeah.
David Reneau (03:33)
So I knew what that was and I had a talent for being in front of kids. That's part of the ministry tech school was being in front of kids and doing that. And they kept asking me to do that. was like, no, I'm not doing that. And then the children's pastor right before my third year of school, children's pastor left and the youth pastor stepped in and he was running it during the summer and he just kept begging me, David, I need you to come help me. Please come help me do this. And I'm like, no.
I am not going to do children's ministry. That is not what I'm gonna do. So I came in, I finally said yes and it changed my life. I had so much fun making the kids laugh and introducing them to Jesus. And then also I love the youth pastor. We're still friends today. He's a lead pastor over in Alabama, organization was not his strong suit. So.
He would call me at like 10 o'clock, we had service at 11, he'd call me at 10 o'clock on Sunday morning, David, what are we doing today? And so I was like, okay. I wrote my first curriculum of planning out services and stuff. So I did that for about six months. And after about six months of doing that, they brought in a new kids pastor. And so the joy and the excitement of...
being in ministry was, being in children's ministry just wasn't there. I could still make the kids laugh and all that, but it was really just all about me and the joy that I got out of it, not necessarily doing the kids. And then I do tell this story in my book in the intro. After I had been talking about, my kids pastor, to the new kids pastor, like, I think I'm gonna step out. I think in January, like I'm gonna be done. I'm not gonna do this anymore.
And he, and one just random Sunday, he did an altar call. And one of the kids, the way Master's Commission works is you have like an MC family. And so there was a family that had kind of like adopted me there. I went over to their house on Sundays, Sunday afternoons, just so I would have somewhere to go. I wouldn't have to be like in the dorm rooms. So I had been developing a relationship with these kids for the last three years. And one of the kids in that house came down for an altar call and he came to me and I led that kid to Christ.
And that was really the first time I had done that. And he walked away changed forever, but so did I. And so at that point it was like, yeah, this is what I'm gonna do. And so it wasn't about trying to make the kids laugh or organizing things or putting things, was about like, okay, let's tell people about Jesus. so that's always the, your why, that's when ministry gets tough.
That's my why I remember that prayer at that altar with that boy. And it it's kept me going. Even now in this lead pastor role, I have lots of other stories like that, but that lead pastor, even sitting in this role is like, I'm doing this for having that prayer with that kid.
KIDMIN U Team (06:27)
Yeah, isn't that ministry in a nutshell? mean, I think
things get really hard, really challenging. It takes so much from us. All it takes is one little moment, like a little glimpse of heaven. And you're like, my gosh, this is why we do it. You know, there are so many days and even there might be people listening to this who are in the middle of one of those seasons where they're like, man, I'm overworked and burnt out. ⁓
David Reneau (06:36)
Mm-hmm.
Right.
Mm-hmm.
KIDMIN U Team (06:52)
Maybe it's hard to see the impact of what I'm doing right now. And it's amazing how the Lord in one moment can just remind us so clearly, it's all worth it. If it was only for that one kid, it was worth it. Yeah.
David Reneau (06:55)
Yeah.
Yeah, it was worth
it. It was worth it. And we're really, we're recording this in November and we're really heading into that season where a lot of people start to feel that burnout because of Thanksgiving and because of December, Christmas and all this stuff pulling on. And so one of the things I talk to children's pastors when they first start off is you have to make sure you maintain your relationship with Jesus, that you have to love Jesus as much before or more than
KIDMIN U Team (07:25)
Yeah.
David Reneau (07:31)
when you're done. And so it's so important to make sure that as you head into these holiday seasons or whenever this comes out, we're probably heading into Easter, you gotta make sure that you keep your own spiritual disciplines going. You gotta remember, practice your faith and not just get eaten up in the ministry. And that really keeps you going for the long haul.
KIDMIN U Team (07:50)
Yeah, I think that's something we all know, ⁓ logically, but have a hard time doing it. I'd actually love to hear your take. How do you do that? How do you protect that in your own heart? How do you prioritize your relationship with Jesus? Like as practical as you can get? What does that look like?
David Reneau (07:53)
Mm.
Mm-hmm.
So what I try to do is you want to have these special disciplines that you have. And if you're in children's ministry, most likely you are not in service. Very few kids pastors get to go to service on a regular basis. I'm one of them. One of my most popular posts on my blog is like, here's how to go to service when you're a kid man. But what you have to do is you need to figure out the church does.
KIDMIN U Team (08:16)
Yeah.
David Reneau (08:33)
several things for you. Being in service does several things. One, corporate worship. Two, learning about God's word. Three, community and fellowship. And four is Bible study. So what you need to do is you need to find ways to replace those that doesn't happen on the Sunday morning service. So like, I mean, you can still get fed sitting in a kids' service, but...
And I'm not knocking that, there's still ways that you, there's still things you need to do. So for me, I have picked out certain pastors that I listen to on a podcast and I listen to them every single week. And I've been listening to them for years of listening. And so I sit under their tutelage and I've met them. I've attended a couple of their churches on and off Sunday. But they, I get that learning from there. I have a daily Bible reading.
KIDMIN U Team (09:12)
Hmm.
David Reneau (09:25)
regimen of like I'm reading through the Bible in a year. That's what I'm trying to say. Read through the Bible in a year and get through. So it's always in there. I've added in prayer and fasting and having like having these disciplines inside. And so that is every single week you put in there. Community is also an important thing because one, you're in leadership. So that's already isolating. And two, you're in children's ministry. So
Because you're not in main service when you were when people come to church they're looking and they're talking to you most of the time they're looking at you from a leadership standpoint of They're a volunteer coming in like what are we doing today or they're a parent of what are you teaching my kids today? And so it's important for you to go be a part of a group And and if you cannot be in charge of that group even better So go enjoy go find a small group and try to I know it's a lot of times
We're so busy, especially a lot of kids pastures are bivocational, trying to figure out where to make that work. But it's essential that you have some community that's outside of, because you're not getting that on Sunday morning, you need to have that in another place to do that. then, so that's like on a week to week daily basis, and that keeps that going. I talked about holidays of like, here's how to do this. like for me, because I'm Pentecostal, liturgy was not a thing for me. I didn't learn about Advent.
until college, when I learned about lint in high school, they told me that they gave up meat for lint. And I was like, I don't think you can eat drier lint. I don't understand what you're saying by that. But what I've done is I've added those practices in there that Advent is looking forward to the birth of Jesus and a celebration of the Messiah, the Christ has come. And so I spend those four weeks
prepping for that on my own personal side that may not necessarily be on the church side. Sometimes I've taught about it in my kids ministry, but it's not all the time. And then also for Lent, like Lent is like fasting, of doing a fast, leading into Easter, thinking about what Jesus has done for me and has life. And so that private practice, those rhythms of that practice in there helps put, especially on those big days, because Christmas Eve, great Christmas service, Easter day,
Those are not really a holy observance for us because we're working on that day. So we have to make sure that we make space for that outside of that time so you can still celebrate and keep Jesus first in those hard times.
KIDMIN U Team (11:54)
I loved what you shared like a number of things you shared and it reminded me a little bit of a quote that I heard from Tom Brady in one of his documentaries you know obviously he's been to all these Super Bowls and what do people do over the Super Bowl like anybody he knows who's a family or friend they're gonna be there for the spectacle they're gonna be there all week for them it's their vacation and he would have to tell him like hey I'll connect with you briefly but like this is literally my Super Bowl
David Reneau (12:01)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
KIDMIN U Team (12:18)
This is biggest game of my life. I can't hang right now. Like I've got a job to do. And I think church is kind of the same way where for most people you just come to church and you get to hang and attend and receive for us. It's like, man, I actually have a task in front of me and I have to be a good steward of that. can't just shrug off that responsibility. But what you said there, and I hope people caught this.
