to Start the Workshop Rotation Model?
How much money? How elaborate? What should we buy and when? This is a question on every start-up's mind.
There are three schools of thought:
1. Go whole hog. Spend and do what is appropriate to your congregation's enthusiasm, vision, and confidence.
2. Go whole hog....but decorate "on the cheap."
3. The third school of thought doesn't take much thinking: "Be Cheap." "Make Do." "Tip toe into this." Like late-night real estate schemes, some churches think they can be rich in Christian education with "no money down." These churches have a bigger problem than just a dead Sunday School. Someone famous once said, "Where you money is, there is your heart also."
To that I would add, "...and where your atmosphere is --or isn't, there also is your heart hanging out for all to see.
Saving money isn't the issue. It's about being good stewards. The man who buried in the ground the one small portion he had been given was reprimanded. The man who was given a large portion and spent it wisely was lifted up.
When our church in Barrington Illinois first started the Rotation Model we didn't go out and visit any Rotation churches because there weren't any. Instead, we dreamed, we remembered bits and pieces of things we'd seen and done, we dug through closets, and we put the word out to our creative-types. We remembered what it was like to be a kid in our favorite class. We remembered VBS's past. Most importantly, we were unafraid to "just do it." And when we didn't like the results (which occasionally happened) we changed things again.
In our first year we spent money on art stools, lots of paint and fabric, props for drama, puppets, some software, and a bunch of videos. We sent some bills to the Buildings and Grounds Committee when we replaced broken fixtures and put in a few outlets here and there. Our first two computers were donated. Over the years we added more "stuff." I think this is one of the disadvantages of new Rotation start-ups when they visit established Rotation churches. They see what it took a year or two to build.
In our first year we took the $3000 we had been budgeted for curriculum and spent it on many of the above items. But we didn't spend it all. True story: We saved so much money that first year that we actually asked for LESS money for our second year. More true story: The church elders turned us down. One of our elders, Bud Kilham, said something I'll never forget, "Well you've done such a great job this year getting things turned around imagine what you could do with some extra cash." Bud got the Session not only to return our budget surplus back to us, but give us $1500 more as well! We spent it, of course, but on starting a children's Fellowship. When a large church writes its own curriculum, Sunday School can cost less money. UNLIKE curriculum purchases, once you buy things like art stools and videos...they don't get used up like curriculum. Thus, a Rotation Sunday School can start to acquire some pretty neat stuff if they write their own. And it's the neat stuff which the kids respond to (we know how they feel about those take-home flyers they left in the parking lot).
Ok, so we were lucky, maybe. And our church was in a well-to-do community....though at the time you'd have never known it by the Children's Education Budget. But the even more amazing true part of the story is how many churches are experiencing the same thing: extra cash to help their Rotation dreams and facilities take shape. Yeah, yeah, yeah....I know it sounds too good to be true ---until it happens to you. Many of your members STILL believe in Sunday School....just not the current Sunday School.
Some churches DO spend a couple of thousand dollars converting their rooms. Some had bad rooms to start with. But many other churches spend only hundreds of dollars because they are good at finding things, asking for things, and letting people know what they need. Take theater seats, for example. You see them in many A-V Workshops. Some churches have paid for theirs. Most of us have found them for free or nearly so. Or take the Drama Workshop...many churches already have leftover drama materials from previous plays, while some churches have collected nothing over the years.
Some Rotation-'perts like myself tend to wince when we hear about the grand re-designs and grand amounts of money some churches contemplate in going Rotation. Most Rotation churches will tell you that it wasn't til their second year of operation that they really got creative. Still, you want your atmosphere to look great from day one as much as possible. That's why many of us counsel "creativity on the cheap."
In Barrington we had a "master plan" in mind ...and it changed fifty times because WE grew and changed. Those murals you see in the photo tour of our facility at this website? We painted one a year. The empty tomb prop in the drama workshop photo? ...old furniture foam, plywood and a can of grey paint. That drape across the ceiling in the Temple School? ...a bed sheet.
Where's the Extra Cash?
It's in your curriculum budget and on your CE resource shelves and in your CE Resource Center.
- Writing your own curriculum isn't just about saving money --it's about digging into your own gifts as a congregation --and those of other congregations such as represented in the free lessons page at the rotation.org website. If, however, you are a "publisher dependent" Rotation church and have to buy your lessons --there goes the $700 for your artstools and new lights.
- Your computer funds might be in the library budget. Software is just another learning resource. The public libraries have figured this out, why not the church library? Many church library's like the computers in there too! ..they attract kids and parents to the books. Your computer funds might also be in the church office budget. Justifying a new office computer is easier if you can show it helps more than Mrs. Cratchet the church secretary.
- One church auctioned off their old wooden chairs. Another sold them at a garage sale.
- Memorial Funds can do more than replace choir robes and tune the organ. Gonna be even emptier pews appreciating these things if we don't take care of the foundation.
- Gift Trees, "pluck an apple (and buy us some art supplies)," and putting the sewing circle to work sewing a drama curtain that slides on a wire with shower hooks, these and many other creative fun(d)-raisers can help. One church even had different adult Sunday School classes, the Women's Assoc., etc., "sponsor" the makeover of each room. Creating interest and ownership has many positive long term results.
- Create a VBS next summer that needs to have some creative workshops. Use the money from VBS to do up the rooms nice and then JUST DON'T TAKE THEM DOWN when VBS is over. Viola! Instead Workshops for September.
- Instead of spending money to remodel a room that's seen better days, think of ways to hide the past. Cloth, tents, theater flats work wonders.
Getting Ready to Spend $$$
Create a "workshop dream design " and price it out. Give people a chance to see your vision and step up to make it their own. If you're short on cash, decorate on the cheap with colorful paint and lots of colorful cloth. (By the way...let someone in your church with decorating sense pick your color schemes. Keep "Norm of Ubiquitous Light Blue Paint" busy building you a wooden or pvc pipe puppet stage. Put off your dream of a TV projector and gussie up the 19" Tv on that cart. Start with an air popcorn popper and hold a fund-raiser next Spring for a big one that makes mounds of mouth-watering buttery popcorn. Muraled theater flats can provide a tremendous amount of pizazz and cover a lot of ugly places.
You don't need to have it all together by September 1st. Instead, get just a few workshops completed. Create an expectation among parents and kids that you will be "unveiling" various new workshop designs over a period of time. Cover a doorway to a workshop under construction with "Caution" tape and put up some orange barricades in the hallways. Wear a construction hat to deliver a "minute for begging" during worship.
If you're strapped for cash.... put off the computer lab until you're ready to do it right (this from a guy who sells software). Instead, grab a good computer and some good software and take it on tour: fellowship hall, the mens' breakfast, Women's Association, anywhere you might find people interested in helping you make the lab a reality.
This article isn't finished...it needs your input and ideas. Email Neil.
This article is copyrighted. You're welcome to make copies for non-commercial use.
Neil MacQueen is a Presbyterian minister and one of the original "Rotaters." In 1996 he left his parish ministry to focus in on his specialty, Computers in Christian Education. He can be reached by calling 614-527-8776