We receive a lot of questions regarding our childcare reimbursement program. We made a decision in the early years to not have adult Sunday school. Instead, we have small group environments (community groups) where 6-8 married couples, or 8-10 same-sex singles, meet in homes to study the Bible and experience accountability, care, and belonging.
We realized that childcare for parents might be an obstacle for participation in a community group, so we decided to reimburse parents for childcare costs incurred as a result of participating in a group. We wanted to remove any obstacles to people participating in group life.
We treat childcare reimbursement as a form of benevolence, and we only reimburse the parents. We do not pay babysitters directly. Since we consider this a form of benevolence, we do not send a 1099 form for miscellaneous income to the recipients of childcare reimbursements.
Our childcare reimbursement initiative costs us over $210k a year. Even though that is a lot of money, it is considerably less than building and maintaining classroom space for several thousand adults on Sunday mornings.