BREAKING DOWN A COMMON BARRIER FOR YOUNG FAMILIES GETTING INVOLVED IN CHURCH MINISTRY PROGRAMS

As a family with young kids, I can attest to the importance of joining a small group at church. But the challenge of finding childcare can make it seem like it’s not worth the effort!

I’ve touched on our lack of childcare before — we live in NC, and almost all of our family is in NY or PA, so we don’t have a default grandparent to help us out. We’ve had to modify our plans, bring our kids along, or borrow childcare from friends at church.

To say it has been “challenging” finding childcare is merely the tip of the iceberg for us. In this post I’m going to be discussing:

• How childcare is a “barrier” to entry for some
• Challenges we face when trying to find childcare
• FAQ and creative solutions for childcare during church events
• How we requested caregivers for our small groups ministry to try and build a database of names
• A sample online request form we used to help parse through who needed childcare 
• Interview questions for vetting volunteers/caregivers interested in joining the database
• Next steps and what we’ve been able to do that’s worked for our small group and my neighborhood Bible study.