One of the most difficult parts of facilitating Children's Ministry is taking care of the many volunteers it requires. Use some of these tips to make scheduling easier for the administrator and volunteer!
To see how Planning Center works for all elements of Children's Ministry, check out this Planning Center University video.
Tip
If you want to recruit for your Children's Ministry, a great way to get information on people is by creating a form for them to fill out!
In order to make sure you have all your classes covered without burning out volunteers, make sure they have their scheduling preferences set from their profile.
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Choose the number of plans they want to serve per month.
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If a household exists, choose to be scheduled with the member or not.
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For specific teams, choose how often to be scheduled.
More ways to honor preferences:
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Volunteers can also set blockout dates for when they're unavailable, so they won't be scheduled for a plan.
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Enable signup sheets, so team members can sign up when they're available.
The first thing to consider before creating a Service Type for your children's ministry is whether or not you are going to include a service order.
If you aren't going to plan an order of service for your children's ministry, you can create one generic Service Type for the children's ministry and just add teams for all your different ages and classrooms.
If you want to plan an order of service for each class, make a folder called Children's Ministry, and add multiple Service Types for each of your ages and classrooms, including special events such as Vacation Bible School.
Tip
If you have the same order of service each week, create it as a template, and use that template when you create a plan or import it into an already created plan.
If your volunteers are on a set rotation and know which Sunday of the month they'll be scheduled each month, use templates for easier scheduling.
Tip
Templates work great if you have multiple services too! Use Split Teams to make scheduling even easier.
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Check-In/Check-Out volunteers are shared among the classroom.
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Helper and teacher volunteers are assigned for each class position.
Once your template is set up the way you want, you can import it into a plan.
If your church requires background checks in order for people to serve with kids, make the teams Secure Teams, which require background checks for team members to be scheduled.
You might also want some Tag teams so that a generic set of volunteers can serve in multiple locations.
For example, if you have a group of people that can check kids in at any classroom, add a Check-In tag. Add the Check-In position to any of the teams, all linked to that one tag.
If you have resources for your teams, such as curriculum, songs, or scripts, you can create a media file, attach your supporting documents to the media file, and then attach the media item to a plan for people to access.
When your volunteers need the files, they can access them from the Files tab on a plan.
