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.

IT IS HURRICANE SEASON! We’re from the northeast (like the real north, where we get real winter, real cold, and real snow. And, real ice). One thing we don’t get much of is hurricanes. We got a little more experience with hurricanes when we moved to North Carolina ten years ago, but through various lucky circumstances we managed to out run a few of them purely by chance. We were in the Dominican Republic on vacation for one, in California at a friend’s wedding for another, that kind of thing.

Well, not so much traveling happens these days with two small children, so we’re staying put this year, and as luck would have it, a hurricane is headed right for us in Raleigh, NC!