What should we do with our children during small group?

Childcare and what to do with the children while you’re in Small Group is a common question. You know, there’s a couple of different ways that you can do it. Depending on the church campus, we actually take and drop our kids off at the campus and the campus will take care of the childcare. You don’t have to worry about the children. You know they’re well-taken care of and you can go to your Small Group and focus without having to worry about childcare. That’s one way.

Another solution we’ve used is we actually have those that have children pitch in and get a sitter together. We’re fortunate enough to have a location in the house where the sitter can go and do crafts with the kids and they can be there and do their own thing while we’re doing the Small Group downstairs. That worked well for us. If you’re in a neighborhood, one of the ways that I’ve seen done is to take the kids to a house and then a couple of blocks down or even a couple of houses down, you’ll have Small Group. So the kids will be in one location with the sitter and you’ll be in another location with your Small Group. It’s a wonderful way to answer the childcare question.

The last way that I can think of is to actually integrate the kids into the Small Group itself. Sometimes that works depending on the curriculum, and sometimes it doesn’t. I would encourage you guys to look into your Small Group and come up with a creative way to manage the childcare issues. The bottom line is: Don’t make it an issue.