Staffing Children’s Ministry in Smaller Churches

I have worked with Children’s Ministry (CM) in a few different settings. The largest CM that I have worked with had somewhere from 300 – 400 children. The smallest that I have worked with had about 30 children – all with children with ages ranging from infant age to 5th grade. No matter the size one of the biggest challenges for us was the obtaining and maintaining of volunteers.  There is an “art” with managing volunteers in CM. From recruiting, encouraging, balancing schedules, motivating, and transiting volunteers out of CM, there is a strategic balance act in trying to make sure your classes are adequately staffed every week. In this article, I want to focus on the volunteer issues for a smaller church/CM.
 
Let’s face it, when you are in a small church you basically know everyone and everyone is busy doing something.  Finding people who are available on a regular basis to teach in a CM class may be tough. Here are some things to consider regarding staffing for your classes when building your CM:

1. Because you are smaller, you don’t need a huge amount of volunteers.
2. Even though your ministry may be small, I encourage you to still create a serving schedule for your team so that everyone will know what days they are on schedule to serve. This will help in solidifying the organization of your team.
3. If possible, consider combining age groups in order to decrease the amount of classes you offer, which decreases the amount of teachers needed per class. Sometimes this scenario is not easy to pull off because of the differences in stages of development for children, but if your class is small, you may be able to manage the differences effectively.

Possible Class Breakdown Scenario*:
• Infants – 2 years old (1:5 Teacher to child ratio = 10 children with 2 teachers)
• 3 years old – PreK (1:7 Teacher to child ratio = 14 children with 2 teachers)
• K – 5th Grade (1:12 Teacher to child ratio = 24 children with 2 teachers)
*These ratios can be adjusted to your needs up or down by a child or two. In this example, the total number of teachers needed on a Sunday is six. If you rotated your teachers and scheduled them to serve in a class every other Sunday, then you at minimum would need a total of 12 teachers on your volunteer team. Another consideration would be to have a number of teachers on your team that are dedicated to serve only one time a month. You would need more total volunteers, but their monthly commitment for each volunteer would be minimal.

4. A smaller teaching team means you can easily communicate information, train, and encourage your teachers on a regular basis.
5. Smaller classes mean increased ability to spend dedicated time with the children.
6. Using responsible teens/youth to work in the classrooms as assistants could decrease the amount of adults you need available each Sunday.

Youth volunteers tend to make themselves more available than adults do, so they could be a great asset to a CM. Keep in mind, however, that many youth use volunteering as a way to not sit in service. It is important that they are regularly attending church as well, so you will want to be mindful of this when scheduling them to serve. These are just a few considerations to make, but definitely not all. Hopefully these few nuggets help you at whatever level you are in developing your Children’s Ministry.