Help wanted! Help wanted!

I had an interesing email from a mom last week. The topic she brought up is timeless -- she could come from any state in the union, any diocese, and still struggle with the same issues:

I wrote you about a year ago, and told you that we would be starting a children's program in our parish.  We we did and the children get up after the Gospel and during the Homily we go into the rectory (attached to our church) We use Catholicmom.com for all of our lessons and I love it.

I am a young Catholic mother of 3 and myself and only a handful volunteer to lead the groups.  We have on average 25 children which is quite large considering our location.  We are a small rural community.

My question is do you have any advice to help possibly encourage other moms or parish members to volunteer? The church members love  the program but no one is willing to help...I see people smiling when the children return to the pews with their coloring pages and craft project that goes along with the Gospel.  I love knowing that we are "teaching" backward...sometimes to get the adults to understand and to learn more about their faith the lessons come from the children, I do feel this is important and very beneficial to our church so any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Can you help out by offering your thoughts, opinions and strategies for how to inspire volunteerism in our parishes? If you've got a program that's working well, I'd especially like to hear from you today! And on the flip side, if you find your parish's tactics to be a turnoff, please share (anonymously) what drives you crazy.

Copyright 2013 Lisa M. Hendey