Hope’s Kid’s Ministry continues to make major strides in the following areas: safety for children, coaching for volunteers, team leadership, focused discipleship for children, and hospitality for new families.
We are moving into the new ministry year with a fantastic new curriculum, high quality safety standards, and a clear focus on relational disciple-making among our children and volunteers. Beginning Sept. 1, Rachelle Brent will lead hospitality for the Kid’s Ministry. She will help develop a team of people who are dedicated to providing a warm welcome to new families.
Despite our progress, we face a long-standing challenge in this ministry: a shortage of qualified volunteers. Even with ongoing recruiting efforts, we have too few volunteers virtually every Sunday and we stretch our current team very thin in order to keep the ministry running.
There are many Sundays when the shortage of volunteers puts the quality of our program in jeopardy and a disproportionate amount of responsibility on the small number of people who serve. In order to improve this dynamic, we have developed a new strategy that will begin this fall:
- We will shift some of our current volunteers to nursery and preschool in order to provide a stable team in those two rooms. We will continue to recruit new team members for these rooms in order to keep good adult-to-child ratios on Sundays when we have high attendance. Plus we will recruit substitutes who are ready to step in to these classrooms when needed.
- We will adapt our elementary ministry in two ways:
- Meg Benedik will step into an interim position (Sept-Dec) as our Equipping Elementary Teacher. She will lead our Elementary ministry with her primary goal being to recruit, equip, and disciple a strong, full team of disciple-makers who will invest in and shepherd our elementary kids. She has three amazing team members now and she will work to build a team of ten.
- We will offer elementary kid’s church on the first three Sundays of every month. Our elementary classroom will be closed on the 4th and 5th Elementary children will stay with their parents in the service on those days and we will provide activity packets for use during the service. As we build and grow our team, we will add back the 4th and 5th Sundays when we are able.
Our goal is to work toward having a full team for each age group every Sunday and to provide an excellent ministry for our kids! If you have any questions or would like information about volunteering, please contact Anna McMichael.