Just curious… do you ever close rooms?

Posted on 02. Aug, 2010 by in Philosophy

Okay, I’m gathering information and I need to ask you a philosophical question. Actually, it’s a handful of questions.

  1. Do you ever close children’s rooms at your church?
  2. What’s your reason (room capacity or volunteer/child ratios)?
  3. Are you allowed to close rooms if you felt it was necessary?
  4. Do you have any additional thoughts or feelings on the subject?

If you would, please take a minute and share your thoughts. Feel free to be anonymous (insert bogus name and email in the comment section)

Meet Kenny

Kenny Conley has written 1609 posts on CMO.

Kenny Conley is the primary author of Childrens Ministry Online and the NextGen Pastor at Gateway Church in Austin, TX. In addition to creating the Illuminate Conference, a high quality kidmin conference designed specifically for volunteers, Kenny is a published author and speaker. For more biographical info, click here.

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  • http://www.kidmin360.com Greg Baird

    Two lines of thought:
    1) allow closure “for the safety of the kids”. It sounds good (and is true) but more than likely sends the message that you are understaffed & incapable. And you WILL annoy parents (and probably the Sr. Pastor) and risk losing any guest for future.
    2) not allow closure “because everyone is welcome at our church”. Again, sounds good but can send the message that you are willing to risk the safety of children and a chaotic environment for the sake of getting everyone in. This will annoy the regulars mostly (and your volunteers!).

    I’ve served mostly in churches that did not allow closure and I am grateful because it forced me to create systems to deal with maxing out the class. I get to a point (intentionally) where I always have back up plans ready to handle the problem. This may include:
    * identifying “emergency” volunteers willing to step in on a moments notice (and knowing how to contact them just before or during service)
    * identifying facility maneuvers to move kids around (change rooms or age group combinations, etc.)
    * train volunteers (before it happens) to handle this situation, with specific procedures to deal with waiting children while getting things in place (have a way of checking them in during the process so parents can get to the service).
    * having curriculum/program ready to switch to if you have to change formats (small group to large group, for example)
    * as CP, you need to have the leadership presence to communicate to volunteers (“here’s why doing this is important”) and to parents (“we will accomodate you and here’s how you can help us with your children”)
    Good question Kenny – one that most of us have to struggle with at some point.

  • http://web.me.com/blake_levrets Blake

    yes, we close rooms. Our PreSchool and Nursery rooms are pretty small so most of the time if a room closes it’s because we’ve maxed out our space. We always have “overflow” rooms setup and ready, one for nursery babies thru 23 months and at least one, sometimes two for PreSchool, 2-PreK.

    I’m trying to decide whether we need to have another permanent PreSchool Class. Currently we have 2 classes for each age; 2, 3 & 4′s. I just can’t seem to figure out a good way to break it down. Any thoughts?

  • Ann

    Our ideal ratio is 1 SGL to 8-10 kids. At one of our portable facilities, we hesitate to go over 72 kids in the room and we will close if we have to. Hasn’t happened yet. If it does, we’re looking at where we can possibly have access to another room for use. Thus far the owners of the building haven’t let on if they will let us have another space to use though.

  • http://www.jonathancliff.com jonathan

    yes, what Greg said!

    We do NOT close rooms, but it is a church-wide philosophy. I think each city, church, and environment has to decide what to do. I’ve been clear with our leadership that we can only be so creative, and by not allowing us to close spaces we are lowering our safety standards. To which they accept this fact.

  • http://www.keystonechurch.com Rob

    We currently use every room we have to pretty much it’s max capacity during our two peak services. So we don’t have the option of simply closing a single room. We have a Saturday night service that is reaching 50% to 60% capacity and a 3rd Sunday Service at 12:30 pm that has plenty of space, but seems to not be a great option for families with kids. Since I have no place to send kids when we hit capacity this fall I’ll have to make the decision at what point we would ask them to come back and attend our later service. I was only 9 kids under our square footage per kid capacity this past weekend during one service (we use large open rooms for our kids spaces). Thankfully most of our spaces fill up at the same time, i.e. kids spaces are at capacity very close to the same time that our worship auditorium hits capacity. If our attendance trends continue this fall we will probably have to make the hard choice to ask families to come back to another service, Haven’t done it yet though so maybe I could comment on this better after this fall. I believe my hard stop on our main kids space would be at 115% capacity (not a fire code capacity but a church building consultant square footage per kid number)

    Big picture if something bad happens as a result of overcrowding I’m risking far more than a few families having a one day bad experience (and trust me, I realize that this could be a one shot deal for some families, it seems though that guests generally show up early or at least on time, our stragglers tend to be regular attending families) We are doing everything we can to creatively move attenders to services with space [http://www.keystonechurch.com/mo_seats_4_yo_peeps.php] but I may have to on rare occasions ask families to wait for another service in order to protect the long term vision. For the same reason a kids volunteer has to be a member, have a background check, and be trained before their first day of service in a kids area. It makes it harder to get kids volunteers, but I’m protecting the long term vision of the church in our community and beyond.

