Children's Church: Using Volunteers

Children’s church is a great way to introduce people to your children’s ministry. Over the years our use of volunteers in children’s ministry has moved from a few long term volunteers to our current format of volunteer teams. Our children’s church is for kids in Kindergarten through the Fourth grade, and so our volunteers can be kids in the Fifth grade and older. Our teams are a mixture of preteens, youth group members and adults of all ages.

We have four teams that server for one complete school year. We take the summer off and recruit new team members during the off months. Each team serves one week of the month. To make things easier to remember, team one always serves on the first week of the month; team two always serves on the second week of the month and so on. If we ever skip a week, for say a holiday, then that team does not serve that week. This schedule let’s everyone plan ahead for their time of service. Some of our volunteers serve in other ministries during the worship hour and our consistent schedule allows them to easily arrange the schedule in their other areas of service.

Depending on how we are formatting our children’s service, we have recruited volunteers in a couple of ways. The years that we were doing consistent themes throughout the year, we recruited volunteers for specific characters. For example, in our space theme, a volunteer was able to sign up to be a live actor in the role of the ship’s captain. This year, our themes are changing about every six weeks, so volunteers signed up for their choice of jobs. This year they could sign up to be puppeteers, actors, backstage directors (this was the only role reserved for adults only), audio/video techs, tappers (the sit with the kids and help keep them focused by “tapping” them on the shoulder), videographer, and song leaders.

The bulk of our children’s church teams our teenage boys. They are always excited to be helping in children’s church. In years past I was always trying to find fill-in’s for team members who were out. Now, I regularly have teens waiting in the hallway to see if someone doesn’t show up so they can help. Another great thing I see is families signing up to help together. One of this year’s team consists of a dad and Fifth grade boy who are doing puppets, mom is our backstage director and the youngest son is in the audience. Their teenage son is also involved, but he chose to serve on another team.  I also have a husband and wife whose daughters are grown serving together on a team as a tapper and audio/video tech.

As much as I would like to have teams practice before performing together, realistically it’s just not possible to get all of team members together in advance. Instead, I have scripts for team members at our Wednesday night service or I mail/email the scripts to them on Thursday. I strongly encourage everyone to read through their scripts prior to Sunday. When team members arrive to the children’s church room following Bible classes, they meet together in a nearby classroom and read through the scripts together. Then they find their puppets and change into any needed costumes. By this time we have finished our praise and worship time and are ready for the first skit.

Each week, I list the team number and the members of the children’s church theme in our church bulletin. This is a great reminder if they’ve forgotten and also a good form of recognition of their service in the children’s ministry for the rest of the church. This year, for the first time, I plan to have some social and appreciation events for all of our teams. Over the years, I have found that youth and adults who serve on children’s church teams also become involved in other areas of the children’s ministry.

A couple of key things I stress with team members each year is taking serious their commitment to serving in the children’s church. I work to remind all team members of their upcoming week to serve, but also stress that it’s a member’s responsibility to let me know if they are not going to be there. Over the years I’ve noticed that’s it’s mostly adults that don’t show up or kids whose parents take them out of town unannounced. I have had a teenage girl drive three hours one Sunday morning to be back in town to fulfill her commitment. Another young teen regularly has his parents who often help serve at another church in town drop him off so he can serve in children’s church. I work to keep our skits fun, current and tied to Biblical concepts that benefit the kids and the team members.

Our current format has built a strong, dependable volunteer team that enjoys serving together. Our children are also benefitting from seeing youth and adults serving together and worshipping with them. In next week’s post I will be discussing the material we use for curriculum in our children’s church.

Children’s Church: Our Format

One of the initial requests upon my hire as a children’s minister some thirteen years ago was to begin the process of starting a children’s church during our Sunday morning worship time. There is always discussion on the pros and cons of a segregated time of worship for children, however this is not the aim of these posts. I will say, we have regular times of combined worship for kids and their families including three months off during the summer which I believe is important.

In this week’s post I want to talk about the format I have adopted at my church. Our children’s church is for kids in Kindergarten through the Fourth grade. Over the last several years we have tried a variety of things bringing us to our current format. We begin right after Bible class, choosing not to dismiss kids from the “adult” worship time. A quick overview of our service includes a time of worship through song, communion, a lesson time, a time of review and sometimes a game.

We are an acapella church, and typically I lead the songs myself. I regularly bring a child to two up to help me lead the song, getting several kids up throughout the service to lead. We sing a variety of songs including large motion, actions songs to slower paced, praise songs, including some “adult” songs that the kids love. During our song time, we serve communion. We celebrate the Lord’s Supper each week, and so we have different kids serve the Christians in the room.

We have tried a variety of methods to present the lesson each week, and have settled on a combination of things these days. We utilize live drama and puppets for a large segment of our lesson presentation. Typically we have three skits that mix puppets and live actors on stage in a thematic presentation. In between the skits, I will help kids connect the skits to the Bible lesson with scripture, gospel illusions, object lesson, student involved skits and object lesson-puppets from Amaze Healing Wings. Repetition is critical in teaching children, so I strive to present the lesson in several simple, to the point methods.

Following the lesson time, typically we have a short time of review. Sometimes we divide the kids and play a game show-style review using a projected, digital scoreboard with team names, lives scores and sound effects. Other times, I may simple ask kids questions about the skits, the Bible stories and draw kids into conversations that will help them apply the lesson to their lives.

On the few times that our service runs shorter than the adult service, we may sing a few more songs, watch a video on the lesson topic or play a game. Now games are not my strong suit, but we’ve played a few games over the years that are fairly simple and the kids enjoy. Our most used game is called “Elimination.” I call out things that someone might do and anyone who has done it must sit down. The last person standing is the winner and we start over.

Over the years we have tried a variety of themes. Some years ago, we had four themes and each week of the month was a different theme. We had four teams, one for each week of the month and they did the same theme each month. We did that for two years. Last year we moved to one theme, with a story line that ran all year long. However, at the end of the year, we were all pretty tired of the theme, even as fun as it was. This year, we are changing themes about every six weeks. We did a superhero theme first and are currently doing a theme called “It’s a King Thing” using some great royal family puppets from Melissa and Doug as we focus on Godly leaders from the Kings of Israel, how to lead by example and ending with Jesus, the King of Kings.

That’s our children’s worship service in a nutshell. Next week’s topic will be on using volunteers in your children’s worship.