100 Best Ideas to Turbocharged your Preschool Ministry (25 page)

Here are practical ways your preschool ministry can equip parents with the resources they need to effectively help their children see God’s Word in action.

Enlist your pastor’s help to equip parents.
Once or twice a year on Sunday morning, share your passion for preschool ministry and your desire to help parents better equip their preschoolers for spiritual growth.
Have your pastor and other church leaders talk about the creative things they’ve done in their homes to live out God’s Word throughout the day.

Communicate with parents to reinforce Bible learning.
Use take-home fliers, newsletters, email, your website, or social networks such as Facebook to let parents know what you’re teaching.
We do this with every month’s lessons.
For example, if the monthly verse is Joshua 1:9 and the monthly Bible point is “God wants us to be brave,” we encourage parents to use the Bible verse whenever their children experience fear; for example, at bedtime, a doctor’s visit, or starting a new school.
When preschoolers can hear God’s Word and learn to apply it to their everyday lives, they’ll “get” it.
Parents can’t reinforce at home what you’re teaching at church if they aren’t informed.

Encourage teachers to resource parents.
Parents should never leave your preschool ministry empty-handed.
Always have teachers give parents take-home resources so they can remind their children about each week’s Bible point.
Moses said to write God’s Word on the doorposts of our houses and on our gates—what about on our refrigerators and our walls?
Teachers can say something like, “Didn’t Katelyn do a great job on her artwork today?
Her Bible verse is at the bottom.
Put it on your refrigerator when you get home, and help her with her Bible verse this week.”

Do what you have to do to ensure that parents have what they need to help their preschoolers grow spiritually.

—Gina

I cringe every time I read of a child who was injured or abused in a church or preschool center.
I don’t know how I would react if it were my child...I don’t even like thinking about it.
I constantly remind our staff of the great responsibility we have not only to God but also to the parents who entrust us with the most precious thing on earth to them—their preschoolers.
We must go the extra mile to build trust with parents.
Here’s how.

• Keep rooms clean. When parents look inside preschool ministry rooms, they quickly assess cleanliness. If rooms are untidy, cluttered, or dirty, parents’ trust factor will evaporate. Keep toys clean and disinfected, throw away or repair damaged furniture, keep the floor vacuumed and the trash emptied.
  
• Let parents know every volunteer has been through an orientation process that includes a background check, reference checks, and an interview. Put this information in writing and regularly remind parents. Knowing that you’ve done due diligence to have only approved volunteers builds trust.
  
• Let parents know your safety rules. Clearly communicate the rules you’ve put in place, such as no adult being allowed to be alone with a child.
  
• Do things with excellence. A commitment to excellence lets parents know you’re worthy of their trust. This will be shown not by what you say, but by what you do.
  
• Follow proper ratios. Nothing will deplete trust more quickly than a parent looking into a room that’s too crowded or understaffed.
  
• Have a secure check-in/check-out system. This is critical to build trust. Parents must know that their preschoolers can’t be picked up by anyone else.
  
• Issue pagers or use on-screen numbers, cell phones, or text messages to notify parents when they’re needed. This gives parents a sense of security and helps them feel more comfortable about leaving their preschoolers with you.
  
• Regularly communicate with parents through newsletters, email, phone, Facebook, and so on. Direct communication about their children’s experience at church instills trust. Parents want to know; they want to be involved.
  
• Fill out incident reports. Preschoolers are going to fall down; they’re going to get bumps, scrapes, and scratches. Hardly a week goes by without this happening. The key is how you respond and communicate with parents. Any time there’s an accident or incident, write a report that describes exactly what happened. When the parents come to pick up their child, share the incident report with them and have them sign it. This builds trust. Trust is depleted if they go home and discover a bump or scratch they weren’t told about.
  

Trust must be earned.
And remember—it only takes seconds to destroy trust.
Be diligent to earn parents’ trust, week in and week out.
As you lead with integrity, their trust in you and your team will grow stronger with each passing year.

—Dale

Families are under such stress all week that when Sunday morning comes around, many parents think it’s easier to roll over and go back to sleep.
After all, this is their only day to rest.
We took a long hard look at this issue and decided to do something about it.

The idea we came up with is Friday Night Out.
Every Friday night we provide free child care for couples.
The kicker is that parents attend one of our small groups ahead of time to receive their free child care vouchers.

We offer care for children ages 6 months to fifth grade.
This is a win/win for everyone.
We have the opportunity of teaching, discipling, and equipping parents through our small group ministry, and in return couples are blessed with 3½ hours of free time on Friday nights.
This is marriage enrichment at its best.

Here are guidelines we use to ensure that our program runs as smoothly as possible.

• Each couple must attend a Sunday morning or weekday small group. During this time they’ll receive a free child care voucher for the following Friday.
  
• Every couple must make child care reservations by midnight on the Wednesday prior to the Friday night. We have an email setup that makes child care reservations quick and easy.
  
• Parents must see that children eat dinner before they’re dropped off on Friday nights. We offer child care from 6:00 to 9:30 p.m. and provide a light snack.
  
• Couples must present their vouchers at drop-off.
  
• Parents must fill out an accident release form for each child.
  

How’s this been going?
I give it an A+.
Couples spend more quality time alone together, reconnecting and communicating.
We receive emails each week that express gratitude about how Friday Night Out is helping marriages move to new levels of growth.
Our prayer is that God will bless homes with newfound peace, love, and joy.

—Gina

Stay-at-home moms have the toughest job on the planet.
Day-to-day activities can get old and tiresome, and I’ve had moms tell me on occasion how they struggle with deep feelings of aloneness.
When I hear words like these, I wish I could gather all the stay-at-home moms in my arms.

Ministry is all about people, and moms are sometimes the most overlooked.
Creating a ministry to help young moms not only benefits the mothers in your church, it just might also change the life direction of moms in your surrounding community.

Our church offers “play days” for moms and preschoolers and “away days” for moms once a week during the summer months and once a month during the school year.

• On play days, moms and kids come together to engage in play time or physical activity. We also offer programs such as art days during the summer for preschoolers and their families.
  
• Away days are days when preschoolers and moms take a break from each other. We offer a Kids Day Out and a Mothers of Preschoolers (MOPS) program to give moms a much needed break. MOPS gives moms time for fellowship, group discussion, and spiritual growth.
  

Our Kids Day Out program was the front door of our church for one mom with two preschoolers; she was desperate for a break and a weekly opportunity to catch up on hard-to-accomplish tasks.
She first heard about Kids Day Out from a neighbor, and eventually she and her husband made faith commitments to Christ.
This is a perfect example of how ministering to moms in the community just might change the direction of their lives.

So step back.
Take a look at your ministry.
Are you meeting the needs of your young mothers?
Are you bridging the gap between your preschool
ministry and the community of mothers surrounding your church?
I can’t think of a better way to open the “heart doors” of your church than by taking care of moms.
Who knows, you just might see a family changed forever.
And that would be a very good thing.

—Gina

“Give me the child for seven years, and I will give you the man.”

—St.
Ignatius of Loyola

Ever heard statements like these?

“Is there child care available during the adult service?”

“Wow...I didn’t know you actually did all this with the kids during service!”

“I’m glad they have people to watch the kids so I can have a break.”

The average person in our churches doesn’t understand the vital importance of preschool ministry in helping children become lifelong followers of Christ.
They think the kids are cute and assume we sing a few songs and share a Bible story with them, but they don’t grasp the strategic vision we have for preschoolers.