    We’ll see if I change my mind after we actually have to do it ;-)

  • Craig G

    Greg’s response is spot on, man!

    At our church, we have a “never ever ever close a classroom” policy. This definitely provides its share of challenges, but ultimately I’d rather fall on this side of the fence.

  • http://www.GrowingKidsMinistry.com Lindsey

    We have never closed rooms. It’s not often that we max out of space, but when we do, we usually play “switch-aroo” with classrooms so the packed class can get more space. This usually seems to solve the problem. We try to keep classrooms flexible to move kids around, and parents have gotten used to system. We certainly don’t switch classrooms around every week, but if attendance is especially high in one class for a few weeks, we’ll give them the bigger classroom.

    I cannot imagine being “allowed” to close rooms. If things got especially packed, we would just move kids to the gym which is plenty big for any overflow problem. We adapt the lesson, throw in a couple extra games, and then formulate a plan for next week.

    Latest Post: Jesus Calling

  • Laurie B

    We are at capacity most weekends at our busiest service. We have always had the ‘never turn a child away’ policy. We close classrooms when they reach capacity but we never turn a child away. We have backup plans for ‘overflow’ mode. It is usually the ‘late’ comers that need those rooms. We are reevaluating for the fall to accomodate more children and reduce individual classroom size (lower student/teacher ratios). Seems like every semester we have to evaluate.
    I agree with Graig. We want to be a church that welcomes everyone and never says ‘You have to come back.’ People have enough trouble stepping through that door in the first place. Let’s keep them here and keep them happy the best we can.
    Guess what. God provides. Sometimes I cannot believe I only had room for ’1′ more child. If I for a minute think that was me I am foolish. God wants His children to learn and be here. He is not going to turn them away. Let Him lead your ministry and you will NEVER have to turn a child away!

  • Rob

    Wow, I was amazed as I read through the comments.

    We have made provision so that we do not turn away a new family. However, we do have to close rooms from time to time. It really happens for one of two reasons:

    1. The room has reached its capacity.
    2. There is no volunteer.

    There have been times by not closing a room we would taken away an opportunity for our body experience and express grace.

  • Maureen

    Yikes. Well, I feel like the dissenter here, but we close rooms and turn away kids (Early Childhood). However, it is never because we do not have the space, it is because we don’t have enough volunteers or volunteers are late. We are very strict about safety (its a value!) and keep to our adult:child ratios which has been approved from our elders on down. We do have a system in place to try to find “emergency” volunteers or to move volunteers around. We ask parents to wait or go to back of the worship center and we will come and get them once someone has arrived. Every so often we do have to turn away (usually after service has begun). Obviously, we hate turning away, but I would rather be safe then risk accidents when there are too many kids in a room and not enough volunteers. Once we explain, parents understand our reasoning and sometimes we get a volunteer out of it. Plus, by keeping to our ratios we show our volunteers that we appreciate them and that we aren’t trying to overwhelm them with 20 kids to a small group or 10 crying toddlers.

  • http://www.westsidefamilychurch.com/index.html erin_english

    Not too much I can add here. We never close rooms, AND take safety very serious. We have a strict teacher:child ratio we closely adhere too. We of course don’t always have the volunteers we need, but will pull staff from around the building to lean in, while also “paging” for team volunteers to assist. We use the parent paging system, which is just and small lcd display in the worship center. (Parents are paged with the last 4 digits of their home phone on the display.) Our kids team volunteers know that a “777″ means we need assistance (most often in a preschool room). And “888″ alerts our special needs ministry that an additional buddy is needed. More often than not, a volunteer will step forward to lean in where needed.

    Our #1 resource has always been God. :) We NEVER pray for less kids, but ALWAYS for more volunteers to step up and get involved. God has always provided for us, and we are so thankful. He let’s us sweat it out just enough to keep us completely reliant on Him, and never on our own efforts.