5 Kidmin Horror Stories

If you’ve been in children’s ministry for more than about five minutes, you already know: you can’t make this stuff up.

At the recent KidzMatter Conference, we hosted a “Dirty Soda” party where we played a game called Truth or Tale. During the party, we read KidMin “horror stories” from the stage, and the audience had to decide whether each story was actually submitted by a children’s ministry leader — or completely made up by us.

To prepare for the game, we asked KidMin leaders from around the country to send us their real-life stories.

And boy, did they deliver.

Some were gross. Some were terrifying. And some were so ridiculous that our fake stories had trouble competing with them. 😂

Here are five of my favorites. I’m sharing the stories exactly as they were submitted — typos, emojis, and all.

1. Nearer, My God, to Thee

We had our outdoor service. We have blow ups after the service. We had a titanic boat blow up slide. It literally was a Titanic slide on its side. Somehow someone disconnected the generator and the titanic started to deflate (go down) with kids on it. 😂😂😂 I started playing my heart will go on while they scrambled to reconnect it and get kids off. 😂😂😂 core memory

—Jessica

My Take: There are two kinds of KidMin leaders in a crisis: those who run to reconnect the generator…and those who run to the sound booth to cue Celine Dion. Jessica, you chose correctly.

2. The Most Experiential Bible Lesson Ever

We were teaching preschool about the plagues, and we had a guest observing. We had some kids blindfolded, we were throwing “hail” and we had bugs and put stickers on them as boils…. The guest looked terrified and asked if we blindfold and assault children every week? To which I replied “if scripture calls for it!” Needless to say, He did not sign up to volunteer! 🤣 unrelated to that day, he moved away.

—Emily

My Take: “Come observe our preschool ministry!” they said. “It’ll be fun!” they said.

I’m particularly fond of the clarification that his eventual move was unrelated to that day. Sure, Emily. Sure.

3. The Burning Bush

I lost a child at VBS. Legit lost him for about 20 long minutes. We had to put the church on lock down to find him. He was hiding im the bushes because he wanted to see of the bush would burn up.

—Tara

My Take: On the one hand, losing a child for 20 minutes is every children’s ministry leader’s nightmare.

On the other hand…he remembered the Bible story.

I’m calling it a curriculum win.

4. And Then There Were No Butterflies

We had a preschool class raise caterpillars into butterflies. Afterwards, they went outside to release them. A flock of birds immediately swooped down and ate all of the butterflies in front of the kids, devastating the entire class.

—Joshua

My Take: Somewhere a volunteer had prepared a beautiful little devotional about new life and transformation. And then a flock of birds said, “Snack time.”

At that point, you just pivot hard to Matthew 6:26: “Look at the birds of the air… your heavenly Father feeds them.”

5. Well, This Escalated Quickly

Reading, what I thought., a cute Easter story to 4year olds. towards the end, it said easter is all about bunnies and candy…

I quickly said, “we know that the easter bunny isn’t real!! JESUS is real.”

one of my students said, “waiittttt… the easter bunny isn’t real??! What about Santa???”

😵‍💫😅😵‍💫 Yes, I did pretend I couldn’t hear him and just moved on with the book.”

—Autumn Grace

My Take: Abort! Abort! DO NOT ANSWER THE FOLLOW-UP QUESTION.

Sometimes the most spiritually mature thing a KidMin leader can do is suddenly develop selective hearing.

And Yet…We Keep Showing Up

KidMin is wonderfully unpredictable. The inflatable will deflate. The object lesson will backfire. Someone will throw up. Someone else will say something they absolutely should not say. And apparently, every once in a while, a flock of birds will devour your entire teaching illustration.

But here’s what I love about these stories: there’s always a leader in the middle of them.

Someone scrambling to help. Someone improvising. Someone cleaning up the mess. Someone calming a kid. Someone laughing when there’s nothing else to do — and then coming back the next Sunday to do it all over again.

The kids might not remember every lesson you taught.

But there’s a pretty good chance they’ll remember that you kept showing up.

So keep showing up.

And maybe don’t release the butterflies until you’ve checked for birds.