It’s May…and for me that means volunteer recruitment season is in full swing.  Having had the lead on multiple ministry positions in the church there is no doubt in my mind that those that recruit volunteers for our weekly children’s and family ministries have the one of the most relationally intense jobs in church ministry.  Even those in a small congregation can find themselves supporting dozens of people as they serve Christ through ministry to children.

The danger with such a relationally intense ministry is that, if we are not very mindful, we can find ourselves empty, tired, and discouraged.  We give and give and give until there is nothing left to give.

So… “Who’s Supporting You?”

http://www.creationswap.com/media/968

If someone or multiple someones haven’t already come to mind your already in trouble.  We can’t do what we do with out having intentional relationship in our lives where we are being supported, encouraged, and mentored.

Below are three key relationships I have found essential to remaining effective as a ministry leader who supports a relationally intense volunteer ministry.

Attend church regularly.  I don’t know how many children’s ministry leaders I have met that can’t recall the last time they attended “big” church.  If that’s you, this has to change.  And right now, as you plan and recruit for the fall, is a great time to make sure that happens.  It is absolutely essential that you spend regular time with your faith community worshipping, learning from God’s Word, and participating in communion together.  If you believe it is essential for others, it has be essential for you as well.

Participate in a Small Group.  You need a group of people that you can hang out with each week, where you can just be you.  Where you can take off your ministry leader hat and put on your follower of Jesus hat.  Where you can be encouraged through the study of God’s Word and prayer.  Where you can be supported and strengthen.

Find a Mentor.  We all need someone who is a little further down the path then we are to help us get to where they are.  In ministry we do this for people all the time, but if we don’t have anyone “up-line” from us, that can be our anchor and support, we put all those who are depending on us at risk.  And I recommend this relationship be more of a spiritual couch then a business couch.  More then we need someone to help us build the right programs…we need someone who helps us make sure our heart is continually surrendered to Jesus.

What are some other relationships/ways you find support in your ministry?

KB

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?

This post could save you hours every month.

Every Sunday School Director, Children’s Pastor, or Christian Education Director has volunteers.  Ministry requires volunteers.  By virtue of having a volunteer team every leader has to create some system to schedule and manage their volunteers.  For years I created an Excel spreadsheet to tackle volunteer scheduling but I quickly ran into problems:

• If I sent out the schedule before getting input from the team, I ended up having to make adjustments and resending the schedule.
• If I solicited volunteer feedback ahead of time, creating the schedule meant wading through a pile of emails from every volunteer about their availability.

Then I discovered Planning Center.  Planning Center is a web-based volunteer management tool.  You can schedule and organize your teams, layout your services, and store media.  This tool puts the onus of responsibility on your volunteers to proactively put in their unavailable dates into a calendar, so when you make your schedule you automatically know who is out of town.  With Planning Center you can communicate to your entire team and team members are reminded of their serving commitment via email or text.

In my church context, we use Planning Center for multiple teams: Creative Arts, Celebrate Recovery, Administration, Children’s Ministry, and Student Ministry.  It is well-worth the monthly investment because collectively we save hours and hours of time creating volunteer schedules and the service planning tools are priceless.

Volunteer training is part of any Sunday School program, children’s ministry, or mid-week club.  Investing in children requires an investment in the volunteers who will lead them.  That’s where VoiceThread can be a helpful tool.

One of the great thing about reading is that they will often benefit you were you are, not just where you want to go. One such book that recently helped me was Stretch, by Jim Wideman. Jim is a self-proclaimed “good ol’ country boy” but it is a title that he holds well and one of the nicest people you’ll ever meet in the Kidmin world.

Stretch opens with with the idea that there are two basic types a structure for your ministry: one that is prepared for growth or one that is prepared to maintain. I believe that we all want our ministries to grow in some fashion (numerically, spiritually, etc.) so I continued reading. If you want your ministry to stay the same – don’t read Stretch. In fact, you need not finish this blog post about the book.

After convincing you of the importance of structure, Jim then walks through some key areas to help you think about where your ministry is and where you are going. He doesn’t jump into getting a larger number of kids, which I think is a great selling point of this book. While we may want more kids in our ministry, he’s careful to show how we first need to prepare saying that perhaps God is saying, “What would you do with more kids if I sent them to you?”

Stretch is 10 simple chapters on preparing fro growth by enlarging the abilities of those you lead, structuring your organization, preparing and structuring volunteers, and taking a look at your facilities and your own leadership style. Jim then wraps up with how to communicate the your structure as well as some questions you need to ask yourself.

As I mentioned above, books can often hit you where you are and Structure did that for me on two points. First, I love teaching in my ministries but that can take me away from my calling which is to oversee the ministry. Jim points out that overseeing is something that we do not do well in children’s ministry and it inhibits our growth. If we’re doing all the work, how will we be able to continue if God expands our ministry? We need to have a system that not only takes care of the kids we have but is ready to take care of new ones. As a new friend of mine said, “I need to be working on my ministry more than I work in my ministry.”

