This is the lowest-paid position in most churches and the one carrying the highest risk. It is frequently filled by a teenager, hired by word of mouth, paid in cash, with no written description and no screening — every one of which is a decision the church made without noticing it made it. Written here at three sizes, though for this role the sizes are mostly about how many Sundays and how many hands.

Screening is not optional here, at any size or any number of hours. Whatever system your church keeps records in, mark this role as requiring screening, so that a missing or expired certification shows up as a gap rather than as silence.

Flag, not answered here: whether your nursery is regulated childcare under your state’s rules. Sunday-morning care during worship is exempt in many states and not in others, and the threshold is often hours-per-week or whether care is offered during weekday programming. Check before you assume — see childcare.gov’s state resources.

The template

Job Description: Nursery Worker

[Church Name] · Approved by SPRC [date] · Reviewed [date]

Reports to: [the pastor / children’s ministry coordinator] — one named adult Classification: part-time, non-exempt (hourly) Hours: Sundays [time]–[time], plus [ ] additional hours Compensation: $[ ]/hour, with a stated minimum call-in of [ ] hours — see the notes Minimum age: [CHOOSE — see notes; 18 for the responsible adult]

Purpose

To provide safe, warm, attentive care for infants and young children so that their parents can participate in worship, and so that a family’s first experience of this church is one they trust.

Core responsibilities

Care and safety

• Arrive [ ] minutes before service; stay until the last child is collected.
• Receive and release children using the church’s check-in/check-out procedure — children are released only to the adult recorded at check-in.
• Maintain the required ratio of caregivers to children at all times.
• Follow the church’s Safe Gatherings / child protection policy without exception, including the two-adult rule and visibility requirements.
• Administer no medication [or state the written exception procedure].
• Follow the church’s allergy and food policy.

Environment

• Sanitize toys, surfaces, and cribs after each use.
• Keep the space tidy and hazard-free; report anything broken immediately.
• Maintain the sign-in log and diaper/incident records as required.

Communication

• Report any injury, illness, or behavioral concern to a parent and to the supervisor the same day, in writing.
• Greet new families warmly and walk them through the check-in process.

Sizes

This role scales by Sundays covered and hands needed, not by responsibility:

• Regular (every Sunday, plus weekday programming): the responsibilities above, plus opening and closing the space and maintaining supplies.
• Alternating or shared: two workers on a published rotation; add “coordinate handoff and supply needs with the other worker.”
• On-call / substitute: the same duties, the same screening, and a stated minimum call-in payment. A substitute is not a lower standard of screening — it is the same standard, arranged in advance, which is why the church keeps a screened substitute list rather than finding someone that morning.

Qualifications

• At least one adult 18 or over on duty at all times; [CHOOSE whether additional workers may be 16–17, and note that a minor never counts as the responsible adult].
• Experience with infants and young children.
• Current CPR and first aid certification [required / preferred / church pays for it — choose, and if you require it, pay for it].
• Patient, alert, and reliably on time.

Screening — required

• Background check before the first shift, not after.
• Safe Gatherings-type child protection training, renewed on the provider’s cycle.
• References checked, including at least one non-family reference.
• [CHOOSE: many churches require a waiting period — e.g. six months of attendance — before an adult may work with children. Decide deliberately; it is a well-established safeguarding practice, and it is also the rule most often waived in a staffing pinch, which is exactly when it matters.]

Working conditions

Lifting infants and small children; frequent bending; exposure to childhood illnesses; occasional evening or event care.

Adaptation notes

Pay hourly with a minimum call-in. A worker who drives in and finds one child — or none — has still given up their Sunday morning. A stated two-hour minimum costs the church very little and is the difference between a reliable person and constant turnover.

Never one adult alone with children. The two-adult rule protects the children and the worker. If your attendance means one worker plus one child, the answer is a second adult or a visible open door, not an exception.

Screening applies to volunteers too. The description above is written for a paid worker, but a volunteer doing the same work with the same access needs the same screening. Churches routinely screen the paid teenager and not the long-time member, which is precisely backwards relative to how abuse actually occurs.

Say what happens when nobody signs up. Cancelling nursery is a legitimate answer. Running it understaffed or unscreened is not.

Keep the records. Check-in logs and incident reports are the church’s evidence that it did what it said it would. Store them per the retention schedule in your personnel policy and keep them out of the general personnel file.

A teenager can be a wonderful nursery worker and should not be the person responsible if something goes wrong. Write the adult supervision in.

Elsewhere

• Safe Gatherings — background screening and child protection training used across much of the connection; your conference may require a specific provider, so check first.
• Childcare.gov — state and territory resources — where to find your state’s licensing rules, ratios, and exemptions.
• Guidelines: Children’s Ministry 2025–2028 — the official UMPH booklet for the ministry this role sits inside.
• Fact Sheet #17A — DOL — for completeness; this role is essentially always non-exempt.
• Your annual conference’s safe sanctuaries policy — most conferences have one, it may exceed what this page describes, and it binds you. Ask your district office.