Serving at
St. Andrew’s

Church is a family. We each have a special part to play as God gives us different gifts to serve our brothers and sisters.

At St Andrew’s we’d love to make it as simple as possible for everyone who wants to be able to serve sustainably.

Why serve?

On Sundays there are so many ways to get involved. Whether welcoming, serving food and drink, helping with children or youth, stewarding — there’s something for everyone. How might you like to serve?

Where can I serve?

We hope this page is helpful to get a sense of how best you might like to serve and to know how we try to set things up to be as accessible as possible.

What can I expect from serving?

For those considering serving
FAQs

  • There is a variety of serving opportunities at St. Andrew’s - click here for a list of all teams and their role descriptions. At the moment there's a particular need for people to join the Explorers Team - our Kids Church for children ages 6 months to 3 years (more information in the link above).

  • For most roles it's essentially once per month. To make it as simple as possible we arrange those serving into 4 teams. Each team serves consistently on the same week of each month (e.g. every 3rd Sunday of the month), plus once per year when there's a 5th Sunday in the month. So that's 13 times in the year. The beauty is it's all mapped out clearly up front so you know exactly when your team is 'on' for the whole year. We hope this makes it easy to plan around (and enjoyable to get to know those on your team), but where you need to be away and miss one of your team's weeks that's no problem at all. You can just update your unavailability online and one of the team will arrange cover.

  • Each serving area has a simple role description on the Serving Role Descriptions page which will give you a sense of what's involved. Please catch any of our church team if you've got questions or would like to chat. If you think you'd like to join a particular team, we have a very simple application form after which one of our team will be in touch personally to discuss next steps. We hope this helps us stay joined up and consistent so that everyone knows what to expect.

  • For most roles we ask people to try to commit for 12 months to enable sensible planning and consistency. However, it's really important that no one feels pressured or stuck serving, especially if circumstances change for whatever reason. So you'd be free to step back at any point if you need to.

  • The application form for serving on Sundays is here. We're so grateful for your willingness. For some roles (especially where working with children), we will require references and DBS clearance in line with safeguarding best practice. We hope that all our processes enable us to love well all those entrusted to our care (including those serving). We'd always be glad to hear any feedback you have as we're always wanting to improve.

 For those already serving
FAQs

  • Log in to the My ChurchSuite app (let Ollie know if you have any trouble with this), click on the three lines in the top left corner and click on My Rotas. This opens up the Next Serving tab, which shows you your serving commitments for the next three months.

    N.B. Those with linked family members can also access their family's Next Serving dates. Rotas listed in red indicate a clash, where you're set to serve on more than one rota on the same date/time.

    Just next to Next Serving you will see a Rotas tab, which contains a list of all the Rotas you either serve on, are part of the ministry team for or oversee.

    N.B. And on an iOS device, you can use the ... Actions button to open a tab with iCal and Google buttons, where you can subscribe to a feed of your serving dates.

  • You can easily block out dates of known unavailability for yourself and linked family members from the Unavailability section. Adding unavailability means you are unavailable for any rotas on the dates selected. By keeping your known unavailability up to date, those overseeing rotas can more easily plan and manage their rotas, identify & fill gaps and needs, and better ensure people are not over-serving.

    Unavailability can be added from the Unavailability tab. As above you click on My Rotas and you should see across the tabs: Next Serving, Rotas and then Unavailability. To add unavailability, (very intuitively) click Add unavailability.

    On the Add unavailability pop-up, you can add unavailability for a range of Dates and add an optional Description (reason) for yourself (and/or for your linked spouse/partner and children!). Any clashes arising from your unavailability are shown within the pop-up.

  • The best people to talk to are Ollie or Steph - they look after our serving teams pastorally and operationally.

  • If you would like to step down from your team or would like to try serving on a different team, please reach out to Santhosh, Ollie or Steph who would love to chat to you about it. We're so keen that everyone is given the opportunity to serve sustainably and joyfully and a key part of that is being able to make changes.