David Reneau (12:18)
Right. Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
KIDMIN U Team (12:41)
is there's a way to actually check those same boxes, even if it doesn't come in the form of that main service. And I do think, I kind of feel like we put that service on a pedestal. Like if I'm not in that room on a regular basis, then my faith falls apart. And I think, first of all, like I would tell anybody in our church, like get in the room because it's important. But if you're a ministry leader and you can't, there are some ways you can recreate it. Like,
David Reneau (12:48)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
KIDMIN U Team (13:07)
At the
church I most recently was at, we would always do Tuesday prayer and it was a ton of worship.
David Reneau (13:11)
Mm-hmm.
KIDMIN U Team (13:13)
heavy prayer, was a charismatic church, so probably similar to what you're experiencing up there. And for me, that was like my church, you know, like that checked off a number of boxes. So on Sunday, if I can't hop into the main room, I still felt like, hey, I got it over here. And I also have a small group, but I have community and I have these other rhythms. So what we're not saying is that you don't need that and that you're invincible as a ministry leader. In fact, you're more vulnerable, I would say. Like it's more important for you to be healthy.
David Reneau (13:19)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
No. Exactly. You absolutely
KIDMIN U Team (13:43)
Coffee.
David Reneau (13:44)
need it. It's essential. And here's where I learned of this is that two years ago, I lost my job as a pastor. Like I went to be a lead pastor in a succession planning and it failed. And then all of a sudden I didn't have a job as a pastor that I'd been doing for 15, 16 years. And the only thing I had to fall back on was my faith and my practices.
KIDMIN U Team (14:08)
Hmm.
David Reneau (14:09)
And so we had to go church shop, which my wife and I had never done before. But there was that whole healing process and all of sudden all these spiritual practices and disciplines that I had been developing over the years, they were the thing they got me through in those darkest times of that six months of just healing and reparation, but also like learning what it's like to be just a Christian and not being a leader. ⁓
KIDMIN U Team (14:34)
Yeah.
David Reneau (14:36)
Sometimes we can get, it's not until you separate yourself from that for a significant amount of time that you really realize just how much of that weight is sitting on you every single Sunday.
KIDMIN U Team (14:47)
Yeah. And I can speak to that too. So, I mean, listen, I spent 14 years like working in kids ministry and until just recently, you know, I branched off and I'm doing my own thing now building up KidmenU and doing things like this podcast. And so I think, what is it? Maybe four or five months removed from that. It is a weird feeling, you know, like you don't realize how many of your rhythms were kind of just built in. And, and it's a really good reminder that like, hey, lesson prep is not your devotional.
David Reneau (14:53)
you
Mm-hmm.
Mmm. yeah.
No,
KIDMIN U Team (15:16)
That's not your time in the word, you know. ⁓
David Reneau (15:16)
no, can't, that does not count. can't do that. really even like, if you're leading worship, that doesn't count either. You need to have your own worship. So like one of the things I did in that six month time is I learned how to play the guitar. I'm really bad. not sitting, I will probably never be on the stage. I am the whitest guy of all white guys. So I have no rhythm.
KIDMIN U Team (15:21)
Yeah.
my gosh.
David Reneau (15:40)
⁓
And it wasn't until after I decided to play it that I realized, this is rhythm guitar. This was a horrible mistake. What have I done? But still, there's time where like, okay, I'm gonna spend time in worship. And I know worship is more than just music, but spending time in that worship time where I am creating a joyful noise to the Lord, and that's outside of like, I don't have to rely on what's just happening on something.
KIDMIN U Team (16:04)
Yeah. Okay. Let's go here for a second. So.
I was part of a charismatic church that was actually quite new for me. know, my background prior to that was a lot more buttoned up, you know, kind of some Baptist roots and things like that. So coming to a charismatic church was like a fun little adventure, a lot of new things. And one of them, when I heard you say that, it like triggered this thing where like on a pretty regular basis, I don't know if your church did this too, but there would be things like that where they're like, Hey, we're to take a moment and everybody make your own noise. Everybody sing your own song, you know, like that sort of thing.
David Reneau (16:12)
Hmm.
Hmm. Okay.
Well, yeah.
KIDMIN U Team (16:38)
And I would always freeze up like, what do I even say? What's my tune? I would overthink it, you know?
David Reneau (16:41)
Yeah, that's
why a lot of Pentecostal churches don't do that anymore because that's what happened. you know, it can get, when you get into charismatic stuff, it can get weird real quick. You got flag dancers and tambourines and shofars and you got people doing all the kind of dancing and stuff. And I've been in those rooms.
KIDMIN U Team (16:47)
Ha ha ha!
David Reneau (17:05)
⁓ and, and it's, it's great to have like the spirit moving in those places, but also like for the uninitiated, it's like, what is, what is happening? And so the, we're trying to like balance how do, how do we embrace our Pentecostalism, but also like make it inviting for the new person.
Mm-hmm.
KIDMIN U Team (17:27)
you a moment ago you were talking about like, hey, I was part of an AG church, but liturgy was probably very unfamiliar. We probably never did that. It's like, well, I actually think there's a place for both in our churches. I don't know that we have to get stuck in one camp or the other where the Holy Spirit is certainly active. Like I think if you are a New Testament Christian, like it's pretty clear to see how the Holy Spirit wasn't just active then, but active today. But also even some things that feel a little bit formal and structured and whatnot like liturgy.
David Reneau (17:36)
Mm-hmm.
KIDMIN U Team (17:58)
those can be really powerful too. And so I actually love it when a church kind of gives themselves permission to just try different stuff. Like we don't have to stay in like the same camp of what we're associated in and never veer out. It's like, hey, actually there's beauty in a number of different traditions.
David Reneau (18:00)
Yeah.
Yeah, there's something that you can learn from all of those, all of those different things. And really when I go back and you look at the heart behind when they started corporate prayers or Lent or Advent or these different liturgical things, these were spiritual leaders hundreds of years ago who were trying to help their people, their congregations connect with God. And so if we, a lot of times people turn against
KIDMIN U Team (18:40)
Hmm.
David Reneau (18:45)
leaning into things like Lent because the Lent is like, we've seen Mardi Gras happen and that Mardi Gras happens the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday because it's like, we're about to go on a big fast, so let's big party. And so like that's that so people have turned it and lost the heart behind it. But as a person who did not grow up in it, it's like, no, I can like understand the heart behind this and embrace the thought and the meaning behind this and not
KIDMIN U Team (18:56)
Hmm.
David Reneau (19:11)
And I can kind of say goodbye to the abuses to it because I just, haven't practiced it long enough to learn how people can mess it up.
KIDMIN U Team (19:19)
Yeah. Okay. That ended up taking a really fun turn. But the real reason I wanted to bring you on is ⁓ because of our topic for today. So one of the things that I'd love to have a conversation about
David Reneau (19:23)
Yeah, would probably be wonderful.
KIDMIN U Team (19:31)
is having a healthy balance of measuring our ministry. And this is kind of a sensitive topic. The reason it's part of this is because it is one of the core modules in our Kidman U training. And I believe it's really important. I believe it's a stewardship thing. And I came across you because you just came out with a book. It's available now. Everywhere books are sold. It's called Next Level Kidman. Great read, by the way. Yep, there you go. Shameless plug. I love it.
