Church bus ministry

[coadie]

How many run church buses every Sunday?
What works?

With no jobs, expensive gas, we see people mis church for more reasons.
Who is doing well with this?

[aegsm76]

We run 3 vans for 1-2 trips each every Sun. morning.
We also run 1-2 vans for Sun night and Wed night.
In the last month, we have baptized about 10 and had 5 receive the Holy Ghost from this ministry.
Our attendance from these is growing.
For a church who has a "huge" bus ministry, I would look at the Godairs in Durham.
I am not up to date on them, but they used to run 50+ bus/vans.

[missourimary]

I've seen it work, and I've seen it not work. If you want a strong bus ministry, every person that drives and staffs the buses needs to really believe in what they are doing and love people. Also, if you are only picking up kids, for the sake of the workers on the bus please have more than one worker interacting with the kids. Not people who are simply on the bus, but people who interact with the kids.

The best workers I've seen on Sunday School bus ministry (and the best bus ministry as a result) had puppet skits, prizes, and sword drills. Every worker was involved, not just one or two who worked while the others talked amongst themselves. They also had decent buses with air conditioning, and a driver who would come early to warm up the bus in the winter. That way the kids and ladies didn't freeze.

One thing I always wanted to do and think would work well would be to use the Kid's Power Hour series and modify it for your buses. For instance, in the western one, decorate the bus seats by making the outside edges look a little like park benches or cover them with yellow plastic and pretend they're hay bales, have workers wear cowboy hats and bandanas, etc. If you have more than one bus, have a few workers run between the buses while they load/unload or have some workers jump on at surprise places along the route and run bits of skits before jumping back off. Make it a very energizing trip.

The bus I usually rode was horrid. Worker burnout was high, and there were many complaints. The bus ministry leader either didn't listen to the complaints or knew he couldn't stop the problems. I'm not sure which. The workers have to love people... and they have to love each other.