The mothers ministry at my church began back in 2016 when my oldest wasn’t yet a year old, and we’re now almost halfway into our 3rd year!

I previously wrote about starting a mothers ministry at my church here, and since then I also created a page to compile all the resources I’d been sharing on Instagram that proved to be encouraging to moms/leaders or helpful in planning some content. You can check that page out here.

Now that it’s been a well over a year since that first post on starting a mothers ministry (which was then a year into itself), I thought I’d fill you in on what we’ve been up to, what has been helpful, and what challenges we still face. At the end, please feel free to comment if you have anything to add, or have any questions. This is a safe place and I appreciate and welcome the input!

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.

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In September 2015 I began attending a MOPS (Mothers of Pre Schoolers) group near my house. It was hosted by a local church, but not the church we called home. I attended for about a year (well, 2 semesters), but in May 2016 when the year ended, the leader stepped down and a new leader could not be found (and MOPS appeared to have taken several steps away from their roots as a gospel-centered ministry), and the ministry at that church disbanded. It was then that I began to realize I couldn’t possibly be the only mom at my church who felt the need for this vital ministry and fellowship.