David Reneau (19:35)
Mm-hmm.
Mm.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, it's worth it. It's right there. Here it is. Yeah.
KIDMIN U Team (20:00)
Yeah, but really good book. And in the back of it, in the appendix, you had a section on how to build a dashboard, some things to measure in your ministry. And as soon as I saw it, I was like, wow, this is probably the only kids ministry thought leader that I've come across who's actually had a conversation about this topic. So maybe a good place to start, David, why do you think people are so hesitant and reluctant to talk about numbers in ministry?
David Reneau (20:18)
Mm-hmm.
I think part of it is ⁓ math has a bad name and so people just don't like math. So and part of the reason why I love it is my degree is in math. So I love math and so I want to be able to track the numbers. When I was taking studying for my math degree, it's teaching math. Statistics was my least favorite subject because it was so inexact and so much of it is just guessing.
KIDMIN U Team (20:29)
Ha ha.
David Reneau (20:48)
But then when I got into ministry and I was like, wait a minute, statistics is the most practical class I took all this entire time. one, I think people are scared of the numbers, they're just numbers in general of like, how do I do this? Two, they don't know how to keep track of the numbers. Three, they've heard all the people talk about the numbers and you can, because I've been guilty of this.
KIDMIN U Team (20:48)
Hmm.
David Reneau (21:12)
you can get so focused on the numbers that you miss Jesus in it, ⁓ that you can be all about the metrics and trying to make everything work, you're focused on just trying to get those numbers up and it starts to feel more like a business as opposed to a church. And so there is a balance that you have to find when you track your numbers and keep your metrics in there. So you have to...
KIDMIN U Team (21:16)
Hmm.
Hmm.
David Reneau (21:38)
But I think it's doable. think it's absolutely important for you to know your numbers because you got to know whether or not you're being effective. Because one thing about math is that math does not lie. It's going to tell you the truth. And so you can leave a particular event or service and you can feel like, that was great. And then you go and look at the numbers and realize, no, it wasn't. Maybe this wasn't. And I'll give you an example.
KIDMIN U Team (21:50)
Yeah.
David Reneau (22:05)
I know I'm going a little off your question here, but I'll give you an example of what I'm talking about. So we did a fall festival. It was a trunker treat years and years ago. We did this thing and 1,400 people showed up, which was for our church of 400, 1,400 people was amazing. We doubled the attendance, doubled or even tripled the attendance from the year before, which was just like, this is amazing, wow.
KIDMIN U Team (22:07)
No, it is great.
David Reneau (22:32)
And if we had just gone off that number, and that 1,400 is just an estimate, but if we had just gone off that number, we would have like, yes, we are absolutely gonna do this again. But we set certain numerical benchmarks to say, okay, these are things that we wanna see as a result of this. Like, we wanna see people come to church as a result of us doing this fall outreach. You how many families came to church because of 1,400 people on campus? How many people came to church the following Sunday?
KIDMIN U Team (23:01)
gosh.
David Reneau (23:01)
just one, 1,400, one.
I mean, that is just a horrific statistic. And the other thing was is that we did it, you're counting the other numbers, is like when you do a trunker treat, in order to have a successful trunker treat, you gotta have a lot of cars. You gotta have a lot of cars, a lot of energy with it, and you gotta have a lot of buy-in from your church in order to do it. We had 11 cars, five of them were staff, and two of them were like my car physically and the church van. So,
KIDMIN U Team (23:08)
You
David Reneau (23:30)
Like it's just, you got 11 cars for 1400 people. The lines were out there, out, you know, just 30 kids long. It just, took forever to do anything to go in there. And the other, and so like when you only like six people of 400 actually involved themselves in that. And then even my church people came to me and said, we felt unsafe at this event and we don't want to come, we didn't want to come to this thing and we don't want to come to it in the future.
And it's like, okay, if they're, one thing about being unsafe feeling in the community, that's one thing to address. But the other side to address is that if I can't fix that, there's no way they're gonna show up and do a trunk and help me do this thing. So using those numbers of like, okay, only six church members actually came and participated doing a trunk. I had more people in other places.
We didn't do a good job, we never presented the gospel. We did not do a good job of keeping registrations. Only one family came to church as result of it. It's like, I don't think we should do this again. I think we're gonna shut this down because this is not doing what we wanted to accomplish. And that illustrates my point of like, if we don't track our numbers, then we would not have done that. We would have just done it again and again and again and again and our church people would have been just stopped showing up.
And meanwhile, the community is just showing up to get a free hot dog and some candy.
KIDMIN U Team (24:55)
Well, it's interesting because I think what you're hitting on there is that people are telling you something. Like if you've only got six people in your church who are choosing to participate in this, what are people saying? They're saying that it's not important to them.
David Reneau (25:00)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
KIDMIN U Team (25:08)
I know
that's like not fun to hear. And maybe that's part of why we don't like to talk about numbers is because we're scared of what it might say. And I think that can be a vulnerable place because numbers don't care about your feelings at all. Like they're objective, they are ruthless, you know, but it is important to look at it and say, okay, well, what's actually going on?
David Reneau (25:15)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, no.
Yeah.
KIDMIN U Team (25:28)
What are the trends? Like what's actually happening? I love this whole talk and especially like learning today that you are like you've got your own math degree and everything. It reminds me of, have you seen the movie Moneyball by chance? Yeah. I feel like you're the Jonah, whatever his name is, Jonah Hill. You're the Jonah Hill of kids ministry right now.
David Reneau (25:40)
Yes! ⁓ I love it. So fun.
Jonah Hill, yeah. Yeah, I was I was Yeah, I was I was all about Jonah Hill's
character in that one is like
KIDMIN U Team (25:52)
Yeah, but it's important. All right, so I would actually love to talk about like how you use numbers to measure impact, because I think probably one of the biggest concerns that people have, and even listening to this, maybe up until now, they're like really on the fence, because they're like, okay, this is all well and good. If you track the number of trunks, or the number of people who come, I get that. But when we talk about matters of the heart, where only God can see the heart, can numbers even be useful for any of that? What are your thoughts?
David Reneau (26:20)
Absolutely, you have to have because your numbers tell you whether or not you're being effective in your thing that and that's a lag measure Numbers are there's two types of measures. There's lead measures and there's lag measures So numbers like attendance data is a lag measure like we did this event We had this many people show up and that just tells us what happened Or we had this many salvations at the end of the year with this many baptisms at the end of the year
So those are the lag measures, but then there's also lead measures of like, okay, I know I can do these things to kind of take these numbers up to reach more people. just to give you an idea, these are some of the things I track. I track attendance, absolutely. You need to know how many people are in the room, as that's part of knowing your numbers. But you also want to your guest flow, how many visitors do you have coming into your building?
Rich Birch, he's a great executive pastor. He does a lot of coaching for churches of a thousand. He's a metrics guy. And he talks about that in order for your church to grow, you need to have as many of your average attendance, that many visitors attend. So if you have a church of 100, in order for you to maintain or grow, you need to have 100 visitors throughout the year that comes to your church. ⁓
KIDMIN U Team (27:42)
Mm-hmm.
