Nov
2
Written by:
Different Voice
11/2/2009 7:00 AM
Many churches give their Sunday School teachers (and other volunteers) a gift at Christmastime. If your church does this, now is a good time to begin thinking about the gifts you will give this year. If your church has not given Sunday School teachers a Christmas gift before, this year is a good time to begin. By Christmas, your teachers have been giving of their time on Sunday mornings for four months. Christmas is a good opportunity to remind them their efforts are appreciated!
Having said that, choosing a gift for Sunday School teachers can be a difficult task. You want it to be something that really makes the teachers feel appreciated, yet it needs to not be expensive, given the state of many church budgets. It needs to be suitable for women and men. Food items are a tempting idea except for persons who are on a special diet (which you may or may not know about). In other words, you need a meaningful, one size fits all, inexpensive teacher’s gift. Ideally, it would also be something that does not take the whole month of November for you to pull together.
Here’s a teacher’s gift idea that fits all of the above criteria: give your teacher’s a break. I’m not referring to a Sunday that the teacher needs to be gone. Hopefully you already have a system in place to cover those Sundays. I’m suggesting that you give your teachers a coupon that entitles them to one Sunday off during January or February.
This gift idea will require some work on your part, of course. Here’s a checklist for you:
- Purchase Christmas cards. Or if you want to spend a little more time, make them or have your children or youth make them.
- Download the coupon sample, or design your own.
- Copy the coupons onto white or colored card stock. Cut out the coupons, insert into cards and address the envelopes.
- Check “Sunday School teachers’ Christmas gifts” off of your To Do list.
- Recruit several persons to sub for teachers during January and February.
- Shortly after Christmas, contact all teachers by email, by phone or in person, and have them select a Sunday in January or February for their day off. Encourage them to select a date that they had not already scheduled to be gone, so it really is an extra gift.
- Watch your Sunday School teachers smile.
An extra nice thing about this gift is that it never goes out of style. You can use it next year, too!
~Sally Hoelscher