Ministry-to-Children.com » church volunteers

Writing A Church Nursery Manual In A Small Church

Tony Kummer — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 00:28:19 +0000

You must have clearly written church nursery manual regardless of your church’s size. In this article, I want to offer some tips and point you to other resources that can help you develop your own church nursery guidelines.

Ideas For Church Nursery Manual

Know your church culture. Many smaller churches will express skepticism or distrust to a written church nursery manual of policies and guidelines. This is normal and should not surprise or offend you. Small congregations typically have a much higher natural trust level among the membership because nearly everyone is related or long time members. But don’t use this as an excuse not to create guidelines for your church nursery.

Even little churches should have clearly written expectations. You will have to accommodate this attitude by writing a smaller manual. Even so, it is important to get something in writing that you can build on later. If your church nursery manual is not consistent with the culture of your church, your volunteers will ignore or resent your efforts.

If you are in a small church, do not copy and paste from a mega church nursery manual. For my church, we have a one-page set of guidelines that we post in every nursery or early childhood ministry room. I would like to expand this later. But for now, we cover the basics and try to model the more advanced items.

Balance trust and accountability. Writing down your expectations can change the dynamic of your church nursery. It can also damage relationships if not handled correctly. You must find ways to affirm your existing volunteers and assure them that you do trust them to provide care for the nursery.

At the same time the church nursery manual initiates a system of accountability and may offend a small number of workers. It is essential that you meet with nursery volunteers in small groups or individually to explain the new guidelines and assure them that “no one is in trouble.”

Some Resources For Writing A Church Nursery Manual

Download my one-page Church Nursery Volunteer Worker Guidelines (job description)
Encourage your nursery volunteers with my article titles God Is In The Church Nursery
Excerpts From Another Church Nursery Manual (PDF)

How Do You Expel A Child From Church?

Tony Kummer — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 03:09:47 +0000

When God called me to serve in children’s ministry I never imagined some of the situations I would face. Over the years I’ve learned that kids bring a lot of baggage with them to church. The biggest danger for sexual abuse on church property is often one child molesting another. The danger for cruelty and emotional abuse is often a group of children bullying one of their own. We have not faced those issues, but we try to protect the children in our church. If your church is committed to reaching the un-reached you can be sure they will bring their mess with them.

Last Wednesday was a bad night. Several key volunteers were out sick and everyone was a little rusty from the Thanksgiving week off. At two minutes before our start time I was making my rounds, greeting the children and doing ministry. Then several children ran up to me and said there was trouble. I hurried down the hallway and found myself in the middle of a 4th grade fist-fight. The two girls had been at odds for weeks and now their conflict had come down to violence in the church bathroom.

My best teacher was on the scene and was struggling to gain control of the situation. Both girls were crying and shouting. After a few minutes to sort out the affair, I determined to send both girls home for the night. I had them call for a ride home and instructed them to wait in two separate areas under volunteer supervision. There was one problem – one of the girls refused to follow even these simple directions. She was belligerent and determined that she would not obey our request to sit quietly until her mother came.

Rather than escalate this power struggle, I left her to stand where she was and set one of our great volunteers to watch her. I was due to teach in the first worship rally or I would have supervised her myself. Our church is blessed with dedicated volunteers, many of whom have teach in the public schools. Their competence minimized the disruption from these events.

When the moms arrived (both girls are from un-churched families), I spent several minutes explaining the situation and our response. Then I made the hard decision. I asked the rebellious girl not to come back until January. Basically this is a one-month suspension from our program. Immediately she broke into tears, but shouted at me that she would not come back even then. I assured her mom that we want her to come, but that all children must follow teacher directions.

I’ve been thinking over these events for several days. This was a painful decision and I pray that God would somehow reach out to that little girl. However, I’m sure that it was the right thing for our program and ultimately for that child’s soul. We handled her with love and even in our discipline showed a large measure of grace.

What do you think? How would you have handled this situation if you were in my shoes? Have you ever expelled a child from church? Post a comment to join the conversation.

Church Nursery Volunteer Worker Guidelines (job description)

Tony Kummer — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 05:30:06 +0000

Here is a list of volunteer expectations that I have been using for our church nursery. We don’t have a formal church nursery worker manual, but these guidelines have several ideas for safety that move in the right direction. I do not use the term ‘job description’ in the document. We want our people to think of their work in the church nursery as a ministry or service to the Lord. Feel free to use these in your church or leave a comment to help me revise them in the future. You can download this as a word document: Church Nursery Worker Guidelines

When I first introduced these, I called a meeting for all church nursery workers. It was a process of re-teaching what many of our best volunteers already knew. Do these guidelines solve all our issues? No, but they set clear expectations and help the church nursery minister more effectively.

