Last Sunday, during a lull in our children’s work, I genuinely texted this to my wife: ‘OMG it’s crazy out here.’ No exaggeration, that really happened. We’ll leave the question of whether I should have texted during the session to another time, and focus on what on earth was going on to require that text. I thought perhaps it might serve as a useful case study to help us think a bit about how we manage sessions.
So what was going on to cause such a text? We had a bit of a perfect storm:
- We had an odd group, almost all of my older regulars were away so we had mainly younger kids who hadn’t been with us as long
- It was windy so the younger kids were a bit mad
- We weren’t in our usual room and didn’t have space for our usual games
- It was raining so we couldn’t go outside
- One of the kids who can struggle with behaviour was having a really bad day and this made some of the smallest ones laugh. This encouraged him to do more!
- The older kids who would help with that situation by sitting next to the smallest ones weren’t there
- We had a visiting speaker (they always take longer)
- A lot of time was needed for notices
- I hadn’t checked that all my resources were where I thought they were, and it turns out they weren’t.
So we have a mixture of stuff that was beyond my control, stuff that totally within my control but that I took for granted and stuff that was beyond my control but I could have had a contingency for. However, in the end we did get somewhere, so how did we all survive?
- I fell back on good old fashioned behaviour management, lots of affirming of good behaviour, and particularly sitting still and quiet and waiting for people to be ready.
- During one of these pauses I took a moment to reassess what to do next
- I’ve worked hard to establish a relationship with the child with behaviour struggles so I could now have a word and ask him to help me out by thinking a bit about how he was behaving
- We played a game, not the running around game we needed but a game none the less
- I changed my programme to fit my limitations. So I dropped the quiet prayer bit and the wondering questions and got going with craft reflection where we as leaders could chat with the kids about the story as we went along
- I noticed that as the momentum went out of the craft at the end that a couple of kids were making paper aeroplanes so we finished out session with a paper aeroplane competition.
Was this week my finest hour? No. I was a little underprepared and that was made much worse by a load of other stuff, but we got through. I made some sacrifices that for a one-off saved the day. If this happens more often then we’re going to have a more serious chat as a team and try and rework what we are doing, but with all that was going on, Sunday was about rescuing chaos and getting through the session. Also I’m going to check the resources box before the session!
Sam Donoghue is Head of Children’s and Youth Ministry Support for the Diocese of London and leads the children’s work at his church.