Hi friends! This is episode 57, and I’m Sandra Peoples your host today! In this episode, we’re talking about what to do when you don’t have enough buddies to serve the kids or teens in your inclusion ministry. This can be an issue for churches of every size, whether you are buddying 5 kids or 25+! I’ve got four ideas that I hope will help lower your stress level on Saturday nights when you’re thinking about the next morning and meet the needs of the kids and teens you have each week!
Summer seemed like the perfect time to talk about this, because you not only need extra buddies for events like VBS or sports camp, but you probably have your usual buddies taking weeks off. You may also be looking ahead to the fall and figuring out how you’re going to meet the needs of the kids as they transition classes or from children’s ministry to youth ministry. Plus, your regular volunteers are deciding if they are going to keep volunteering during the new school year, and some of your regulars may be burned out. At our church, we’re navigating all of the above! We need extra help and new solutions!
You don’t want to turn away families when they show up on a Sunday, so what can you do?
Here are four ideas that can help:
First, train the classroom teachers and helpers. This should be #1 on our to do list. In many churches, there’s a separation between children’s ministry and disability ministry. Like “These are our kids, and those are your kids” and the classroom teachers handle the typical kids and the disability ministry team handles the not-so-typical kids. But that isn’t the best way to do it. These are our kids—all of our kids. What’s stopping the regular classroom teachers and helpers from feeling confident to support kids with disabilities may be a lack of knowledge or experience. We need to take the fear and mystery out of it.
Let’s get them on our team and empower them. In the Parable of the Great Banquet in Luke 14, we read that when they invited people with disabilities to the table, there was still room for everyone (v. 22). When we start with the mindset of inclusion, it benefits everyone. Right now I teach a typical first and second grade Sunday school class. And I use methods I’ve learned from inclusion practices, like having a visual schedule on the board and fidgets available. It’s helpful for all my kids!
Let’s train everyone on how to support kids in their classes, and hopefully we’ll need fewer buddies!
Second, have floater buddies in the classroom instead of one-on-one buddies. As we’re looking at the kids and their support needs for the new school year, we’re asking ourselves if they need one-on-one support or just someone there to support them when needed who is also available to support other kids in the class. This is especially true in our older elementary classes. Kids who have needed lots of help in the past are maturing and gaining skills that help them be more independent. They may need someone to step in occasionally, but not as often as they did when they were younger. So instead of a buddy being assigned to one student, they are assigned to a classroom and available to help any student in the room who needs it. This also works well in the youth group setting when teens may not want someone shadowing them, but it is helpful to have an adult who keeps his/her eyes on that student and anyone else who may need support at times.
Third, hire buddies. Some churches have people who are generous givers but are less likely to volunteer their time (or at least less likely to volunteer as consistently as we need them to in disability ministry). If this is your church, consider hiring buddies. We do it at our church, and it works really well. We hire people from the community who are there on Sunday mornings and for our Wednesday night activities, then we fill in around them with volunteers. Some of our kids really benefit from the consistency of the same buddy week after week. And our ministry leaders don’t stress each Saturday night because they know the paid buddy will be there the next morning. You’ll want to have clear communication with them and train them well. You’ll also want to make sure they share your church’s values and prioritize the gospel. But the right person in this role can make a huge difference for your ministry!
Number 4, and something that works for lots of churches is to ask special needs families to let you know ahead of time if they will be there on Sunday so you can prepare to meet the needs of their kids. It’s like a reservation system. I know we don’t want to add one more obstacle to families coming to our church, but as a parent, I wouldn’t mind sending a quick text on a Thursday afternoon to let the ministry leader know we plan to be there on Sunday if it means there’s someone ready and happy to see James when we get to church. A couple of our regular families have naturally done that over the summer—letting us know when they will be out for vacation so we can adjust our volunteers’ schedule. If being understaffed or overstaffed is an issue (like you have buddies ready week after week but the families don’t come, which makes the volunteers less likely to keep showing up to help), this could be a solution.
That’s the four ideas I have to help when you’re low on buddies: train everyone, use floater buddies, hire help, or ask parents to let you know when they are going to be there so you’re prepared.
