Adding children's ministries to MSP this fall? ⛪ Share your tips!

[Krista Kutz]

Happy September, MSP Community! 🍂

School is back in session, ministry fairs are kicking off, and parish groups are busy recruiting new volunteers! 

As we enter fall programming, we're hearing from churches interested in adding their children’s ministries to MSP — such as Children’s Liturgy of the Word, Nursery Volunteers, or even Catechists for Religious Education. While scheduling Altar Servers in MSP is quite common, we’re curious to know: Does your church schedule ministries for youth or children in MSP?

If so, we’d love to hear your tips! 🙌 What do you call those roles or ministries? Any scheduling tips for other churches looking to bring children's ministry volunteers into MSP during the new program year? 

Looking forward to hearing and learning from each other!

Blessings,
Krista 


Krista M. Kutz, MDiv
Growth & Impact Manager
Rotunda Software

[enwi...@gmail.com]

We use MSP to schedule our Faith Formation (formerly "Sunday School") program, and we incorporate youth and children in our regular worship services. 

Faith Formation is considered another "service" on Sunday mornings during our academic calendar September - May. It is scheduled 9:00-10:00AM, followed by worship services at 10:15AM. Faith Formation adult and high school roles that are scheduled through MSP include Lead Shepherd, General Shepherd, Storytelling Shepherd, Move Shepherd, and Create Shepherd. We also have a Snack Provider. The various specialty shepherd roles rotate through the season, so that when I create a schedule, I use the minimum roles and then edit the title of the day and add specific roles each Sunday as the program takes shape. I post a Faith Formation-only schedule in list format along with our complete interactive calendar schedule to facilitate quick access to the Faith Formation schedule.

For Youth-specific and child-specific roles within the worship service, we include these roles in the service. These roles include "Communion Distribution (Youth & Children)" and "Candlelighter and Ring Prayer Bell (Children)". 

All children or youth who participate in our worship services have individual member profiles to facilitate scheduling. Our policy is that all youth and children profiles include the parent's phone number and email address, even if the youth has their own email address. All communication goes through the parent(s). Also, family members are grouped by "Family" which allows the parents to switch between family members' accounts.

Emily Wixson

Madison Christian Community

Madison, WI

[Sondra Griner]

We include youth in our schedule, (acolytes, videographer.) Because they are too young to drive, and they might not even have their own email, we make sure the parents get the reminder notices.