Recently we’ve been focused on volunteers and within the last few weeks a new resource was made available entitled Rock Solid Volunteers. Here is the description from Amazon:

Larry Fowler, Director of Program and Training for Awana Clubs International, believes that there are seven biblical principles, drawn from the book of Nehemiah, that will help pastors and leaders more effectively motivate and manage volunteers. Rock-Solid Volunteers looks at the obstacles Nehemiah and his volunteer workers faced – fatigue, weakness, loss of vision, peer pressure and opposition, just for starters!—and examines the seven steps Nehemiah took to lead his volunteers to success. Pastors and ministry leaders will be equipped to attract, inspire and keep talented, committed volunteers, no matter the challenge!

Larry begins each chapter giving the account from Uzziel’s view. A goldsmith during the days of Nehemiah who helped rebuild the wall. While this account is not recorded in the Bible, Larry uses this to show how the workers of the day must have felt and how the volunteers we serve with today feel in service. Then throughout the chapter, Larry conveys practical ideas from Nehemiah (yes, Biblical principles!) to use to gain and maintain volunteers. Larry pulls from his own personal experiences in ministry and taps into what others in children’s ministry are doing today. At the end of each chapter, Larry also provides questions to think and talk about, helping you personalize it and develop an action plan for you and your ministry.

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I think that all of us in children’s ministry, or in ministry in general, have some idea or plan in our heads about how volunteers will progress through our ministry. This is usually some vague sense of where you will put new people and where they will go from there. But, how many of us actually have a thought out, prayed over, written down plan for this progression? I would bet that most of us just wing it. We either recruit people into a specific position, or we put them in where there is a need and then kinda let it roll, deciding arbitrarily how and when we will progress these new team members.

Now, my ministry is no different. Most of the people in my ministry have come in, and I have just put them somewhere.  Alternately, I bring them in and just kinda tell them what to do on a week-to-week basis. As I thought about this recently, I wondered what would happen if I developed an actual plan for how volunteers would come into and move through my ministry.  I think that having such a plan can have a number of benefits.

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Flickr by wonderwebby

Getting your volunteers invested is the key to bringing out the best in your ministry.  Check out the intro as well as lesson one and two here.  For this post, we’ll be diving into lesson three and four.

3) Help Them See the Pay-off

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Flickr by wonderwebby

It’s 8PM Saturday night and the phone rings.  One of your volunteers has called to ask what lesson is up for Children’s Church tomorrow.  Clearly, they’ve taken a lot of time to prepare.  Or worse, a team members shows up Wednesday night fifteen minutes before your program is starting and asks “I’m not supposed to do anything tonight, right?”   You’ve seen it during the lesson too – a couple of volunteers standing in the corner chatting, serving as more of a distraction than a help.

It’s frustrating.  It’s mind boggling, and yet our volunteers might not really be to blame.  Of course, we want them to live and breathe children’s ministry.  That’s usually what we’re doing, right?  Even being bi-vocational, I find myself thinking and reading about children’s ministry constantly.  Why can’t our volunteers do that?  They need to get invested.  And they need your help to do it.

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When it comes to volunteers in children’s ministry, there is one issue that I hear about more than any other – that is the issue of how to recruit volunteers.  It seems to be a constant problem in the kidmin world, and very few people seem to enjoy it.  I can count on one hand (maybe two) people who I would call experts in that field.  That is one of the reasons I was excited to see Andy Johnson post a complete FREE volunteer recruiting package several days back on his website.

I have never met Andy Johnson, but I am a fan of what he does.  What he does is run a great blog known as Free CM Stuff for which he scours the internet for the best FREE resources for those of us who work in children’s ministry.  I have followed Andy’s blog for quite a while, and he has pointed me towards a multitude of wonderful resources.

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Recruiting is a  continuous process in children’s ministry.  As volunteer leaders, it’s vital that we have others join our team to accomplish all that needs to be done.  If I were a full time children’s pastor, I would schedule time each week to take people to lunch, or meet them at Starbucks, or treat them to Marble Slab, just to have a chance to sit and talk and get to know them.  Relationships that are established in those kinds of times, enable us to share with others the opportunity to serve in areas that match their giftings and personalities.

But I don’t have time to go to lunch, rarely get to Marble Slab, and don’t get to Starbucks as much as I’d like.  More often, my conversations with potential Momentum Kids team members are snatches of sentences, quick comments on vacations or their kid’s sports accomplishments, and the occasional church luncheon when I can sit and talk with one family for 20 minutes.

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