Riding High and Low

Our church has a van route ministry giving rides to people who have no other way to get to the church Wednesday evening prayer services. It’s designed especially for teens, but along the way, we have gathered a few others. One person is 92 and can no longer drive due to limited eyesight. A few others who ride are still teens, but on the upper age limit and considered an adult. I ended up being the director for the van ministry.

The driving time of collecting then returning riders home is about two and a half hours plus the time in the prayer service. That is four and sometimes closer to five hours that the volunteer driver and the assistant/chaperone are tied up in service to this ministry. Recently, the Assistant Pastor and I asked for those interested in helping with the van to please attend a meeting to see if it’s a ministry that they might be interested in assisting. We were sweetly surprised at the number of people who attended.

In the past three people volunteered as drivers and chaperones. That meant we were limited in the rotation of personnel with some doing duty several weeks in a row. This voluntary task soon felt like a burden. I was afraid it would cause folk to “burnout” and became worrisome to me. I began to look for some solutions. One thought came to mind was to have our 92 year old rider complete his child security clearance complete. Although he wasn’t able to drive, he could be the extra person in the van as the chaperone. He was the first to be collected and last to be dropped off. That gave us a bit more flexibility in our schedule.

I felt the amount of time spent on the route and the inflexibility of a schedule was still a concern and made a proposal that we could divide the route putting both of the church vans into operation. The four hour old route collected people in Everson, Connellsville, and finally in the “mountains” when we found more volunteers.

At the meeting, that we had an increase in the number of people who were interested in driving the vans. We’ve decided that we can make two loops and be able to cut the time and expand the amount of area we can cover, actually expanding the ridership. It will allow us to offer rides to two young men and two young ladies who have difficulty finding a ride. Our church can offer a safe place for young men and women to have good and godly activities on Wednesday evenings. We are creating rotation and hope to have it functional by next week.