Tag Archive - Elevate

Why the Orange Change?

September 28, 2010 in Ministry with 10 Comments

We’ve made a huge change in the past few months, as it relates to how we program for our Children’s Ministry.  The change was simply a major shift in curriculum, but it goes beyond that to something deeper as well.

For the past 2+ years we have used Elevate in our Elementary environment, and for the past year haves used Elevate Jr. in our Early Childhood environments.  We’ve used Elevate in just about every combination of use, from 100% videos, to only small video segments.  We’ve tweaked the heck out of that stuff, and it served us well while we transitioned from a stale ministry to kids to something resembling a living, moving ministry at Trinity Church.  I think many great things about the Elevate curriculum package, and have gone on and on in the past about how much I admire what they do for churches with their curriculum.  I’m not going to get into the question of, “Why not Elevate?”, as much as look at the question of, “Why did you choose 252 Basics and First Look?”

I’ve had my eye on the curriculum offered through reThink for a few years now, having attended the past 3 Orange Conferences and getting my fill of the overall vision and strategy behind it.  I have friends that have used it almost exclusively and others that have shared it’s positives (and negatives) with me.  I felt that we had to wait until the right time to make the move, as it would have to coincide with another volunteer effort to help make it work.

In August of 2010 we moved to 252 Basics, after a long two month process of recruiting Small Group Leaders.  We’ve done small groups for 3 years, but only at the end of a large group time.  We used 252 Basics to help move us to a Small Group -> Large Group -> Small Group model.  This simply means the kids arrive in their small groups, exit to a large group worship environment, then return to the small group where they will be retrieved by their parents after church dismisses.  This was a HUGE change for us, but something that has worked almost flawlessly for the past 7 weeks.  I’m proud of our staff for making the change happen.

In September of 2010 we moved to First Look, after reThink released the updated Wonder! Look at God’s Story DVD’s.  It’s a funny story actually, we were actively looking for Early Childhood storytellers and thinking we’d start First Look sometime in January 2011.  But after seeing the Wonder DVD’s, we decided to push our date up.  That along with a great 50% offer that was on the table back in July and we were all over it!

Here is what we have liked about both changes:

  • The biggest thing we’ve loved is the overarching theme of the Orange Strategy.  You’ve read Think Orange, right?
  • It’s so easy to edit.  There is simply nothing so easy to edit and dissect at First Look and 252 Basics.
  • So many options to work with.  It can be a little overwhelming, but if you give yourself a month to familiarize yourself with the mountain of content…it proves that there is something for almost any setup and environment.
  • The video elements for both 252 and First Look have been much improved over the years.  We feel they are a great fit, most weeks.  I’ll get into this more tomorrow, when I share how we use 252 in our environments

The biggest reason we decided to make the change to 252 Basics and First Look is that as a team we felt that it offered us the best opportunity to present a vision to parents of what the church could mean in the lives of their children.  Very simply, that is it!


What I Don’t Like about Elevate Jr.

June 18, 2009 in Ministry with 8 Comments

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If you’re just now finding this post, please don’t think I’m being negative.  We have recently added Elevate Jr. to our Early Childhood way of teaching, and I’ve detailed earlier how we are using it, as well as what I love about the changes.  Today I would like to simply address what we have found lacking with Elevate Jr.

I believe that there is no such thing as a perfect curriculum.  Just as there is no perfect person, church, or children’s pastor.  I do not expect these things to be changed, but I am simply trying to share the things that have been limiting about our Elevate Jr. transition.

  • The take home portions are very, very, very weak.  We spent a great amount of time looking into First Look, by the Rethink Group; and when you compare Elevate Jr. with First Look only taking into account the take home ingredients it isn’t even close.  Overall, this is the biggest weakness with Elevate Jr..
    • There needs to be more ORANGE elements with the curriculum to provoke spiritual conversations at home.  I would love to see take-home DVD’s, refrigerator magnets outlining the 8 week series (this is a First Look thing), take-home songs, and a more beefed up family devotional.
    • I also wish Elevate Jr. had a more assessable website for families to interact with the current series from home.
  • The music portions are weak.  The songs are very professionally arranged, and the audio is fine; I just think there are plenty of current songs that kids hear on radio stations and with their parents that would be a better fit.
    • On that note, I would love to send families home with music from the series so they could play it in the car and around the house.  I think music is quite possibly the best take home product for kids to continue spiritual conversations at home.
  • Maybe this is the case with future series on Elevate Jr., but I wish the activity portions were more age specific.  We are using Elevate Jr. with our 3 year old children through Kindergarten, and it would be nice if there were a few 3 year specific activities.  I know that Elevate does this with the Elementary versions, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

This has been the most uncomfortable post I’ve done in months.  I really hate to point out the negative things, but felt that it was important to state what wasn’t working.  Overall, we are all very happy with the change and I’m looking forward to what this change mean for our church and families.  I’ve already had testimonials from parents about the excitement their kids are showing about attending church, and from parents that are impressed that their little ones can retell the lesson so well.

If you haven’t already please take the time to look over my previous posts about Elevate, and if you are using Elevate or Elevate Jr. please joing the conversation.  We need your voice!

What I Like About Elevate Jr.

June 17, 2009 in Ministry with 1 Comment

thumbs_up I’ve introduced the change we’ve made to Elevate Jr. earlier this week, and yesterday I talked about how we are using Elevate Jr.

