Connecting the Christian faith with Children - section nine - part five (children's workers)

- How Affirmed are the Workers?

Our children’s workers are overwhelmingly female (many of our Sunday Schools are desperate for men to help and to teach; and, also, the children need Christian male role-models). The vast majority of our children’s workers are the mums of the children in the groups (who know that if they don’t go out with their children no one else is going to do it). I wonder what that says to the children (and to the mums) about the value we place on them?

Very few of our children’s workers have had any training. Some of them admitted that they are not even up to date with child protection stuff. And our churches are relying heavily on the teachers on our congregations. Where teachers have had training, they have generally sought it (and, paid for it?) themselves. There is no evidence that churches are saying to their workers, ‘Here’s a course you might find beneficial, we’d like you to go on it, we’ll pay for it, we’ll pay your travel expenses and we’ll sort out your childcare.

Only 3 churches said they had enough children’s workers, everyone else is constantly trying to recruit. And virtually all churches are finding it incredibly difficult to persuade members to take on any responsibility for the children.

Only 9 of the churches are able to offer their children’s workers a rota system, so the majority of the workers are out with the children week in week out, with no opportunity for their own spiritual input unless they get the tapes or attend the evening service (difficult for busy mums).

Only 4 churches annually ‘commission’ their children’s workers. Many churches don’t even pray for them regularly or routinely. Some pray for the children and the workers before they go to their classes on a Sunday morning, but one respondent made the entirely valid point that any children’s work beyond a Sunday morning is hardly ever prayed for in services.

Perhaps as a result of all that the vast majority of our children’s workers feel unaffirmed, unappreciated and unacknowledged. They feel that the rest of the church are just glad they don’t have to go out with the children. They feel ‘out of sight, out of mind’. Other members of the church make them feel that their work is of limited value. They feel like a child-minding service, ‘out on a limb’. (Those are all phrases and words that children’s workers wrote on their version of the form.)