what do our Sunday mornings look like? (for me and my husband)
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Yesterday, I posted about what Sunday mornings look like for special needs ministry at our church. If you missed that post, find it here!
I promised that I would share today about what all that means for me and my husband each week as we coordinate special needs ministry. Let me start by saying that while I usually join our family discipleship staff for their Monday morning team meetings, I am not on staff. Neither is my husband. I'm a stay-at-home wife and momma; he's a structural engineer. We're just passionate about serving in this way, and it has been a tremendous blessing.
For starters, another volunteer named Katie coordinates everything related to the Joy class, along with her team of volunteers. While I check in on them from time to time, I don't know or need to know what's going on there every Sunday morning. In other words, my Sunday morning focus is high school and younger. I will post this afternoon with a description of what the adult class is like each week.
Before we began serving in this role, we preferred to go to the 8:00 am worship service. Well, it turns out that we don't have any children or youth with special needs involved during the 8:00 am worship service, so that has continued to work well. Here's the play-by-play of our mornings:
If you coordinate special needs ministry at your church, what else would you add to the list of what you do each Sunday?
I promised that I would share today about what all that means for me and my husband each week as we coordinate special needs ministry. Let me start by saying that while I usually join our family discipleship staff for their Monday morning team meetings, I am not on staff. Neither is my husband. I'm a stay-at-home wife and momma; he's a structural engineer. We're just passionate about serving in this way, and it has been a tremendous blessing.
For starters, another volunteer named Katie coordinates everything related to the Joy class, along with her team of volunteers. While I check in on them from time to time, I don't know or need to know what's going on there every Sunday morning. In other words, my Sunday morning focus is high school and younger. I will post this afternoon with a description of what the adult class is like each week.
Before we began serving in this role, we preferred to go to the 8:00 am worship service. Well, it turns out that we don't have any children or youth with special needs involved during the 8:00 am worship service, so that has continued to work well. Here's the play-by-play of our mornings:
- 7:55 am (in an ideal world; in the real one, we're usually running late): Arrive, sign in and drop off our two-year-old son at his class
- 8:00 am: Arrive in worship, usually in the very front row because that's the preference of our four-year-old daughter, who has always joined us for the music portion of the service and who began staying for the entire service when she turned four
- 9:10ish am: If the service is not over yet, we usually start gathering our items to leave around this time to be present in children's ministry through the transition between the two services. Lee usually takes our daughter to her class and heads to the car to get our travel coffee mugs (coffee = good. our church's coffee = not so good. so we bring our own from home)
- 9:15-9:40 am: The first transition! A lot happens in a short time period. We
- Check in with our 9:30 am volunteers and families, and keep my cell phone in hand because that's where established families and volunteers text me if anything changes at the last minute.
- Greet new families. If a buddy is needed for a new child, Lee or I serve as the buddy for the first couple weeks to get to know the child and family.
- Help with other children's and student ministry needs, like assisting families as they check in kids in our computerized system.
- 9:40-10:40 am: What we do at this time varies, including...
- We check on our kids and volunteers, sometimes by peeking in the class and sometimes by joining them for a while.
- If a teacher is concerned about how to meet the needs of a child with no identified disability or special need, we go in to the class to observe.
- If there's a new child or student, one of us goes to class with him/her.
- As we near promotions in September (when children move up to the next class), I observe in the classes which will receive any of our kids to evaluate how we can help that transition go smoothly.
- If we have a new volunteer, I usually train them during this time.
- Prep materials for the next week if necessary.
- Connect with other volunteers and staff, and help with non-special needs stuff as needed.
- Talk with parents.
- Visit adult Sunday school classes to talk about what we do and how they can get involved.
- Stop by the Joy class.
- Drink coffee.
- Try not to get spotted by our son who is at that separation anxiety age right now and expects to be picked up from class if he sees either of us.
- 10:40-11:15: The next transition time!
- All the same things as we listed in the previous transition.
- If I get caught up in a conversation or anything else holds me up, Lee picks up the kids from their classes, and we meet up at the car after all is said and done. Then we talk with the kids about what they learned while we drive home.
If you coordinate special needs ministry at your church, what else would you add to the list of what you do each Sunday?