Church Nursery Volunteer Worker Guidelines (job description)

Service Description – Early Childhood Ministry Volunteers

And Jesus took a child and put him in the midst of them, and taking him in his arms, he said to them, “Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, and whoever receives me, receives not me but him who sent me.” (Mark 9:36-37)

Service Titles: Nursery Volunteer (Babies & 1s), First Steps Leader (2s & 3s)

Ministry Purpose: Your role is to provide safe, secure, nurturing, clean and efficient care to our children. Your ministry responsibilities include playing with the child or directing his play, reading to him, praying for each child, exhibiting Christ-like patience and love, and relating the events of the day to the lesson and theme in words the child can understand.

Service Expectations:

Arrive 15 minutes before scheduled service time.
Pray! Pray! Pray! Pray individually for children as they play, as they listen to the story, and for the other caregivers as you work together.
Every child’s diaper should be changed before parent’s pick up. Potty training children should ‘try’ at least once.
Oversee the check-in process. All children should have name stickers on their back. All cups and bags should also be labeled.
Oversee the check-out process. Parents will need their “ticket” to claim their child. If they don’t have they will need to wait for the Children’s Minister before the child is released.
Clean and straiten the room after the children leave.
Report and concerns or ideas for improvement to the Children’s Minister.
Attend occasional Early Childhood Ministry meetings.

Interacting With Parents:

Always thank the parent for bringing their child. It is our privilege to serve them
Always smile (even when you are tired)
Always tell the parents about any diaper or feeding events
Always follow dismissal plan

Teaching Little Ones:

Early Childhood is best time to build a God-centered worldview for children. We have provided age appropriate teaching material for all Early Childhood Ministries. This material is easy to prepare and use. Instructions are written in the curriculum. Here are some suggestions. If you need additional help see Tony or Kellie.

Integrate the biblical truth or theme into the activities the children are doing. Take advantage of every opportunity to make the truths “real” to the children, repeating them over and over, applying them to anything normal around them.
- Example: “Do you see the elephant in the puzzle? God made elephants. What else did God make? God made everything!”
Your role is to teach the children a short Bible lesson each week. It is important to be able to express excitement, energy, and love for God’s word when sharing the story and its principle. It is to be taught as truth, not as just a story.

Please sign and date if you agree to these expectations.

______________________________________________________________________________

Our Children’s Ministry Volunteers Donated $42,900 In Time This Year!

Tony Kummer — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 04:49:57 +0000

How much are your Children’s Ministry volunteers worth?

Of course, they are beyond value. But, what if you could calculate the weekly budget needed to hire replacements? Here is a group exercise I developed for a College level Children’s Ministry class. I was the guest teacher on the topic of volunteers. I wanted to communicate to the students (current and future Children’s ministers) how essential volunteers are to every ministry. It was a training session designed to inform and motivate the learners. The students all seemed to get my point – volunteers are the ministry.

This could be a great tool to get a handle on how much responsibility you have when working with volunteers. You could use it to show the finance people that most of your resources are people – so a few hundred more dollars is a small request!

Let me know if you find this helpful by leaving a comment. You can also download this worksheet as a Word Document. Enjoy.

Worksheet: Estimating Cash Value of Church Volunteer Time

_______________ = Sunday School Volunteer Hours Each Sunday
_______________ = Nursery Volunteer Hours Each Sunday
_______________ = Children’s Church and Extended Session
_______________ = Sunday Evening Children’s Programs
_______________ = Volunteer Coordinators (reminder phone calls)
_______________ = Mid Week Programs
_______________ = Other Volunteer Led Programs
_______________ = Total Hours Donated Each Week

@ $10 per hour (Avg. private sector wage in the U.S. for Jan 2007 is $17.17/hour)
_______________ = Estimate Weekly Value of Volunteer Hours
_______________ = Weekly Children’s Ministry Budget (exclude seasonal events)

My Children’s Ministry volunteers deserve $42,900 per year.

When I ran the numbers for my church I found out that our volunteer labor is worth at least 4 times the entire children’s ministry budget. That was assuming a meager $10 per hour for the volunteers. We all know that they work with passion and dedication that is worth far more.

Read Children’s Ministry Volunteers That Stick
Read how to Get (and keep) 183 new volunteers
Download the Word Document version of this worksheet