Children’s ministry of any kind (large group/small group, kid’s church, Sunday School, kid’s choir, club programs) requires volunteers. The need for volunteers is constant and pressing in our field.  Last week I spent some time presenting a webinar sponsored by David C Cook’s Tru Curriculum with three creative geniuses: Matt Barnes from Rock Harbor Church, David Robles from The Rock Church, and James Pomeroy from Christ Community Church.  We spent an hour talking about how to add creativity to our ministry context and how to develop an amazing team of storytellers.

One of the fantastic ideas that emerged came from Matt Barnes.  Matt leads the storytelling team at Rock Harbor.  In addition to developing specific values for the storytellers, Matt empowered the group of volunteers to meet together regularly as a small group using the children’s ministry Bible story each week as the small group curriculum.  According to Matt, the group fostered community within the volunteer team, gave each team member an incredible opportunity to “live in” the text they would be teaching, and helped everyone with creative ideas for how to teach the Bible story.

Great idea! (Thanks Matt)

How are you fostering community within your volunteer teams?

Getting out of the way is hard.  And for all the right reasons.  The hugs that run your way at the local grocery store.  The satisfaction that comes from crafting and delivering an engaging Bible lesson.  The joy of watching kids surrender their life to Christ for the first time.  It’s why we do what we do.

But as our church has grown and changed so has my role.  Four years ago I had to get out of the way and allow new leaders to take over my ministry environments.  And they are doing great.  God has done amazing ministry through them.  Things that would have never happened if I had held on to my ministry

And now it is my staff that get the thank you cards.  It is my staff who the kids run to each Sunday morning.  It is my staff who get to walk with kids as they enter into a relationship with their Savior.  And so I find my joy and satisfaction from something different.  In watching others experience the blessing of ministry.

Now that doesn’t mean you won’t still find me rocking babies in the nursery, stepping in for a sick small group leader, or helping the 4 year olds with their craft.  But in these environments I’m not the leader, just a volunteer doing what needs to be done.

Getting out of the way is hard.  But it’s worth it…for all the right reasons.

What’s your story?

KB

Volunteer recruiting is a constant effort in children’s ministry, so honing the skills required to recruit well are critical for children’s ministry leaders.  In a new book  The Rare Find: Spotting Exceptional Talent Before Everyone Else,  George Anders unpacks what leaders and managers should search for when they are looking to hire a new employee.

According to Anders interview with Dan Pink, the primary characteristic leaders should search for is resilience.

“Being able to bounce back from adversity is crucial in just about every field I examined. You need resilience to be a great CEO, a great teacher, soldier, investor, etc., etc. But when we hire, we’re taught to regard setbacks — regardless of what came next — as flaws in a candidate. So when we prepare our own resumes, we hide our stumbles. That’s wrong! We should cherish people who have extricated themselves from trouble in the past.”

• When you are looking to hire a new volunteer, what are the primary characteristics you look for?
• How do you vet those characteristics in the volunteer onboarding process?

Everyone knows that more learning takes place when people have the opportunity to share with one another.

That sounds great until you are trying to get a group of bashful contributors to be chatty, chatty.  Common results seem more like, “cricket, cricket.”

Here’s a simple way to get people talking.

• Prime the pump by sharing your ideas to the question on the table.
• Make sure the question is clearly understood.
• Most importantly, break the group down into smaller groups to discuss or brainstorm.
• Then ask your question.
• After a short time of sharing, ask each group to share what was said in their group.
• It’s always more productive when people know what they want to say BEFORE you call on them in front of the whole group.

I promise you, it will work!  Try it at your next training or gathering.

If you were in the car with me and my kids you might hear words like, “PT!” or “Slug bug!”  Every time a PT Cruiser or Volkswagen get anywhere in eyesight the first to call it, gets the point.  If you mistakenly call an HHR a PT points were deducted.  For that reason I was almost always losing this game.  I had to learn to identify the cars by their details in order to win!  And I started winning when I took notice.

Thinking recently about the importance of knowing who I wanted on our ministry team.  My mind went to the car game.  As a recruiter for our ministry teams, we must know what we are looking for as look for volunteers on our team.  When we do; we win!

Have you taken the time to specifically look for the “winning details” of potential team members?

The Cory Center Podcast kicks off 2011 with a series on Team Building with Kids.  In this episode, Brodie Swanson – a Bethel Seminary graduate and Side by Side Coach, discusses how to transition team building from being just a game to a powerful learning tool in ministry.  Listen and learn the keys to the team building success and uncover new team building resources.