David Reneau (27:43)
In practice, I have not actually seen that come into fruition. However, it's still something, you still need to track, okay, how many visitors came? So that tells you by how many visitors come, that tells you whether or not your outreach is working, are people inviting, are the outreaches you're doing actually doing that? If you're doing any kind of marketing, that helping that thing? And then you also can track, the other things I track is I track how many second and third time visitors come.
because you can get many people to come into the door, but if they don't come back, then there's something wrong. And that's an indicator to you saying there's something wrong in the system. There's something wrong either with our people or our systems, our processes. There's something happening that's telling our people that's not welcoming enough for the people to feel like they want to come back to this product. It's like when you go to a restaurant and you go to restaurant for first time, you'd have a horrible experience. You're never gonna go back. But you go to a restaurant,
You go to a restaurant and you have an incredible experience. You go and tell everybody about it and you're like, and then you go back again and again. And even from a restaurant standpoint, the studies show that if you show, if a person goes to a restaurant three times within, I think like a month, you are now a regular tender. You are going to go to that restaurant on a regular basis. And so you wanna track those, track that visitor metrics and say, okay, how often are they coming, how often are they coming back? And you want them to come back within.
KIDMIN U Team (28:54)
Mm-hmm.
David Reneau (29:08)
a couple weeks of it. if you're like, yeah, great, they came three times, but they came Easter, Christmas, and the following Easter. No, that doesn't count. They gotta come within a certain amount of weeks because they're motivated to come. The other things I track is I track milestones. So the milestones that I track for mine are salvations, baptisms, how many kids are serving in different places.
And then because I'm a symbol of God, how many kids are baptized in the Holy Spirit or at least seeking the baptism of Holy Spirit? For me, those are like the four milestones of every believer that needs to go in there. And since I'm saying that that's important for our ministry, I need to keep track of it to see if my things that I'm doing, like presenting the gospel on a regular basis or doing a baptism class once a quarter, or like sending my kids to camp so they can be exposed to how the Holy Spirit works.
if those things are being effective, if those numbers are going up, as my ministry is growing, those numbers, those milestone numbers need to go up because if they're, if I just say I want baptisms, but I'm not doing anything to help baptisms, then nothing's gonna happen. And then by looking at that number, I can say, look, I saw an uptick in baptisms here. What happened there? it's because I did a baptism class and I taught, I did an entire series on.
KIDMIN U Team (30:31)
Hmm.
David Reneau (30:33)
why it's important to get water baptized. And so that's why we saw an uptick there. The other thing I track is I track the grades that kids are in because around summertime, the lead pastor is gonna ask you, or the youth pastor is gonna ask you how many fifth graders are moving into the ministry or how many preschoolers are moving into kindergarten.
those questions are being asked. if you were tracking your numbers, excuse me, if you're tracking your numbers, you know, you can answer that question. At any moment, you can say, I have this many kids. And then that aligns also, did small group, I was in a large group, small group model. So my idea was to have small groups, they were split up by grade. So I needed to know how many kids I had in each grade so that I would make sure that it was staffed correctly from a volunteer standpoint.
KIDMIN U Team (31:09)
Mm-hmm.
David Reneau (31:28)
Cause we're all talk about, you I have the rule of two of having two adults in there, which is great. But what happens if it's a, if it's a small group and you got two adults in there, but there's 20 third graders, that's, that's not a small group. That's a medium group. And so you need to, you need to split that. You need to make that into a smaller, you need to split that into the smaller group. So if you're tracking the numbers and it's like, okay, I know I have this many third grade girls coming in here.
And so I want to try to track between, want my groups to be between eight and 10. So if I'm starting to see average attendance hitting eight kids, and I was like, all right, now I definitely need to start looking for a new person. Now it's a 10, I've really read alert, they've really got to find somebody. If it's a 12, it's too many. now group dynamics are falling apart and I really got to get somebody in there. But if I'm not tracking my numbers, if I'm just sticking my head in the classroom or just walking over to a group, and for me a lot of times,
KIDMIN U Team (32:21)
Mm.
David Reneau (32:23)
I was leading a small group so I couldn't even see what the kindergarten girls were doing because I'm hanging out with fifth grade boys. like seeing those numbers helps me understand where we are as a ministry and how we're tracking with that. One of the other, I know this has been a lot of numbers. The other thing that I do track is when I track attendance, I don't just track just the raw number. I also look at the average attendance of like a rolling average of like four weeks. And then I compare that
KIDMIN U Team (32:30)
Yeah.
David Reneau (32:51)
to where we were six months ago and where we were a year ago. And so that I can go back and look and say, are we doing, are we up compared to where we were last year? Are we down? If we're way down or way up, why? So like one of the things I talk about, like I said, we're heading into Thanksgiving. There are two, and Christmas, the two biggest lowest attended Sundays are the Sunday after Thanksgiving and New Year's Sunday. Nobody comes to church on those days.
That's why they call it National Youth Pastor Preach Day, because even the senior pastors not coming to church on those days. So no one comes on those days. And so you can look at your numbers and like, what just happened? Like you've got a ministry of 100 kids, 20 of my kids didn't show up. Or worse, you got a ministry of 10 kids and now you're talking to two. You prepared all these lessons and no one showed up? Well, it's the Sunday after Thanksgiving.
KIDMIN U Team (33:24)
Hahaha.
Mm-hmm.
David Reneau (33:48)
You
know that because you've been tracking your numbers. So you know that that's coming and you can prepare appropriately from a volunteer standpoint. You didn't need to have fully staffed volunteer because you knew 30 % of your kids were gonna show up or vice versa. Easter's coming. You know that you're hoping to see a 10, a 20 % jump in your attendance as Easter's coming. So you know you're gonna need more volunteers to help manage that and bring them in there. But you're only gonna know that from having.
year over year data and seeing how that's, and seeing like, this is, I know I'm gonna see a little bit of a jump here and we can adjust accordingly.
KIDMIN U Team (34:26)
Yeah, that's really good. I know mid response, I started to see you get self-conscious about how many numbers you were spitting out, but I actually love it. I'm glad you went there. That's the whole point of this conversation. And I know for some people, it might be hard to track along with this. And maybe this isn't as exciting as if we just talked about volunteer recruiting all day, but this is a necessary conversation. And I love what you said about attendance too, because it's really similar to what I've always done.
David Reneau (34:32)
Right? Yeah.
KIDMIN U Team (34:52)
I remember getting started in kids ministry, my first kids pastor job. I was fortunate to work with a guy who had been a kids pastor for nine years and now he was the XP. And so that was part of the appeal for me. I was like, I want to learn from a guy like this. And he had this incredible spreadsheet that he used that I think he had built out over time. And it was like insanely detailed. mean, you're talking like the numbers for every room and volunteers and there are a number of different inputs I'd have to do every single week. It was like,
David Reneau (35:06)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Really?
KIDMIN U Team (35:21)
its own task. And then what he would do is he would compare like this week in the year to this week the previous year. So if this is week like 16 of the year, he would go and say, what was week 16 of last year and how to compare. And on the surface, that sounds like, wow, that's brilliant. But I actually found a lot of challenges with that, because of what you just said, well, what if week 16 of this year is Easter, but last year is just a regular Sunday? Or what if last year's week 16, there was a rainy day?
David Reneau (35:28)
Mm-hmm.
of last week. Yeah.
KIDMIN U Team (35:51)
I live in California, people are fearful of the rain, you know, like they're not showing up to anything in the rain. They're so, they're so goofy. But like my point is when you isolate it that specifically, there's crazy variants. And so I never found it to be very reliable. What I've done instead is something a lot closer to what you do, I think, where I've always just taken, I like to keep it simple because I'm not a math major. I know numbers are important, but I probably don't have the skill level you do.
David Reneau (35:55)
Yeah. Yeah.
