Every church needs a large volunteer work force to make it run smoothly. Volunteers are needed to run bake sales, serve on the missions, building, and other committees, and do pretty much everything in the church except preach. While most churches have many volunteer opportunities, one of the most critical and most often repeated requests is for people to teach Sunday school lessons. Children’s workers are often in short supply in churches and those who put years of their time and effort into caring for the youngest members of the congregation often do not receive the notice or the respect they deserve.
Who Should Teach
One of the biggest difficulties with finding people to teach Sunday school lessons is that you want only the best people. Children love and imitate their teachers so you want the teachers to be people who are excellent examples of the Christian life. The teachers also need to genuinely love the children, have a gift for putting complex spiritual truths in terms a child can understand, and be capable of doing all kinds of little craft projects. Those who are willing to teach may not shine in all these areas at the start, so it is important to have a good curriculum and director to help them get comfortable with teaching simple lessons to the children. Special Sunday school or homeschooling curriculum software may be useful when it comes to designing a program to help a child develop spiritually.
Honoring Teachers
One of the biggest concerns any church should have concerning their children’s ministry is to be careful not to burn out their children’s ministry leaders or any of the people who teach Sunday school lessons. These volunteers are providing an important service to the church, especially to all of those with parents. Setting up a rotation for teachers that has them in the morning service more than with the children can be helpful, so can requiring parents to serve with the children’s ministry in some capacity. Ultimately, appreciation needs to be taught and modeled by church leaders so that the congregation begins to spontaneously express appreciation and value the children’s workers. There should also be a formal time of recognition of the children’s workers at least once a year. Congregations often take a special love offering for their pastors around Christmas. Children’s ministry coordinators should get one as well, since they often work just as hard for little or no salary at all. Workers should also get some small token of appreciation, even if it is just a meal the parents get together and put on to say thank you. These tokens of appreciation can help encourage workers and make them feel that their work is valued and valuable.