Listen to the full episode: Team Building with Kids – Part 2

The Cory Center Podcast kicks off 2011 with a series on Team Building with Kids.  In this episode, Brodie Swanson – a Bethel Seminary graduate and Side by Side Coach, discusses the concepts behind team building activities and how these activities can be used to empower kids in your ministry.
Team Building with kids – Part 1

I’ve learned so much from the Learning Leaders Fieldbook created by the MASIE Center that I had to create a blog series to share the insights.  You can check out Part 1 of the series here.  The MASIE Center created the fieldbook to focus on the creation, role and function of a Learning CEO.

In today’s piece, I’d like to cover the “Clock Model” mentioned in the fieldbook and relate that model to volunteer leadership.

Picture a numbered clock.  The leader is in the 12 o’clock position.  At the center of the clock (the point around which the hands rotate).  As you build your team, the best thing you can do is find leaders with complementary leadership skills to your own and to each other.  The idea is to keep attuned to the skills on the team and continually fill in the gaps on the clock.

“The key is to hire opposites to counter-balance great (strong) individual leaders: opposites in terms of style as well as experiences, perspectives and approaches. That seems counter-intuitive to success because, on the surface, you just hired a team primed for hostility, conflict, strife and delay. But, if they have a common set of values, if they fundamentally agree on how and why they are going to work together, then the real fighting is over and their discussions will be about how to successfully achieve those goals and that vision.”

I think the clock model works for staff teams and volunteer leadership.

1.  Center your team around shared values.

2.  Develop a diverse team – if they are all the same, you will always lack perspective.

3.  Seek talented, strong leaders and believe they can work together.

4.  As you fill your volunteer teams, you have to commit to stay away from the strain of not having enough leaders and be strategic in your recruiting.  Filling spots never works.

The more research I do, the more I see the role of Chief Learning Officer in business and education.  In fact, I recently came across the “Learning Leaders Fieldbook” developed by the MASIE Center.  From the fieldbook, I culled some valuable insights into learning leadership (which I’ve written about before here).  Here are five to get us started.  I’ll be sure to post more in days to come.

1. Make other people successful: be a trusted advisor

So often children’s ministry leaders are seen as program peddlers or Christian Education trainers.  If others (volunteers, leaders of leaders, and staff) trust you, that will open doors for you to serve as a problem solver instead of being just a solution.

2.  Have a point of view: thought leadership is everything

Your point of view has to be dynamic.  Understanding the culture of your church will be an incredible asset to you as a learning leader.  This type of knowledge can help you gauge the church’s readiness for new programs/initiatives.

3.  Be a connector of talent

In these days, unlike any other, you have the ability to connect to children’s and family ministry leaders with experience, education, and leadership skills for free through social networking tools – without going to a conference, enrolling in seminary, or joining the latest children’s ministry fad.  As the expert in your context, you can connect lots of talent to your ministry.  Take advantage of that!

4.  Provide support tools for learning

Simply, in order to reach today’s digital learners with the truth of God’s Word and the life-changing story of the Gospel we will be required as children’s and family ministry leaders to incorporate new tools and methods to teach.  We must take advantage of digital tools that are available.  Video, design, social networking, gaming, text, Twitter, Facebook – these are all on-boarding tools that will aid learning.  It’s time to give up on full frontal lecturing and static teaching.  It’s time to make our teaching style as dynamic as the powerful message God is using us to communicate to kids and families.

The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell is one of my favorite books.  Now, I think it could be my favorite game developed by the Singapore-MIT Gambit Game Lab.  According to the website, “Tipping Point is a cooperative puzzle game for up to four players. Players assume the roles of Project Managers, and must work together to complete projects before they go too far past their deadline. The game is won by completing a set number of projects without letting any project fail.”

I’m always looking for creative ways to train leaders.  My current go-to resource has been Wilderdom.   When I look for training resources, I’m  trying to find  ways to get people to work together and think through problems.  What’s great about the Tipping Point is that if any single player’s project fails, everyone fails.  At the end of the day, that’s a powerful truth for children’s ministry. If one team captain is rocking the house in 5th grade, but 2nd grade is sucking wind – the team has failed.  Leaders need to work together and that’s a powerful team skill to coach and develop.  I can’t wait to use this with my team captains.

The instructions were intended for children’s ministry people too – take a look at the requirements: Paper, color printer, scissors, 5 sandwich bags, and a manila envelope.

Download it here.