KIDMIN U Team (36:18)
So what I do is I just take the monthly average. So, okay, what do we average in the month of October? What do we average in the month of November? And then compare that each year. You know, I've got this graphic that we use when we train people on this and we show them that to your point, attendance is like a wave and the shape of that wave generally stays the same each year. January, you're gonna see a spike. There's gonna be a little bit of low. You're gonna get to Easter and you're gonna spike up again. Maybe a little dip before you get to summer or whatever.
David Reneau (36:18)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
KIDMIN U Team (36:46)
But the shape of that wave, whatever it is for your church, is going to be pretty consistent year to year. So if I always compare February to January, that's a bad comp. January is always going to win. It's going to look like our ministry is in decline in February every year, but it's not. This is part of the natural rhythms. So one of the things I like to do, and it's the same thing you're doing, is stacking year over year and seeing, okay, well, how is the wave? And also, how can we anticipate? So,
David Reneau (36:51)
you
KIDMIN U Team (37:14)
The last few years have been at a church and it's like fall every year, like more so than any other church I've ever been at. Fall is like a huge spike and it's always a little bit of a jump in other churches, but for some reason it's, it's been like crazy for us. So even though our numbers might average a certain number, I know we're about to jump like crazy once we hit August and September. And when you track these things, now you know how to prepare. Like this is the beauty of it. So
David Reneau (37:23)
Mm.
Yeah. Yeah. You know,
you know, this is where if you're going to do a big outreach event with your know, you're heading into a spike. If you want to push that spike more, that's the time to do a big event or like you did a big event and it bombed. Why did it bomb? Well, you did it spring break weekend. Like no one, everyone's gone. And so that goes a little bit into calendar planning, but like you have to look and do that and to counter to help me to do what you're saying. We're like where I track.
go look at week to week. What I do is I put a comment on that previous year. So like if it's Easter Sunday, I comment on it, hey, it's Easter Sunday. So I can just like, okay, why is there a 30 % difference between last like the same Sunday last year? It was like, I'll go look at it. was like, oh, it's Easter. That's why, you know, that's, that's why we saw that big of a jump in there. And then I don't, it was like, okay, well, then let's look, this was two weeks before Easter. So let's really compare it to that number and see.
KIDMIN U Team (38:12)
Okay.
David Reneau (38:35)
see how we are and that helps that counteract that big variance that you're talking about. yeah, you're right about that wave. And there's always that spike there that happens at Eastern. You just want to measure for.
KIDMIN U Team (38:48)
Well, I do think there is a connection to like calendar planning, like you said, too, because once you track some of these things, some trends start to pop up. And that's why I love that one of the things you're measuring right now is new families who come back. You know, I call that return rate. You know, I like simple terms like that. So we measure. We don't complicate it. I just want to know, did they come back a second time? You know, I know if you want to be like pro level on this, you you could measure their third and fourth visit. That'd probably be more like reliable in terms of overall engagement.
David Reneau (38:56)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
KIDMIN U Team (39:17)
But for the sake of simplicity, I just want to know who returns because just like you said, I think there are a million reasons why somebody might come to our church for the first time. And a lot of them don't even have to do with our kids ministry. It could be the sermon series that our lead pastor is preaching. Could be a cool marketing campaign that our church is doing. Could be a neighbor. Just mention the church. But it doesn't say anything about our kids ministry until they come back because there's only one reason they come back. It's because they had a good experience. So
David Reneau (39:21)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
KIDMIN U Team (39:46)
Once we started measuring this, I was blown away by some of the results. So ⁓ in the church I was at, we had 11 different locations and 11,000 people. And so we had a really good sample size to know, you what are these trends? Cause it was consistent from one place to another. And what we typically found is we'd hover around 50 % of people who would come back a second visit. Like that would be an average month. And there would be some months throughout the year where we dip below that.
David Reneau (39:51)
Mm-hmm.
Mm.
Yeah.
KIDMIN U Team (40:15)
like it wasn't a good month for new families. And then other times we'd have like spikes, it'd be like 55 to 60%. And it was funny, there were two months of the year where we went back like five years, we just retroactively looked at all this data. And over the course of that time, there were two months that always jumped out. It was back to school in January. Those are the two times a year where instead of 50 % coming back, it was 60 % coming back, which...
David Reneau (40:17)
Mm-hmm.
huh.
KIDMIN U Team (40:42)
I know I'm about to confuse people with this next thing, but what that means is that the families who show up during those months are 20 % more likely to come back. That's what that I know. I know you're thinking like, I know it should be 10. That's not a mistake. I'm taking the 50. You're math major. You know what I'm saying.
David Reneau (40:57)
No, that's because
percentages are weird and they don't follow normal math rules. That's just, that's the works. Just it's up. And if you don't understand, just understand it's up. Yeah. Right. ⁓
KIDMIN U Team (41:03)
Yeah. But listen, yeah. Higher, higher. Yes, those two months are higher. But what I teach
is I'm like, listen, these are two times of the year where families are clearly way more open to adjusting their family rhythms. That's what they're telling you. And think about, we know this from experience. When I get to back to school season, what are we doing? We're trying to figure out what clubs am I signing up for? What programs are my kids gonna do?
David Reneau (41:19)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
KIDMIN U Team (41:29)
It's like a restart. In January is the same thing. What am I going to commit to this year? Well, church is one of those things. People visit in those months. It's almost like, this is like a business term, but if somebody shows up to somebody's website, their intent to buy is interesting to track, right? Are they just curious, you know, or have they been following this thing for a while and they're like ready to buy it right now? Well, if we're to bring that to the church, there are two months of the year where people are ready to commit.
David Reneau (41:37)
Hehe.
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
You
KIDMIN U Team (41:58)
and ready to adjust their rhythm. what I always say is that should impact the way that we plan our calendar. That means those two months are a great time to go do an outreach event or something like that to get people in. listen, I don't know. Listen, everybody does like a fall festival or something like that in the middle of fall, which is great. It's cute. It's fun, whatever. But I don't know if it has great results. I actually think what if you put that at the beginning of January? What difference would that make?
David Reneau (42:26)
Yeah
KIDMIN U Team (42:27)
And obviously
the theme would be different. You'd have to adjust it. But if the data is saying that families are more likely to stay in your church in these times, why don't we go all in on those two windows throughout the year? But these are the sort of insights you don't get unless you start tracking things and figuring out what are the opportunities that we have to reach people. We're not trying to like be a business. We're trying to actually serve people.
David Reneau (42:47)
Yeah, I think exactly.
I just, just to piggyback off what you said, talking about specifically in the fall, a lot of people like to do, there's this new trend. It's been going on for a couple of years now where they do a big fall and they'll do it like in September. It's supposed to be like a back to school event and do that. Well, I don't know how it is in California, but where I'm in Georgia, school starts August 1st. So if you're trying to hook people in and get them to come to church,
on a big outreach event and you're doing it September 23rd, you missed them. That was two months ago. So what I'm doing in my church now is like, I'm not looking, if I do a big fall, I wouldn't even call it that because it's August. We're gonna do an outreach in August to try to get, to motivate them. And then when I was in children's ministry, I did guest pushes is what I call them. And so I would do like a month or two month worth of
of inviting, challenging my kids to go invite their friends. And it was based off the data, off the attendance trends that were coming, of when I chose to do those three different guest pushes. So I would do around Easter, and then I would do around summer, because it's vacation Bible school, so I wanted to get those numbers up, and then I would do around Christmas. Because those are times where people are looking to come to church. And so...
KIDMIN U Team (43:58)
Hmm.
David Reneau (44:11)
They may try it out in January and August, they, I mean, they may try it out in Christmas and in the summer, and then they're like, okay, we tried it, we kind of liked it, so now we're going to commit, this is the church we're gonna go to in January and August and September.
