We recently received a question from a church wondering how to provide security measures when preschoolers go to children's worship halfway through the service. The church requires that parents (or designated adults) pick up their kids from the class after the service and this information is maintained in a list. However, when there are visitors, the volunteers do not know which adult or parent should be picking up the child. The church has received comments from visitors who are concerned with the lack of procedure.
Does your church have a system or policy in place for children's programs that begin mid-service? How do you handle this situation?
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We require a parent/guardian of 3 to 6 year olds to sign their children in and out. The parent who signs in, is the one who must pick the child up. Since our children actually go downstairs, a Children's Church teacher stands at the top of the stairs with the sign in sheets on a clip board for parents/guardians and visitors to sign their children in. At the end of the service, parents come downstairs and go to the classroom door to pick up their child and sign them out.
We us Planning Center Online (specifically their Check-Ins app) to do our kids check in for the nursery and kids classes during the service. It's pretty easy to get kids checked in for visitors and it creates a label for the child with their name, parents names etc. It also creates a "security" label with an ID number (but no name) that is used to pick up the child at the end. We don't allow kids to go unless the parents have the security label that matches the label on the child.
Excellent question. We recently visited Alger Park CRC in Grand Rapids, MI, and they had a good process for this kind of thing. The kids were first registered/checked-in to their children's ministry rooms and nurseries. And then when it was time for the children's message, the kids came as a group to the front of the church to be part of worship. Following the message, they went back to their classrooms until the service ended.
By the way, the system they used for check-in was called KidCheck (www.kidcheck.com) and it was very user friendly.
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