Category: Training

This is one of the things I get asked about a lot. As a general guide, you can’t beat Paul Godfrey and Nic Sheppard’s book on the subject, which you can find here.  Usually, if you’re in St Albans Diocese, we’ll send you a free copy if you ask.

And for questions about terms of employment, supervision, pay and benefits, etc., you should always go to an HR professional and not your Diocesan Children’s Ministry Advisor.

But here are a few of the things I’ve learned in advising at least a dozen churches in this process over the years.

(As always, there are exceptions. There are no hard and fast rules.)

Motivations:

Think about why you’re hiring someone now. Is it because you have no children and need to build up from scratch? In this case, you’ll probably need a visionary leader with entrepreneurial skills, who can help get things off the ground, help existing leadership to inspire the congregation, make changes to worship, programmes, etc, to make them more child-and-family-friendly, and probably start entirely new initiatives. Or is it because you have a great team of volunteers and just need someone who can pull it all together, support them, make sure everyone’s singing from the same hymn sheet, and resource and equip the volunteers? In this case, you’re probably looking for a facilitator, an encourager, a manager, and a mentor. Those are two very different people.

Very few people have skills to be a pastor, a visionary leader, a detail-oriented team manager, a mentor, a facilitator, an administrator, a teacher, a liturgist, a specialist in children’s spirituality, a theologian, a preacher, a musician, and a communicator/marketing person who can get your church noticed in the community. Yet when I go into meetings and ask “what are you hoping for from this appointment?” I often get a list of skills that include all of those and more.

Think of the top three skills that you’re looking for, and prioritise those. A children’s worker cannot be all things to all people, and cannot singlehandedly save your church. Especially if yours is a part time appointment.

Which brings me to …

The Tooth-to-Tail Ratio:

This is something I heard from a friend who served in the military – in deploying personnel, the army considers how many “behind the scenes” people you need (the tail) for every one soldier on the front line.

The same is true in terms of how you deploy your time. Children’s ministry – especially in smaller churches without large staff teams – requires a lot of behind the scenes TIME for every one hour of actual contact with children.

Here’s an example: a family whose child was baptised at your church a few months ago walks through the door on Sunday morning. They have three children – the baby, and then a four-year-old and a seven-year-old. The four-year-old goes to your Diddy Disciples Group and the seven-year-old goes to your Junior Church. The baby stays in church with its parents. That’s a total of three hours of contact – one with each child.

What’s it taken to do this?

A welcoming phone conversation at the initial baptism enquiry, sending the baptism form (with a box to tick for permission to be added to the mailing list), preparing and running baptism preparation alongside the vicar, sending multiple follow-up emails reminding them of other things happening in the church, recruiting volunteers to run those Sunday morning groups, training the volunteers so that Junior Church is spiritually nurturing and not just “here’s the moral, here’s a colouring sheet, done,” setting up the Junior Church spaces on Sunday morning, buying resources for Junior Church, planning the session you’re running, working with the congregation as a whole to make sure they won’t stare daggers at the family if the baby makes a tiny bit of noise, developing and maintaining a Pray and Play area for the baby (if you have such a space), and encouraging people to talk to new families after church.

That’s a LOT of work for three hours of in-person contact.

And remember that any community contacts – schools, uniformed organisations, etc – take huge amounts of time to build before you start to see any real results.

So if you’re hiring someone for sixteen hours a week, that’s maybe eight hours of actual programme time – Sunday morning, and one other thing every week. A 16-hour contract is Sunday morning, toddler group, and maybe some special events at Christmas and Easter. So often, I have seen jobs that claim to be 16 or 20 hours a week, which expect the person to run Junior Church (and all its volunteers), Messy Church every month, Toddler Group every week, build relationships with schools and do assemblies and support RE learning, do community events and holiday clubs, plan and lead All-Age services, start teatime Sunday services for families, and more. That’s a full-time job. Allow at least one hour behind the scenes for every one hour actually leading something. Building mailing lists, keeping in touch, planning and publicising events, and building relationships with the community all take time.

As a general rule, full-time posts get more applications. If you can’t afford a full-time worker, be prepared for the fact it may take a while to fill the post.

Boundaries Are Good:

I’ve seen several posts that are advertised as providing housing – sometimes in a parishioner’s spare room.

First of all, if you’re providing housing as part of compensation, speak to an HR professional. This can count as payment in kind, and there are tax implications.

Secondly, while I respect the generosity and hospitality inherent in the offer of accommodation, I would advise against providing it with a parishioner, or in the house of another member of staff. This blurs the boundaries between work and home, and limits the children’s worker’s ability to relax and be off duty.

The relationship with parishioners is a pastoral one – imagine if the vicar stayed in the home of someone they pastored, 24/7. You would need to continually be in “vicar” mode. That boundary between pastoral role and human being is one that needs careful protection, or burnout can happen.

Also, despite best intentions, sometimes living arrangements don’t work out. And it’s easy for a problematic domestic situation to then spill over into how the parishioner and children’s worker treat each other at church/work, as well as at home. The end result of this can be factions, cliques, rumours, blame, etc.

And finally, it’s not healthy for the children’s worker to be so dependent on someone outside official line management and complaints procedures.

Providing housing in the home of a parishioner or fellow member of staff could end up creating problems that require a huge amount of time, sensitivity, and money to sort out.

Speaking of Dual Roles … :

When I became a children’s worker, I lost my priest.

Because I was now worshipping at the church where I served, and the priest there was now my boss.

There are things I would happily tell my priest that I wouldn’t feel comfortable telling my boss. So when they became the same person, it presented a difficulty. I ended up with nowhere to go for spiritual and pastoral support. For years.

Think of what opportunities your children’s worker will have for spiritual and pastoral support that are not provided by their line manager.

And think about what opportunities there will be for retreat and reflection – especially if your children’s worker is leading a Junior Church group almost every Sunday. The same problems that can arise with clergy – always leading, never simply receiving – can affect children’s workers. But they don’t have the official support networks that clergy do (which are often meagre enough, let’s be honest).

In St. Albans Diocese, the SIM (Support In Your Ministry) scheme is available to paid children’s and youth workers as well as to clergy. And Sheldon retreat centre offers its minister’s discount to lay ministers as well as ordained ones. But it’s also worth thinking about who in your area could be on hand to be your children’s worker’s go-to person for pastoral care – it could be someone in your own clergy team who isn’t their supervisor, or it could be a neighbouring priest, or someone else.

Practicalities:

Where to advertise: don’t overlook your local area, especially if you’re a village or rural area. But we will also put your advert on our Diocesan website and social media, and on the Going 4 Growth national church website (especially if it’s full time). If you have a budget to pay for advertising the post, then consider Youth and Childrenswork Magazine and/or The Church Times.

How much to pay: The Living Wage Foundation recommends an hourly rate of at least £9 nationally and £10.55 in London, to meet the actual cost of living. Considering that you are looking for specialist skills and possibly for anti-social hours, I recommend you do better than this if at all possible. Most posts I see are between £20,000 and £27,000 for a full-time role. This is an enormous sacrifice for most churches, and still provides barely enough for someone to really live on. That disconnect is a problem nationally.

How to choose: I recommend including children in the hiring process if at all possible – in drafting the job description and person specification, and in interviewing. You will definitely get a different perspective and a better understanding of their needs.

If you don’t have a clear front-runner, or you have someone towards whom you’re feeling, “well, I guess they’ll do, I suppose,” then don’t appoint. Go through the interview process again. It may feel like you’re failing, but it’s much better to hire the right person after six months than the wrong person immediately.