David and Goliath . .. The Small Church doing Workshop Rotation

by Leslie King, Ossawatomie Kansas

I remember one of my first conversations with Neil MacQueen regarding our interest in beginning the workshop rotation model in our church. “Neil, do you have many small churches doing the workshop rotation model?” To which he replied: “Why yes! We have churches of 200-300 members experiencing a great deal of success with the model.” I was somewhat intimidated rather than encouraged since our congregation was a whopping 80 members.

Nonetheless, with Neil’s and the web site support, in the summer of 1997 we implemented our first phase of the Workshop Rotation model. We had murals painted on what would become our drama room (puppeteering). We had a very modest audio visual rotation where we served popcorn. We had a craft room and a computer center (We purchased refurbished computers in order to make it affordable. Learning from experience, it is better to have one state of the art computer rather than four affordable ones. Begin computer labs slowly). Our pastor writes most all of our curriculum - however, the web site was an important helper for us.

Several years later, we are a church of about 100 members and still enjoying the Workshop Rotation Model of Sunday School. We enjoy providing a very flexible schedule for our teachers and a new twist on our model each year. For example: this year we phased out the audio - visual rotation and replaced it with Mary and Martha’s Bed and Breakfast - a cultural experience classroom. The result of our endurance is that for a congregation our size, we have approximately 40 children enrolled in our Sunday School program and we have a teaching staff of 14 teachers (2 in each classroom).

Two of these teachers guide a 3 &4 year old class through the Workshop Rotation ideology though, our experience has been, that this age group works best in the same classroom week after week rather than rotating to different classroom settings. Twice a month, they are a guest to another classroom of older children in the traveling rotation. For example, perhaps they are hosted in Mary and Martha’s Bed and Breakfast to a meal of hommus and grapes (web site idea). This helps the older kids to be able to articulate learning and the 3 & 4 year olds get slowly acquainted with the traveling rotation experience.

Two of our teachers are for nursery age children. (This gives us a great advantage when recruiting young teachers into our program).

Another teaching team instructs our youth class which is not involved in the rotation model, but they do make use of the computer lab once a month.

The other eight teachers are rotation teachers who, because of our broad based age groupings this year, teach twice a month only. Depending on the year, they may teach as much as three times a month, but everyone has at least one Sunday off.

There are several things that I think contribute to our nice ratio of volunteers and students for our size congregation:

Postcards are sent to the kids once a month advertising some aspect of Christian Education.

Teachers are treated like the jewels they are. At the beginning of each teaching season, they get an orientation breakfast that lasts only one hour - they receive an overview of curriculum, a list of substitutes at their disposal (we never hassle anyone about needing a Sunday off), and a 1st quarter curriculum outline.

Teachers receive a public appreciation ceremony in worship at the end of each teaching season.

If you'd like to learn more....contact Leslie at lesliedj@micoks.net

Do you a "David and Goliath" story about being a small church doing Rotation? Email it to this website.