Love the suggestions so far! Keep 'em coming!
As I see it, the challenge for parents with small children is that a lot of the work in a parish needs to be done without the small children…the committee meetings, the set-ups and tear-downs on a tight schedule with lots of heavy stuff being lugged around.
If you want to meet people, these are some great volunteer opportunities where you are more and less likely to make friends:
a) Volunteer work that you pick up, do at home, and drop off is not as good. It is better to volunteer to serve at the funeral luncheon, where you’ll have a chance for a little small talk here and there and to see people in action with each other, than to make a salad or hot dish and drop it off. The same goes with cleaning the altar linens instead of cleaning the church. The former is good for how flexible it is as a way to contribute to the parish, but the latter will get you more contact time with fellow parishioners. The problem is, though, that you’ll need someone to take care of your children, because they probably can’t be running around during the luncheon prep until they are old enough to help. You do have to be fully available to help.
b) Volunteer work where there are meetings but no informal time. You don’t get to know people during formal meetings. You get to know people when you are sitting in a room with a pile of envelopes to be stuffed, because the work doesn’t take much attention and you are free to talk. Do not forget, BTW, that you do not have to have a child at the school in order to volunteer at the school. Oh, wow, do they LOVE parishioners with no kids in the school who come over to help! (You’ll probably have to take the sexual abuse prevention training that all the other parents take, but I would highly recommend that every parishioner do that, anyway.) Do make it a point to tell the school that one of your goals is to meet people, so you don’t want to be put into a room stuffing envelopes or setting up take-home packets all by yourself. Have them call you in for the group work parties.
c) Volunteer work where you are scheduled with the same person in the same time slot every time or that you do alone are better for when you know more people and are looking to get to know a few more thoroughly. You may get face time with the people who come in, but you probably won’t chat much. You get to know that one or two people that volunteer at the same time as you do, but not a wide variety of people. If you volunteer so that you’re never sure who you’ll be working with, you’ll pick up more different faces in less time.
d) Volunteer work where you can’t talk is not as good. People will get to know you if you’re a lector or an extraordinary minister of the Eucharist, but then you will have the problem that they know your face and you don’t have a name for theirs. If you serve at coffee and doughnuts, you can compliment their child’s cute dress, introduce yourself, and exchange pleasantries; you’d better not do that while helping Father dispense the sacraments!
e) I think the best are the volunteer groups that make it a point to socialize within the group. The Altar Society and the Knights of Columbus usually have a mix of volunteer time and social time. If your lectors get together for coffee once a month, that makes being a lector into a way to meet other parishioners with similar interests. So look for that.
f) RCIA is very good, but be aware that you’ll also be meeting people who don’t know anyone (or very many) in the parish. The friendships and connections made there are very deep, though, and the long-time parishioners you tend to see working RCIA will very often have roots running everywhere in the parish. If you can make the commitment and not miss meetings and events, that is a good way to go.