Today let’s tackle What I like about Elevate Jr.:

  • It’s consistent.  It has long been a challenge to maintain a consistent level of teaching across all classrooms.  I needed something that would guarantee me that children were all going home with a biblical truth that was consistently taught to each child in each classroom.  I cannot overstate this enough, seriously.
  • It has forced our classrooms into a schedule.  I’ll be the first to admit that it has been a major weakness of our Early Childhood departments that we have not had a consistent schedule.  Some teachers were spending 45 minutes on crafts, while others were skipping it all together.  Elevate Jr. has been awesome at making it easy to walk down the 3 year old hallway, and realistically know what should be happening in each classroom.  It is going to hold our teachers much more accountable to doing what needs to be done and not getting bogged down in one area or another.
  • No More Snack Time!  There just isn’t time for it anymore, because Elevate Jr. has made our classrooms more deliberate about every minute of the classroom experience.  Elevate Jr. has allowed us to abandon the expensive, lunch-ruining snack tradition that exists in so many different Early Childhood areas.  This change alone has scared away a few leaders.  I’ve learned that snack time was being used as a crutch for poor planning…and that is an entire separate conversation.
  • The video portions are very well done.  I cannot state this more clearly to my Children’s Pastor friends: NOT all video materials are created equal.  Elevate Jr. is very well done.  The colors are vivid and sharp, the set designs are wonderfully created, the actors are lively and captivating to the kids, and the DVD itself is super easy to use.
  • It’s not a video-only curriculum.  While the video elements are key to teaching the lesson each week, it is not the sole presentation of the biblical elements.  My group leaders still have to prepare, lead, and become engaging storytellers.  This is a fact that I’ve had to demonstrate this to my existing leaders, so that they will not be misguided in their belief that we are asking our televisions to teach our kids on Sunday Mornings.
  • It gives leaders the opportunity to put more time into building relationships with the kids.  Elevate Jr. is great at taking the main teaching burden off my teachers (although it is still there in a smaller form), and instead puts the emphasis on what happens during classroom activity, main point activity and other elements that include teacher-child interaction.

If you use Elevate Jr., what am I missing?  Anything that you love about it that I forgot?

How I Use Elevate Jr.

June 16, 2009 in Ministry with 0 Comments

Earlier I talked about launching Elevate Jr. in our Early Childhood areas. Today I wanted to fill you in on how we are currently using Elevate Jr. and how we transitioned to it from a traditional Sunday School classroom format.

  • We tested it out during our Saturday Night services for 8 weeks.  It was a great success, and we learned a lot about what we needed to do to make it work on our much busier Sunday Mornings.
  • My Early Childhood Coordinator and I held special training meetings on the four Wednesday nights leading up to our Sunday Morning launch.  At these meetings we provided dinner, and did the first lesson of Spy Chase Jr. for the leaders.  Yes, we treated them like they were the children.
    • These meetings were key, because they helped creat buy-in from some very important people and it helped move out some that needed to be moved out.  Know what I mean?
    • During the training we were clear with our leaders that we are only married to our spouses; we’re not married to one particular way of using this curriculum, and we’re open and willing to tweak how we use Elevate Jr.  I think this helped ease people’s minds about doing something new.
  • We are using Spy Chase Jr. to launch with.  I believe it is the first of the Elevate Jr. series’ that was created.
  • We are using the Large Group Format, with the entire video portion of the curriculum being shown at the same time.  We are not however using it as a true large group.  We are gathering the age groups that were previously split into one area for the video.
    • For example, the 3 year old children check-in to their separate rooms based on their last names; then move to one room to gather for the large group video, then dismiss back to their separate rooms for the classroom activities.  The same is done with the 4′s together, and the 5 & 6′s together.
  • We print the large group manual for each classroom leader at our print shop, taking out the activities we will NOT do that week.  In other words, we only give the teachers what they will need.  This is a big difference from giving leaders a teacher’s manual, and telling them to not use certain elements of that same teacher’s manual.  Why create needless confusion?
  • We have asked the stronger of the two age group leaders to lead the video time with the kids.  For the most part, we haven’t had a problem with this and we hope to allow both group leaders to eventually split the video teaching time.

Am I leaving anything out?  What would you like to know before I get to the postivies and negatives later this week?

Elevate Jr. Introduction

June 15, 2009 in Ministry with 4 Comments

logo-elevatejrThis past Sunday Morning we made a major change in our Early Childhood areas at Trinity.  We have moved to Elevate Jr., and it has been an exciting change for us.  We have a specially-designed program for our nursery through 2 year olds that my staff and I wrote, but we have relied on curriculum for 3 year old through Kindergarten.  This 3 year old through Kindergarten age bracket is what makes up our Early Childhood area, and it is comprised of 12 individual classrooms over two services (Two 3-year old rooms, two 4-year old rooms, and two 5 & 6-year old rooms) total on a Sunday Morning.

First let me say that I have used Gospel Light’s Movers & Shakers, Group Publishing’s Faithweaver, and some other stuff that I can’t quite remember.  I think most of these curriculum’s have some great things going for them, but at our church the alignment of kids being in classrooms and the burden put on our teachers to lead these classrooms has been heavy.  I know that every church is different, and every church has unique circumstances that dictate what will and will NOT work.  That being said, I was looking for something much different than had been used in the previous 45 years of our church.  I have also been using Elevate for our Elementary services over the past two years with some success.  The adaptability of the curriculum has been great for us, and what we do would probably differ from what others do.

In Early Childhood, I think I have found something that fits the bill. Because I’m a blogger, and want to milk everything for all it’s worth, I’m going to split this review into 3 categories.  First will be How I use Elevate Jr., next What I like about it Elevate Jr., and finally What I don’t like about Elevate Jr.

Are you using Elevate Jr.?  I’d love to know how you use it, and what you’ve found to make it more beneficial for your environments?  Please, make yourself a part of the conversation!  Don’t be a lurker!

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In case you’re wondering what Elevate Jr. is and how to use it (according to their instructions) watch the video’s below.  The quality of Elevate Jr. is MUCH better than the quality of these videos!




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