colab
CoLab | Reimagining Children’s Ministry
A six-week cohort to help you make your kids' ministry more impactful. Begins April 16th.
colab
We all want our children’s ministries to grow and thrive.
But as the world changes rapidly around us, this is easier said than done.
We need fresh ideas fueled by reliable research insights to make smarter ministry decisions, better reach and shepherd today’s children and propel ourselves forward.
Barna CoLab: Reimagining Children’s Ministry is a six-week program that combines timely data with expert insights to help you understand what’s new and what’s next for your children’s ministry.
Join us as we tackle the key questions every children’s minister is asking: What is different about doing children’s ministry in today’s culture? How do I disciple in a way that builds lasting faith? What do I do with parents? How do I find and retain the best volunteers? and more.
Reveal what the latest Barna research is teaching us about effective children's ministry
Uncover opportunities and challenges in your ministry through custom assessments
Connect with other leaders so you can learn and grow together
What to expect from a Barna CoLab
We’ll provide the data, the community, the assessment and the framework. You’ll bring your experience, perspective and passion for ministry.
Barna CoLab is a source for valuable information and resources from which to hone ministry efforts and effectiveness.
CoLab Attendee
Do it. It brings a different perspective and provides an opportunity to meet with others who are going through something similar. The CoLab confirmed some practical things we have been doing and revealed ways we could grow!
CoLab Attendee
CoLab equipped me with needed data and tools to share with leadership.
CoLab Attendee
Frequently Asked Questions
About Barna CoLab
For Barna CoLab | Reimagining Children’s Ministry, the live 90-minute gatherings will be April 16, 23, 30, May 7, 14, and 21, starting at 1pm ET. If you are unable to attend the live gathering, your team can still watch the recordings on demand in your online learning platform at a time that is convenient for you.
Each Barna CoLab offers six weeks of online training and collaboration through six live virtual gatherings (which are recorded and made available on-demand). Additionally, participants will be offered a free congregational assessment for each church to deploy, team activities and reflection guides, bonus content and the ability to interact with other participants through breakout groups and online discussion forums.
Yes! You are welcome to join Barna CoLab and will certainly still gain insights that can help you, but please keep in mind that our content will be crafted to primarily serve church leaders.
Yes, you can deploy the assessment. However, the assessment is pre-built, and many of the questions will ask respondents about their experiences with “their church,” so some insights might not be totally relevant to your context. You will be provided with a copy of the assessment questionnaire at the start of CoLab and can determine if it’s worth deploying for your context.
The Barna team has gone above and beyond to provide you with a suite of team activities to help you plan for and then take next steps in your ministry. Using our Barna insights-to-action framework, our team has built these guided activities specifically for your CoLab cohort. This is where we turn up the dials and get strategic as leaders. If you choose to invest time and energy in the team activities, you will leave CoLab with a concise list of testable, actionable ministry ideas. Again, this extra work is not mandatory but strongly encouraged if you want to walk away with a strategic action plan in place.
Each week of the Barna CoLab includes 90 minutes of live content—one 60-minute session, plus a 30-minute breakout. Barna recommends also allocating an additional hour each week for the assessment deployment, team activities and/or reflection guides. This additional work is optional but highly recommended.
As a part of CoLab, the Barna team has built a free and easy-to-use online assessment – designed just for you as a member of your particular cohort. Deploying this assessment to your congregation isn’t mandatory, but it’s definitely strongly recommended. In order to help you successfully do so, the Barna team is going to encourage you to launch the assessment to your people as soon as possible – ideally by week 3 of CoLab. After you’re signed up for the cohort, we will supply you with everything that you’ll need in order to participate, including email templates, the questionnaire in its entirety for your review and step-by-step guides to access and then deploy the assessment to your people.
If you or your team are unable to attend the live virtual gatherings, you can watch them on-demand. There will be some advantages to participating live (including Q&A with the Barna team and special guests, plus live breakout rooms). However, through the online course platform, you’ll still be able to interact and collaborate with others throughout the course of the program.
You can definitely add more participants from your team or church after your cohort launches for only $49/person (after you have reached the max number of your original purchase). Email us at colab@barna.org and we will help register additional participants.
Barna CoLabs are hosted on a custom Barna course platform. Apart from the assessment (which is hosted by our technology partner Gloo), everything will be found within our course platform – the live gatherings, on-demand recordings, discussion forums and course content. Upon purchasing a CoLab seat, you will receive an email to make an account for this platform.
You’ll have access to everything in the course platform for your specific cohort for 30 days after the six-week program is complete.
We would prefer that only the people who register and pay to participate in the cohort have access to the videos and resources.
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