How running a nursery can help your church

Could a nursery be a new ministry for your church this year? Elim’s Early Years lead Pete Jones explores why it’s a great option.

Did you know that a church-run nursery could help you forge community links as well as become the backbone of your finances? That’s the question Elim’s Early Years lead Pete Jones is asking churches to consider when devising future plans. Pete oversees Elim’s stable of nurseries alongside Rachel Hopkins. With both a ministerial background and several nurseries of his own, he has vast experience of their benefits and is keen to encourage other leaders to consider them.

Missional support

Nurseries’ greatest strength is the way they support churches’ missional work, Pete says. “If a church is active in its community – or wants to be – nurseries can be a real door into that because they naturally work with families and local authorities.” For many families, a nursery is their first proper connection with church, and the relationships and trust built through good quality childcare can be a profound expression of the Gospel. These connections create a wealth of opportunities to offer practical help too, or link families to their existing programmes.“A church could equip people to parent singly, parent better, cook more healthily or get back into work, for example. Or conversations with parents might reveal a need for financial help. Churches might already have CAP in place to help with budgeting or debt, or could point parents to other professional help. It’s a good, practical way for churches to come alongside people and ask, ‘How can we help you?’” Nurseries also create natural partnerships with local authorities and family liaison officers that can further embed churches in their communities. “The doors are being swung wide open by local authorities who are asking, ‘Can you actively come and help us within the environment of your church?’ It really is a holistic approach.”

Financial strength

Let’s be up front about this, a good nursery can also make a significant contribution to church finances. “Finances shouldn’t be a driving force – if you’re genuinely passionate about making a difference a nursery won’t just be about making money – but that said, if you get things right the by-product is a decent income,” says Pete. “Some of our nurseries bring in well over £1m per year. One with around 140 places pays for the pastor, the rent, the utilities, the other running costs. If you took the nursery away the church wouldn’t survive. It’s very, very valuable.”

We’re here to help

If a nursery could be a great fit for your church, Elim will support you through the entire process, says Pete. Since coming into his role in January last year he and Rachel have built a centralised hub of resources at Elim HQ. “Everything you need – information on setting up a nursery through to systems, policies, procedures, documentation for each setting – is there for managers to access.” And since Ofsted introduced a new curriculum for nurseries in September, resources to help embed that are available too.

So how do you get started?

“If someone is interested they would first get in contact with me,” says Pete. “I would send them documentation to ensure they’re bang up to date with legislation around standard policies and processes, then I’d come out and do an inspection. I would get the nursery ready, do the plans, the financials, then Ofsted would inspect and sign everything off. We would then do interviews and work with the managers we employ and the minister. “It used to be that the pastor was expected to do everything but that’s not the case anymore. We put all the structures in place and all the finances come through HQ. It really is Elim working with churches to help them expand into communities in a nursery form.” This is a great time to consider opening a nursery, Pete concludes. Parental demand for places is high. Some Elim nurseries are running at 80, 90 or 100 per cent capacity. And that has increased since government-funded nursery hours were increased to 30 hours a week for children aged nine months to three years of eligible parents. While Covid once reduced Elim’s 18 nurseries to eight, Pete is now travelling the country speaking to ministers who are interested in making this move. “But we need more to say, ‘I’d love to do this!’,” he says. “It’s about being open and thinking differently about how to get the Gospel out. The more we can get actively looking at developing nurseries that fit their churches’ missions the better, and we’re ready to help.”

This article first appeared in Direction Magazine. For further details, please click here.