If you are trying to staff your children’s programming concurrently with the worship service, it’s hard to get volunteers because they have to miss church to serve. So what to do?
Some churches require parents to volunteer once a month. Yet that approach is often inconsistent with the church’s values: You wouldn’t rotate in who’s parenting your kids. You wouldn’t rotate who is leading your community groups every week. But we’ll do it for our children’s ministry. Children are actually the ones who need to most consistency. They can sing the same song over and over again, or play the same game over and over again until it drives you crazy. But they need that developmentally, and we can’t deliver it by staffing with rotating people.
We need people who will make long-term commitments for our children’s programming, and that’s hard to get when you only have one service. On the other hand, if you start a second service, and offer two separate Sunday schools, one during each service, you can now recruit people to work with kids in a way that allows them to attend one service and work the other. It’s easier to staff two than one.
***As a bonus, if one parent is teaching Sunday school, their own children can have special time each week with the parent who isn’t teaching. They could start a tradition of going to a nearby park each week.