Last week was a crazy week. It was the last week to get all of the details of promotion finalized. It was a week of massive communication to everyone. It was a week of deadlines.
We were ending our summer programming with bang. We are finishing projects so that we can launch the fall in style.
And yes, our team is very organized. And no, everything did not go as planned. Our computer database did not cooperate. Our small size t-shirts are stuck out of the country somewhere. A “must have” video shoot location canceled at the last minute.
So here’s what happened:
The Video Shoot: We needed two very specific locations for a video shoot and after knocking on the doors of a few total strangers, we found them! One was a 101-year-old farm house and the other was the biggest disaster of a garage you have ever seen. It was perfect!
The Database: We recently migrated our entire ministry to a new database. Needless to say, not all of the kinks are worked out. We are promised that it will soon be a new sleek and sweetly purring upgrade.
But for now, Wayne and Jason are saving the day! I’ll tell you more about them in a later post.
The Coaches Meeting: Every director met with all of their coaches this week. Most of them hosted them in their homes or at a restaurant. It was great to reconnect at the end of a busy summer and to give them all kinds of fun information to start the new year.
The Promotion: Moving about 8,000 kids and 2,500 volunteers to their new small groups for the fall is no easy task. All small group rosters had to be complete by Sunday so that we could give them out to all of our small group leaders. This process is more time consuming than I can even explain… so I won’t!
The Brainstorm: We spent a day with a team of writers working through creative ideas for our November content. Writers come to this meeting with ideas and we all work together to shape those ideas into a solid direction. Our big idea is “Gratitude - a thankful attitude,” and we are teaching through the life of Moses. It’s gonna be fun!
The Kindergarten Konfidential: We hosted Kindergarten Konfidential this past Sunday. Getting our Kindergartners and their parents ready to move up from Waumba Land to UpStreet, is a big deal. This event is all about communication (and fun!) This “parent secrets” video was part of the program.
The Grab & Go: Massive coordination went into putting together a bag for every volunteer to stop into their classroom and pick up last Sunday. Included in every bag: their t-shirt, bio page introducing them to their team, magnet with coaches contact info, volunteer roster with team contact information, curriculum, and “need to knows” for Promotion Sunday.
The Shirt: Yes we roll t-shirts…by the hundreds! Although our highly organized and fearless leader works so hard to get our shirts delivered to us early, we always run into an obstacle that is out of our control. This year all of our small size t-shirts are stuck out of the country. Hopefully they will be here by Friday!
This simple list doesn’t begin to describe the massive effort involved. All of the “heavy lifting” involved in each of these projects was done by our incredible staff. I wish you could meet them.
This Sunday is promotion. We are excited and we are ready!
August 12th, 2010 at 4:35 pm
Just like a duck swimming on the pond, all the scurrying is done beneath the surface and up above (i.e. Sunday morning) all is smooth and effortless. From a grateful parent, a former volunteer (even volunteers graduate to xtreme) and parent of a brand new volunteer, thanks for all you do to make partaking of and serving with the Waumba/UpStreet teams a joy
August 12th, 2010 at 5:19 pm
Thank you Jim! That really means a lot!
August 13th, 2010 at 1:03 pm
What do you use to determine age-level for Waumba Land - a birthday cut off date?
Or do kids promote through out the year on their birthday in Waumba Land?
I am assuming that once they are in graded levels beginning with Kindergarten, birthdays no longer considered for promotion? How do you manage a situation where a children repeat a grade? Or advance a grade?
Thank you!