KIDMIN U Team (44:25)
Yeah, but I strategically placing those things like way increases your odds of effectiveness. You know, it's almost like, ⁓ it's a bad example because you shouldn't do this, but it's almost like counting cards at the blackjack table. It's like you're not supposed to do it. But if you knew what type of card is coming next, wouldn't that be an advantage? Like we have an opportunity to have a totally ethical way to do that in the church world.
David Reneau (44:31)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Yah!
It just helps you.
Yeah, if you're
going to be strategic, if you're talking about you did be strategic, you need to have the data. And that's why we track. That's part of the reason why we track metrics so that we can be more strategic. So, you know, when you're going to do something, it's going to work. Otherwise, it's not a guarantee it's going to work, but you have a far better chance of it working if you're strategic about when you're actually doing this, doing this on the calendar.
KIDMIN U Team (45:13)
Yeah, you know, there was a time I stumbled into this, like totally by accident. I remember taking a job at a church and I think it was like,
David Reneau (45:17)
Yeah.
KIDMIN U Team (45:21)
in the spring and they weren't planning on doing a VBS, but then they're like, Hey, let's do it. Let's go for it. And I think by the time, you know, I got on staff and we were doing stuff like so many weeks of the summer were accounted for, whether it was our church calendar or the other churches in town. And the only week that was available was the first week of August and school was going to be going back in session, I think a week or two later. And I'd never done like an end of summer VBS before I'd actually always done like
David Reneau (45:22)
Mm.
Yeah.
Mmm.
Mm-hmm.
KIDMIN U Team (45:50)
a beginning of summer or sometimes like middle of July kind of thing. And so I was very hesitant with this, but ended up being one of the best VBSs we've ever had, not just because of like the people who came because nobody else was doing anything that week. Like we had zero competition, but also more people came back because it kind of acted like, and this wasn't intentional. This is accidental. We just stumbled into this, but it acted as that like back to school end of summer.
David Reneau (46:04)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
KIDMIN U Team (46:19)
outreach that was a launching pad for the fall for new families ended up being incredible and I never would have thought to do that until experiencing it. yeah, okay.
David Reneau (46:24)
Yeah. No. Well, and also if you
were tracking your numbers, you wouldn't have noticed the difference. Yeah.
KIDMIN U Team (46:31)
Yeah, that's a good point. I wouldn't have even known it was a win, you know? I would have done the
classic pastor thing where it's like, I feel like we're growing. I feel like things are great.
David Reneau (46:39)
Yeah, yeah. How do you know?
Look at the numbers. at how the difference is.
KIDMIN U Team (46:45)
Okay, there are a couple things I want to hit on. One, we're talking about your dashboard right now and the things that are on it. Maybe my first question is, who has visibility on that and who do you share that with?
David Reneau (46:50)
Mm-hmm.
So I I build it I've built it out in Excel and then I shared in Google Sheets I like the I like the Formula writing better in Excel. It's just what I'm more more familiar with I also I don't like charts in Google Sheets. It bothers me It doesn't work the way I want it to but they so I'm using I use that stuff And so what I have done in the past is I've taken that
that spreadsheet and I've shared it with my ministry leaders, people who are like my preschool director, my nursery director, I have World Rangers and Impact Girls Club. So I had them look at it. So like if you're Baptist, like the Iwana leaders, not everybody, but like the top tier person, my ministry coordinators, those the ones that like when I was in multi-campus, the...
kids pastor at the other campus or like my elementary service coordinators, I shared it with those people. In practice, while I shared it with them, they never looked at it. what I started doing was when I would do a monthly lead team meeting and I wouldn't share it every month, but I would share it maybe once a quarter, definitely at the end of the year, beginning of the next year when we're talking about wins for the year.
I would share the chart and here's some numbers that we can keep track of that you can look at. And here's, as we're planning for our calendar, here's where things need to be and put those in there. so, and then I was still having to do a lot of explaining because of, have to, when you are gonna share data, you cannot share the raw numbers. Going back to the Moneyball thing with the Jonah Hill, there's a scene in Moneyball.
KIDMIN U Team (48:32)
Hmm.
David Reneau (48:35)
where Jonah Hill is scrolling through the spreadsheet and it's just raw metrics. And he knows what those numbers are and what those numbers means. And he's looking at that raw data, looking at the stuff. What you need to do and what he did and what I do is you gotta take that raw data and you gotta be able to put it in a chart. You gotta make it into a pie chart, a line chart, a bar chart.
KIDMIN U Team (48:39)
Ha ha.
David Reneau (49:03)
some type of data so you can show them like, here's where the trend is. Because they're not gonna be able to look through 10 separate numbers in a spreadsheet and be able to see, this is going up or down. You gotta be able to point, pick out like, hey, here's where the different stuff is. And just from, here's a lead pastor position. I've been doing the expense reports for the board and there's a lot of numbers. Because we got a lot of different categories. There's a lot of money running around.
a year to date report. And so we're in October, the last one I just did. that's eight months worth of data. And so what I did is I took it and I boil it all down to four charts and said, here, this is where we are. And so these guys, some of them are businessmen, some of them are just, they're just regular joes. And so they're able to see these charts and say, okay, now I understand income was up, expenses were down.
And so if you can take this stuff and put it in a chart and Excel and Google, as much as they are very simple, you just highlight the data and say, create the chart, and then it'll make it. You gotta massage it sometimes to make it show the way you want it to show it, but it's worth the time to figure out how you want it to look so that you can, it's showed to other people, because people don't like numbers, but they like pictures.
KIDMIN U Team (50:21)
Yeah, you got to help them understand it. You know, I think numbers tell a story, but not everybody knows how to read the story. So you've got to figure out, you know, how do I translate this? How do they see the things that are, whether it's concerning or the things that are really exciting, like how do I translate it for people? I think is really important. OK, one question I had, my background primarily is in larger churches where numbers.
David Reneau (50:23)
Thank
I'm
Mm-hmm.
KIDMIN U Team (50:44)
people aren't really afraid of numbers as much, you know, and I think once you get to scale, numbers become really, really helpful. But most recently, I've been working with a church plant and it's much smaller scale and numbers are very different. So my question for you is like, how does this dynamic change of how we measure things based on if you're in a big church or a small church?
David Reneau (50:50)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Yeah, I will say that this dashboard that I created, I developed it at a church of 400. And then I fine-tuned it at a church of 1500. So like, understand, I wasn't at a church as big as yours, like, I understand that big thing. But then when I went to go be a lead pastor, I went to a church of a hundred. And that was a culture shock. It was, You know, when you got like, there's 10 kids on a good Sunday.
on there. when you're working with those smaller numbers, a couple things. One, you can't watch percentages as much because it's like if you normally have five kids and then on a particular Sunday you have 10 kids because somebody's aunt came in and brought her five kids with her, you had a 50 % growth in one Sunday. That's amazing.
KIDMIN U Team (51:54)
Give this guy a raise.
David Reneau (51:55)
And it's like,
my gosh, you just grew 50%. So you can't look at those numbers because they grow so fast from a percentage standpoint, because you are working with those small numbers. Like when we're at those big churches, you've got a family show with five kids. Like you're more impressed that they got five kids than the fact that your numbers just grew five people. You know, it's just, because it's a percentage thing, that was like maybe 1 % of how many you had there. So you gotta be careful with your percentages. You don't track that as much.