The second big help the book gave was in some thinking that I’ve been doing on where and how our classes our structured. There wasn’t any specific helps on this in the book but it did lend clarity to that thought process.

Finally, as I make one last case for this book, let me share two quotes that, even if you don’t read Stretch, I hope will help you.

“My mama taught me a long time ago, ‘It is never as bad as you think it is. You are never as wonderful as you think you are. And when people tell you everybody is upset, count the everybodys.’”

“There are some things you do each week that others can do if you just give them a checklist.”

Do you have a kidmin book to share?

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?

Every Monday morning, as I sit down at my desk with a hot cup of coffee and open up my laptop to begin another week of ministry, I am greeted by a reminder which reads, ‘Two Notes of Encouragement”

A wise man once told me that church culture is like a rudder of a huge ship.  Culture determines your direction.  If you turn it to quickly everyone falls off the ship.  But if you make small, incremental, intentional changes in the same direction over an extended period of time eventually the ship will be headed in the right direction.

As leaders it is our responsibility to manage the cultural rudder in a way that keeps people from falling off the boat, but also produces a culture where volunteers thrive and children and their families grow spiritually.

Several months ago, through God’s prompting, it became clear to me that the culture of our ministry was missing a spirit of encouragement.  This was not a shock to me.  Encouragement isn’t one of my gifts.  I’m a doer, so it is hard for me to pick my head up long enough to actually notice the amazing volunteers and ministry that goes on around me every Sunday.

So every week I force myself to slow down, look around, and notice.  All morning, in the back of my mind, I am thinking about those ‘two notes of encouragement’ that will face me Monday morning.  They force me to notice.  They force me to pay attention. They force me to live out a different type of culture.  And every week the rudder turns another two degrees.

Whatever the issue may be, as leaders, it is our responsibility to live the culture we want to create.  It is through this ‘living out’ week after week that we begin to change the culture around us ‘two notes of encouragement’ at a time.

What’s your story?

KB

Long ago my husband and I heard analogy about a postman who isresponsible for delivering packages. Wind, sleet or rain; he is to deliver the package. If it’s rainy the package gets wet. If the dog chases him and it gets ripped up a bit, he still delivers it.

In ministry there are many times when our pastors or directors on the way to deliver the “sermon-package” get woes of volunteers troubles rained on them or get the “I didn’t like it when you…” chewing out and need us to protect them.

Do you complain to your leader before they go up to preach or teach? Save it for after the service is over. Are there fifteen things your class need and you go to the leader for every one of them instead of trouble shooting on your own? Just sayin’…

The message will be presented. How can you help it be delivered nicely and in a peaceful manner.

-Rhonda

One of four children, my Maxx (5) loves to have personal time with me.  In order to get time alone with him I started inviting him to “mid-night breakfasts”.  Since I tend to work late at night to get my work complete, it was great for us.

I recently chatted with some ministry volunteers who felt disconnected from their leadership.  Although their children’s ministry director had no time, she agreed she must take time for her team members so they would feel loved and valued.  After looking at her calendar, drive-time, evening chats or early breakfasts made it possible to make those connections to benefit her momentum in ministry.

Are there opportunities without cheating your family or adding too much to your schedule you could take time for your volunteers?

~Rhonda Haslett

I want to say thank you to the Cory Center staff and community for the warm welcome to the team. I am excited about what God is doing through the Cory Center and look forward to serving this community.

I’m a big fan of stories, so for my first post I thought it appropriate to share a story from this past week…but just a warning…I don’t look very good in it.

I have spent the past week at Christ In Youth’s Move Conference. Every year conference is one of my favorite weeks of ministry, because of the incredible opportunity it is to create shared story…you know, the stories deep relationships are build on. The kind of stories that would take months, if not years, to build any other way.

Because this week is so relationally intensive, each year as we recruit sponsors for this event we are highly intentional about inviting the right sponsors that have the passion and giftedness necessary to connect with our student on a deep level.

This year there was a lady who has been a faithful leader in our children’s ministry program for years and has recently felt called to minister to youth. When she asked to come with us to conference I wasn’t sure how she was going to do. She isn’t the typical youth sponsor type…full of energy and a little crazy. She is more of the mother/grandma type…loving, gentle, and really into quilting.

What I have observed this past week not only surprised me, but also made me realize how often I have stereotyped volunteers. Judging their ministry effectiveness before they even start. The connection that this lady has had with our teens has been phenomenal. Whether it is encouraging letters written to each of our girls or the time of pray she has poured over them, her connection with these kids is on a level not often seen.

Here is what God taught me from my experience this week. Be careful not to keep others from your ministry because of your own preconceived ideas. Jesus was a master at allowing people the opportunity to serve. Any religious leader of Jesus’ day would have laughed at the ragamuffin group of followers that Jesus specifically choose to do ministry with. Trust that God will bring you the right people for your ministry. Pray diligently for the workers, and then allow whoever comes to your doorstep the opportunity to be used by God.

Because, the reality is, someone did that for me, and I’m guessing someone did that for you.

Can you relate? What’s your story? Who gave you the opportunity to serve?

KB