Every children’s worker wants their work to be meaningful. We don’t head into this children’s ministry thing expecting or looking for failure – we want our work to be significant for the children we work with, and to thrive. Equally, every church or funder wants the projects or activities they support to work, and to engage the children taking part. But what is it that makes a project, and the role of the children’s worker, ‘work’? And how can we ensure that the groups, activities and projects we are working on are moving in the right direction?
In our Diocese, employing children’s workers is on the increase. People are noticing the inherent potential of these roles as a way of growing their church; generally these jobs have a missionary element that takes it beyond the confines of Sunday morning. However the success of these roles and the people in them is quite hit and miss: some are huge success stories and others don’t really achieve any more than a group of well-supported volunteers would. A proportion of these roles are funded centrally by the Bishop of London’s Mission Fund which has supported in excess of 40 projects over the last ten years. This anniversary gave us the opportunity to do some research to see if we could establish some patterns linking successful projects, and examining which things you need to get right when launching a youth or children’s work project, especially if you are going to employ someone to deliver it.
WHAT IS IT THAT MAKES A PROJECT, OR THE ROLE OF THE CHILDREN’S WORKER, ‘WORK’? AND HOW CAN WE MAKE SURE OUR PROJECTS, GROUPS AND ROLES ARE HEADING IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION?
We commissioned a man called Terence Russoff to do the research; he was a director at IBM and therefore was able to bring a fresh perspective. He read every single review form ever submitted and then went to visit a selection of projects – both those which were successful and those which failed. Speaking to project workers, line managers, vicars and even those who attended the projects gave him a good picture of the key factors in making projects a success and indeed what will cause a project to struggle.
Clearly this research is not definitive; we only operate in London, and some factors here will be unique. Some of the factors we already knew, as they were intuitively obvious from our experience, but also some of it was more surprising and pushes against some more established norms. But the research does give some really key pointers into what you must get right to make a project successful.
WHAT WE LEARNT
1. MAKE THE RIGHT APPOINTMENT
Making the right appointment might be the most obvious statement imaginable, but this appears to be the most important thing you can do for a children’s work project. If you make a bad appointment there is no amount of mentoring and support that can save the project, but getting the right person means the project is likely to fly. We heard again and again that it is crucial in the recruitment phase to hold your nerve and not appoint unless you’re really sure. If that means going through the recruitment process multiple times and not appointing anyone you interview, then so be it. Parishes that panic and appoint the person who is the best on offer in the interviews rather than the right person for the job always regret it. In London right now it’s become normal to have two goes at appointing.
We have found that the character of the worker is far more important than their skills. This flies against a lot of established logic: we have attempted to professionalise our workforce and we often include a youth or children’s work degree on the personal specification, but our research showed us that this doesn’t matter as much as we’d hoped. What we need to be looking for is people with staying power, the ability to enthuse and inspire others and those who can shift the culture of a church. You can teach those people about children’s and youth work. Parishes have tried the opposite and thought they could motivate someone with some skills and a degree, but it doesn’t work.
If you can get that person with the entrepreneurial spirit required then you will still have issues to deal with: you may have to reign them in at times and getting them to consent to being trained can be a battle, but fundamentally you’ll be having good problems around harnessing their energy as opposed to getting someone going.
WHERE PROJECTS PRIORITISED DEEP RELATIONSHIPS OVER BETTER PROGRAMMES - WE SAW SUCCESS
2. GOOD LINE MANAGEMENT IS KEY
Good line management is crucial but only in forming and steering an entrepreneur. Meetings should focus on ensuring objectives are being met and that the worker is reflecting well on their work, and not just charging ahead without thinking about what they’re doing.
3. KNOW YOUR AREA
It’s not enough to have a good idea or even a vision – good research into your local area is crucial. Just because someone has had huge success with a project somewhere else, that doesn’t mean it’s going to work in your locality. Take the time to engage with your local community and find what’s already out there but is oversubscribed, and where there are needs that aren’t being met.
4. ENGAGE THE WHOLE CHURCH
Engaging and enthusing the whole church (PCC and congregation) in the vision for children’s and youth work, making it an integrated part of church life, is crucial for building momentum, driving internal funding and growing the volunteer base. Too many of us are content to live in a silo aside from the church and accept the fact that no one gets what we do. This attitude however will slowly kill your project. I cannot tell you how many parent and toddler groups get founded by churches with great missionary objectives but then slowly get detached from the church until the only input from the church community is to complain about the way the hall is left afterwards: this is probably not something Jesus is very chuffed about.
5. VOLUNTEERS ARE CRUCIAL
Volunteers here are crucial. Projects that are too dependent on a key worker can only survive as long as the key worker is around, and are therefore incredibly fragile. Recruiting and empowering volunteers is a constant mission that pays off over time with a broader leadership than just one person, leading to greater creativity in planning and space for the key worker to think and reflect.
6. PRIORITISE PEOPLE OVER PROGRAMMES
Focus on relationships, taking a ‘whole life’ approach. It’s easy to obsess over making our programmes slicker and more exciting but where projects prioritised deep relationships over better programmes we saw success. Actually setting up programmes is the easy bit; we are learning not to be impressed with them when we review but to dig deeper to see what relationships the programmes are facilitating. Caring about people and building trust builds a powerful witness.
7. POWER THROUGH
Avoid plateauing. Although much of what we have said previously will mitigate against this there is a clear trend of projects hitting a plateau in year two, often caused by the fact that the early years are spent settings things up and launching programmes and there is then a transition in focus to developing and growing the groups, and people find this difficult. Getting through this stage requires a big effort from more than just the worker but it can be done; one response is to try and launch a new programme, but that won’t solve the problem. What this ‘powering on through’ will look like is difficult to say; it will look different in each context. But being aware of the typical two-year plateau may simply give you the courage and motivation to keep going, even when it starts to feel like hard work.
8. USE THE HELP AVAILABLE
Expert advice is really important. We saw a direct link between success and engagement with the training and resourcing we provide as a Diocese for all youth and children’s workers. Those who sat on their own tended to struggle more. This need for expert advice also spreads into fundraising and any number of other things specific to the projects, but it’s amazing how many projects struggle on without taking the help that is on offer.
9. MAKE YOUR PROJECT SUSTAINABLE
Long-term sustainability is not an accident; you have to plan this from the start. There is an assumption that sustainability happens because successful projects generate momentum that keeps them going and going. We assume that it’s easier for other churches as they have a huge pool of willing volunteers that you can only dream of. This simply isn’t true. The projects that make it work for the long haul do so because they have been thinking that way from the start, and working with that in mind. Many have established a clear long-term vision and have built with that in mind from the start, systematically putting in place the foundations needed. This includes things like integrating children’s and youth work into the wider vision of the church, fundraising and succession planning. For some projects, the prize was in getting the project up and running and they failed to think beyond that. By the time they did it was too late, and they rarely lasted longer than a couple of years.
10. BE REALISTIC
Long-term projects are realistic in their expectations. One of the temptations when planning a project is to be too ambitious: we’ve learnt that our funding model can encourage this and we need to be more willing to fund less ambitious projects. We have seen that doing less really well by putting more resources into fewer projects is far more effective. Therefore a project plan should have logical and realistic objectives. If you want to start two things, put all your efforts into getting one right before you try and move on to the other one.