Carl Vader's wrote a book about small church. He's a Californian. And he talked, what he talked about what I really liked is that when you are working at a small church and talk about numbers, actually, what's better is to find the stories because you can't, when you're at a small church and you got a small kid, man, you got 10 kids, five kids, you're not gonna have to, you're not gonna be able to tell the story of we baptized 30 kids this year.
You know, one of the last things I did was I left a church, I'm not bragging, but as I left my church at 1500, one of the last things I did is I baptized eight kids, which is just incredible, you know, being able to water baptize these eight children. When I went to my church a month later, there were eight kids in the ministry and they were already baptized. like, so what do you do? So what you do is you focus on the story of like, hey, here's this new kid that just came in and we've really been helping them. We've been serving their family. can be,
and their lives have been changed because of this. And so now we're gonna celebrate that this one child has been baptized. And it may be your only baptism of the year, but it's still a celebration because we had this new kid come in or we had this kid who's been growing up and now they're old enough to understand the importance of being baptized and they're ready to take the plunge if you will in there. So.
That's what you, when you're at that small place, you need to focus a lot more on the stories in it. And really finding those stories is a lot easier because there's fewer people to talk to. So you can really get deep into someone's life far more than you ever could at a large term.
KIDMIN U Team (54:00)
Yeah, I love that. Yeah, I've found that numbers are very reliable at scale. But when you actually have a smaller, more intimate community, it really comes down to stories. You know, those anecdotal measurables are often more important, more telling, because you're right, there's going to be a crazy variance. There are some things that I used to be pretty religious about measuring that I kind of just...
David Reneau (54:06)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
KIDMIN U Team (54:25)
took a break on like when I was in a much smaller environment because I'm like, this isn't as helpful to me to have some of these these numbers. And so we had to adjust. I think that's really good. Okay, last thing I have for you, especially because you are now a lead pastor. So many people who are listening to this have probably felt at one point or another like, man, how do I get support from my lead pastor? How do I lead up? How do I navigate this? I choose to think that actually, this can be a very helpful way to do that.
David Reneau (54:40)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
KIDMIN U Team (54:54)
by actually being able to track what's going on in your ministry and share it with your lead pastor. So this might be just one way, but what is some advice that you would give to leaders in terms of how to actually get support for their ministry, how to advocate for their kids ministry, because I think for a lot of us, we have no idea where to start.
David Reneau (54:54)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, the hard part, being in the kids ministry chair, it's easy to get envious of the worship department because they get all the money and they get all the attention, but they get it because that's where the pastor is. The pastor's in there on Sunday morning. The pastor's not in your children's ministry. He doesn't know what's going on or he or she doesn't know what's happening. And so it's important for you to talk to with your pastor. And a lot of times there's this male-female dynamic and the Billy Graham rule. And so there's that difficulty with it.
But you need to figure out a way to communicate with your pastor, here is what's happening. And what you want to do is, for my kids pastor, I want to know what's working well, but I also want to know what's not working well. And that may be just because of my uniqueness of being a previous kids pastor, because I understand the challenges that they're going through. And it's like, I want to help with that. So not all of my lead pastors cared. They didn't...
KIDMIN U Team (56:08)
Ha ha.
David Reneau (56:09)
Yeah, you know, I'm not saying that they weren't good. They were great leaders. But, you know, when you get into the minutiae of children's ministry, for the most part, they didn't care. You know, they had bigger fish to fry, if you will. but you want to talk about the lead pastor. I don't know what's happening in that room. And so I hear it from three places. I hear it from my son because he's in there. I hear it from the parents of the kids of what they do there. And I hear from my kids pastor.
And if the kids pastor is not telling me what's happening in there, I just have to rely on these other two sources. And those other two sources might not necessarily be reliable. So I need to go in there. what I do not want, and when I sat in the kids ministry chair, my pastor's told me this, I don't want any surprises. So if something goes wrong, you need to tell me about it as soon as possible so that we can handle it. Your lead pastor does not wanna come and just...
come into the office on Monday and have an email or have a phone call from an upset parent because something went wrong and you knew about it and you did nothing about it. So you need to let them know so that they're not blindsided so they can speak to it because the lead pastor is for you. They put you in that place. They're either paying you or they want to pay you to be into that place to take care of that kid. And so they want to defend you. They want to stand guard for you. But if they don't know what's happening in your children's ministry,
They can't do that. So you need to be open with your communication with them. So practically the way that looked at one church, we had to turn in every week. We had to turn in an action plan of here's how we did this week. Here's what I'm working on this week. Here's what I'm working on next week. Here's what I accomplished and here's what I'm looking forward to. And I had to turn that every week. my senior pastor read that every single week. So he knew what was going on. The other things that I've done is I had a weekly
⁓ newsletter that I sent, an email newsletter that I sent out to all my parents of here's the things that's going on and here's how. And so I put my pastor, even though he didn't have kids in my ministry, I put him on that mailing list so that he would know, hey, here's what's going on. The other thing is, is that you need to find places where you can help. So you talked about like, I created this dashboard because I heard my pastor talk about the dashboard.
for their ministry. And I was like, I should do that for my kids ministry. That's what got me started. And so I did that and I built this huge thing out. And so I would start telling my pastor about here's what's coming. And then eventually he gave me access to the main church dashboard. And then all of sudden I'm the person who's putting in the numbers for the whole church. I'm the one who's tracking all this information. I'm the dashboard. So like part of my job and staff meeting was to report the numbers.
KIDMIN U Team (58:46)
You're the dashboard guy.
David Reneau (58:54)
Here's where we are, here's how many people came in. Here's where our visitor felt. It was my suggestion that we start tracking first, second and third time visitors because they were just tracking first time visitors and was like, yeah, but we don't know who we're holding on to. They may just be showing up and we don't know. So you need to find something that helps that pastor so that you can serve them in that way. What is a need that they have that you can answer?
and try to meet that need for them and they will be thankful for you for doing that.
KIDMIN U Team (59:28)
Yeah, there was one church I was at and yeah, this is like the importance of like why it matters to them. I remember having a meeting with our executive pastor and of course he's running all the things around our church. And like you were saying, they've got so many things on their plate. You know, I think sometimes we're like, wait, how come they're not noticing what's going on in kids ministry? You know, this is the biggest thing in the world to us, but
David Reneau (59:37)
Mm-hmm.
You
Yeah.
KIDMIN U Team (59:55)
This is just one of many departments that a senior leader is going to be leading and they've got a lot of different things. And frankly, I know it's a little bit off topic, but it's like, listen, leadership, here's how it works. This squeaky wheel gets the oil and usually kids pastors are not very squeaky. Like it's actually very hardworking, kindhearted people who put their head down.
David Reneau (1:00:09)
Mm-hmm.
KIDMIN U Team (1:00:16)
They're faithful. They are like the glue on a ministry team and they're usually not the ones who are going to be like loud and complaining and whatever. So often like a senior leader is just going to be gravitating towards where the problems are so they can put out fires. And usually your kids mystery leader is they don't want to bring fires to anybody. But anyway, sorry, go ahead.
David Reneau (1:00:36)
We just put our heads down
and just get the work and just suffer through and just get the work done. When your senior pastor could have solved the problem, they could have stepped in and helped. And what you wanna do is you wanna kind of learn how your senior pastor works. So if you've studied like the disc profile, the personality profile, ⁓ I'm a IC person, so part of my C is very...
KIDMIN U Team (1:00:41)
Yeah, I think that's our mindset.
Mm-hmm.
David Reneau (1:01:01)
That's where the numbers come in and being able to track. I like to be correct. I like to be computational, but all the pastors I've worked with have been high Ds. High D people do not like details. ⁓ And so I had to learn when I presented my stuff or talked about my problems, I had to give them just the facts very quick, very in and out. Here we go. And so that, and then they appreciated me adjusting my...
