by Kelly Stockdale
In the four years I’ve been a preschool director at our church, we’ve been in two different portable locations. Along the way, we’ve had many hits, and we’ve had many misses. One thing I’ve learned for certain is you have to start with a great curriculum provider. I would rather have a portable environment with great content than a great building with poor content. Content is always king. While I will concede that sometimes a little more creativity and strategy may have to go into planning for the week, portable churches are able to craft a fun, engaging environment for kids, parents and volunteers using a curriculum like Orange!
Why?
Loads of great content. See an activity that would be hard to do in your portable environment?
No problem. There’s two or three other options available.
Customizable content. Don’t want to do the skit in large group? Want to leave out a few activities that don’t fit? Edit the curriculum to get what you need out of it.
Monthly Bible story videos. Do you have a smaller church and a storyteller isn’t available to serve each week? The monthly videos are a great option to use in the place of a storyteller. In fact, if we took away the video from the kids, we would have mutiny on our hands!
Options. I love that Orange recognizes that many of us are in portable church environments.
This past month, First Look posted a video about how to do one of the activities that small groups added to each week. They even showed what you could do for it if you didn’t have a permanent place to display it.
Social Media Plan. Because people are only coming to our church one time a week, we have to do all that we can to keep the message of investing in their children in front of our parents all week. For preschool, First Look posts a weekly social media plan to reinforce what the kids learned on Sunday morning.
Support. The Orange Specialists do an amazing job of giving great ideas and solutions for any of your questions. In fact, they also are great about connecting people in ministry together to help support each other. Do you have questions about how to make your portable environment work with Orange? They can connect you with other like-minded leaders to help you problem-solve.
Volunteer Resources. Go Weekly has been a tremendous resource for me. There is a plan available every week for investing in volunteers. As a portable church, I also love that they’ve made our curriculum portable with the Lead Small App so that our volunteers can get resources and curriculum on their mobile devices anytime and anywhere.
In what ways does Orange make doing portable church easier for you?
Kelly Stockdale is the preschool director for Orchard Fellowship in Eads, Tennessee.
