Inviting people to small group means addressing the question of children or no children. If you don’t allow children it can turn people away, and if you do allow children it can distract attention from the fellowship time. So what do you do? Compromise depth of relationships for inclusion, or promote opportunity for distraction?

So should you allow children at small group? Ideally, children should not come. If you need to try to provide onsite childcare with someone is responsible for the children. Children at small group distract people from the material at hand and negatively impacts the depth of fellowship.

Nothing causes separation in a relationship more than the topic of children. Telling someone their kid isn’t welcome can cause conflict. You’ll want to have a stance on the topic before fielding the questions and have prepared a gentle response. First, let’s look at the multiple situations on how this can be dealt with.

#1 – Allow Children

Some people will not come to small group unless they can bring their kids. Plain and simple. The most typical reasons are

A. They can’t afford a babysitter

B. They don’t know of a babysitter they can trust

C. No babysitter wants to watch their kids

One of these problems can potentially be solved with a trusted network of resources. If someone tells you they don’t know of any babysitters, this your opportunity to serve them and love by taking the time to reach out to your trusted network and see if you can find potential babysitters for them. Take the names, numbers and the relationship to you and present the potential member with it. Make them feel like you authentically wanted to serve and equip them with a list of babysitters you would trust with your children. Ensure they know this list is for them to use for whatever purpose they want, it’s not a solution to get them to join a small group. “I have a babysitter for you, now you can sign up for a small group.” Once you equip them with this list, the work is now on them to call the babysitter to see if they are available and check their rates. They may even want to spend some time getting to know them or their families (we did when we had a new babysitter).

The other two problems are faced by the least of us. Jesus calls us to serve these people too. Matthew 25:40 says, “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” People who are trying to grow in the Lord, but can’t afford a babysitter, or their kids are so misbehaved that no one is willing to watch them, are the ones that need the Lord the most. They are hungry for His word and wisdom. So what should you do?

The first option is to provide a babysitter(s) onsite. If you have space, hire and pay for a babysitter to watch the members children in a sperate area of the house. Provide expectations for time and emphasis you’re doing this as a gift to them so that they can learn more about the Lord and grow in relationships with other believers. Don’t beat around the bush. Sometimes I’ve found people in a tough situation like this have many needs outside of the small group, and unfortunately, sometimes this generosity can be abused. Be clear their children will be watched during small group time, while the member is there.


Disadvantages: As much as I’d like to say this is the perfect solution, it isn’t. There will still be a distraction, especially with a member of untrained children. A babysitter can be great, but they can train children and often times there will need to escalate the children needs to the parent(s). If this only took away from the parents that would be one thing, but the truth is when there is an interruption caused by children, it will impact the whole small group. One thing I recommend is to commit offering babysitting one or two months at a time and see how it goes. This doesn’t mean that if it doesn’t work you’ll kick them out of the small group, it just means that you can see how things go and reassess options if things don’t go well. This might mean finding more babysitters to help, finding a better place to meet that might allow more separation, or even finding an adult servant in the church that can help.

#2 – Encourage Children

This is similar to the last option, but instead of the exception – it’s the standard. In this situation, everyone in the small group pitches in to support a set of babysitters. The number of children needs to be known and accounted for before small group starts and you get a commitment from all the members to pitch in and help with paying for their service. That can be a wonderful option if there is enough space. I have even seen this work once where two members of the same small group lived in the same neighborhood. One house was used for hosting the small group, and the other house was used for watching children.

A general rule I’ve seen used in this situation is parents pitch in $2 per child per small group. All the money goes into a pot and is divided between babysitters.

Disadvantages: One person ends up hosting a small group. In a perfect world, everyone in the small group will take turns hosting the meeting.

#3 – Allow parents to have children

There is a philosophy some have that church should be done with children alongside or in your lap. They thought comes from the culture of Jesus’ day when parents had their kids with them everywhere and this was a source of learning and wisdom for the children as they grew up. During this learning time, it was additionally opportune for the parents to train the children character and behavior.

If you agree with this philosophy and want to support it this might be the right system to use for your small group. This will usually require the small group to be focused on parenting and have most of the members dedicated to that same area of learning.

Disadvantages – Parents focus on children instead of small group material and lesser ability to be great listeners.

#4 – Don’t allow children

To be straight with you, this is my preference and absolute favorite. As much as I love my kids, the small group is an opportunity to set parenting aside and focus on fellowship. The relationships and quality of time are so much greater and more powerful without the distraction of children. I’d love to use some scripture to back up my strong opinion, but Jesus’ didn’t have children so I can’t.

New members and anyone new to the small group, that have children will often feel a little uncomfortable with this at first. But as relationships grow and deepen the small group will be the most looked forward to event of the week for them. This not only becomes a time of learning and growing, but also a mini date! It can be coupled with having the sitter arrive thirty to sixty minutes early so they have time to pray together, get coffee together, or even share a meal. This will further strengthen their commitment to small group and the fruitfulness and joy in their lives by being a part of it.

This uncomfortable conversation at the beginning turns into a great blessing in the end.

Disadvantage: People will miss small group because of their children not having a sitter.

What if some people have children and others don’t?

Try to decide your small group posture on children before getting too far into the season. Make this decision based on the initial people in the group and that becomes the standard. Try not to change your stance based on someone joining mid-season, after the small group has been meeting for a whil. This can cause resentment and separation in relationships.