KIDMIN U Team (1:01:11)
Ha ha ha.
David Reneau (1:01:26)
they appreciated me adjusting how I communicated with them and to where they would listen to me more because I was communicating the way they wanted to. And you can make the argument that's like, well, they should communicate the way I want to. And you're right, they should. However, part of being a leader is you understand how other people work and you for them so that you can communicate better and so that you can lead them more. And if we're talking about leading up, you need to...
You need to put it in a package that they're going to understand. So if you're like a high detail person, you like to keep things, keep things every tight and organized and thought a way through, but you're working with a person that makes a decision on the dime, you got to be able to just give them the highlights and step out. And if they want to know more information, they're going to ask. And you can have it ready for them just in case. But, sometimes my pastor regret it when he asks more follow up questions, but.
But I had it. And so, but I wanted to give them highlights so I could get what I want. Because sometimes when you can go to your pastor and you just dump on them because you've been had your nose to the grindstone and you've been holding it all in and now you're just, you know, and it's just like, whoa, that it's too much. am too, you know, I was trying to call somebody that I do pastoral care call and you're now you're talking to me about this.
There's an argument about whether you should do Teddy Gramps or Goldfish. I don't understand. So you need to be able to know when to say it and know when to bring something to them, bring it to them regularly, and then communicate it in a way that they're going to appreciate.
KIDMIN U Team (1:02:51)
Yeah, I think the best way I've heard people describe that is adjusting your altitude.
we often think in terms of ground level stuff, like I know what the mailbox looks like, I could see it, I know the details, I because I'm on the ground level, I obsess over every day, like I can see each of the houses on our neighborhood. But then you've got department level leaders who fly at like 5000 feet, and they might be able to see streets and some plot lines, but that's their vantage point, they can't see more detailed than that. And then you've got senior leaders who are flying at 30,000 feet who are just seeing very macro level trends. And I think what a lot of
David Reneau (1:03:02)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
KIDMIN U Team (1:03:25)
kids mystery leaders do is we come in and we want them to know that we've thought through all the details because that's our world. That's our altitude. And so we're like, we're opening registration on this date.
Here's what the registration form looks like. Here are the questions that we thought were really important to ask. Senior leader does not care about those things. They wanna know what are you doing? Why does it matter? And what do you need from me? Because they're flying at 30,000 feet. And so the best advice I ever got was lead, like match their altitude and lead with that.
David Reneau (1:03:41)
He doesn't care.
Mm-hmm.
KIDMIN U Team (1:03:55)
give them the high level bullet point overview. Here's what we're doing and why. And if there is a request that you have, if there's support you need, now's the time to share it. And then be ready to kind of descend your altitude and get more detailed if they ask. But a lot of times they don't ask. And it's not because they don't care. it's not that they don't respect the work that you put in. It's not any of that. It's the...
David Reneau (1:04:10)
Mm-hmm. No. And don't get offended by it. They
KIDMIN U Team (1:04:19)
You are one of many people who is giving updates on the thing that you you do full time every day. You're all in on that. But they're managing a ton of things on their plate. So it's not that they don't care. It's that you've got to you got to be quick, clear, concise. This is what it is. And that's the best way to get support. Every time I've done that, leaders have been like, wow, this is great. Thank you for helping me understand like what you really need from me, because I think the core issue of
getting support from your lead pastor is less about them wanting to help you and more about you helping them understand what type of support you need. Because I think you described this earlier where senior pastors rarely have the perspective of having been a kid's pastor. You're in a unique position where when your kid's pastor comes to you with a request, you know why that matters. Think about most lead pastors, ⁓ senior pastors, senior leaders.
David Reneau (1:04:57)
Mm-hmm.
KIDMIN U Team (1:05:15)
What did they do before this? Yeah, youth, something, maybe they even had a marketplace job and then felt called into ministry. But I can count on one hand, like how many senior pastors I know who used to be kids pastors and you're one of them, you know? And so they have no frame of reference for, you know, what we're bringing to their table. So anyway, all that to say, it's not that they don't care. Sometimes we like to create a narrative that like they just don't appreciate what we do. And I found that
David Reneau (1:05:15)
Somebody even came out of youth. They did youth most of the time.
Yeah, yeah.
KIDMIN U Team (1:05:43)
There are many well-intentioned pastors who really do wanna serve you and support you, but it's our job to help translate what type of support we really need.
David Reneau (1:05:52)
Yeah, you can really even flip the script on that. Instead of thinking, they don't support me, they don't care, actually, they trust you. Because if they started asking questions and going deeper, that's because they don't think that you have it together. And so if they're not asking questions, you say, registration is on this day, okay, great. They understand, they're trusting that you have it all together. And so if they start going down to what questions are you asking?
KIDMIN U Team (1:06:01)
Wow.
David Reneau (1:06:20)
What does the form look like? How are you setting it up? That means they don't trust you to organize the thing and you got other issues. Like you've dropped the ball or maybe they're just a micromanager and they need to go deeper into it. But ultimately, if you tell your pastor's thing and say, okay, good, and they're moving on, then just don't read that as they don't care. Read that as they trust you to do the job. Because if they didn't trust you to do the job, especially if you got a good lead pastor, a good leader,
If they didn't trust you, that's not gonna last much longer. You're not gonna be in that job much longer. They have you there because they trust you to be able to do the job and to get the job that they literally cannot be there for because both of y'all are preaching at the same time. they're trusting you more than the worship pastor because the lead pastor gets to watch that worship pastor sing every single Sunday. They're not watching you. And so they trust that you're gonna get it done and you're gonna teach those kids and reach them for Christ. And so they're excited about...
When you tell them, hey, I had these many salvations, I had these many baptisms, that tells me that you're doing a good job, that you're making an impact in these kids' lives. So I want to hear those things.
KIDMIN U Team (1:07:30)
I love it. This is pure gold. Like I hope people are taking copious notes because I think the things you're sharing are really really good and honestly we could probably talk about this for another like six hours but for the sake of time we've got to wrap up. David I appreciate you coming on. If people want to connect with you and and be a part of some of the things you've got going on what's the best way to do that?
David Reneau (1:07:42)
Yeah. Yeah.
So the best way you can connect with me is davidrenaud.org. That's my website. So that's, do a weekly blog where I put out stuff. A lot of it is children's ministry. A lot of it is, I'm morphing more into more ministry things, but I'm doing children's ministry stuff. That's where you can find my book. And so that's really the best place where you can connect with me with, and that's where you can find all my social media channels and all that stuff.
KIDMIN U Team (1:08:14)
Yeah, and shout out to because when you get the book, I'm doing a little plug for you. When you get the book, you actually gave access to like a ministry toolkit as well. It's on your website. So if you are a kids ministry resource junkie, like the rest of us, this is a great way to get access.
David Reneau (1:08:18)
Yeah, thanks.
Yes. And it includes the...
Yeah.
The book includes, when you get that, it includes the dashboard that I talk about, the dashboard that I use in my ministry. You get that for free. So like you can buy it from my website. I think I'm charging about five bucks, five or $10 for it. But if you want that for free, buy my book and you get that. then $75 worth of free resources just for buying the book. it has all the things I've talked on the book. Here's all the tools you need in order to do it.
KIDMIN U Team (1:08:53)
Yeah, it's really good. Well, David, thank you for coming on. This has been a really good conversation. And for everybody listening, thank you for tuning in. We'll see you next time.
