Recently, my wife and I went through a rollercoaster of emotions as we dealt with many personal health struggles.  While this situation ended well for both of us, and also ended with news that we are expecting another child this fall, it was a long and personal struggle.  Because of the nature of some of it, we chose not to share it with anyone outside of our immediate families.  This meant that the people in our church, including the volunteers that serve with us, thought everything was fine.

I suspect that similar situations happen every day in churches across this country.  Pastors, for personal reasons, choose not to share every little detail of their life with church members and volunteers. 

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Winter is coming. The temperatures are getting colder. Many children have outgrown their coats and sweaters from last year. What to do with those coats?

Why not have a coat-drive and collect new or gently used coats and sweaters and blankets for children and families who need them? There are many children who do not have a nice coat or a coat that is warm enough for the winter months.

A coat drive is great mission project for young children. They can take  leadership roles to collect the coats and sort them out in the collection boxes. They will feel like they are making a difference in the lives of other children and sharing Jesus’ love.

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Often we talk about how to avoid burnout in ministry.  We address situations that can lead to volunteers working long hours at church, neglecting other responsibilities including their family, jobs, and even their own health.  When we get caught up in the “serve, serve, serve, serve, serve” or “I have to do it all because no one else will” traps, we are on a fast tract to burn out. We talk about balance and how we can avoid being completely burnt out, used up and dead when it comes to our ministry.

But on the other extreme of that pendulum swing, is the person who uses their ministry to hide or escape from the areas of their life that are in crisis.  These can often be  difficult situations at home or at work.  If the situation at our secular job is demanding, we may find it easier to ignore the issues there, and pour ourselves into our ministry tasks.  The same scene can be repeated for issues at home.  If we have a strained relationship with our spouse or teenager, often it is just easier to avoid or ignore those issues and pour our emotions and efforts into ministry.  If in turn, those who benefit from our ministry, whether it be church staff, or parents, feed our need for affirmation by praising the efforts we have put into our ministry, this can easily start a cycle of ignoring those areas of our life which need to be dealt with and corrected.  Instead of facing the issue with the difficult spouse, we ignore it.  Focus on ministry.  And we can easily justify it, because ministry is for eternal benefits.  How can you argue with someone who is bringing the Good News of Jesus to others?  You can’t trump Jesus!!!  But in the long run, we aren’t going to last.

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In our Children’s Ministry, we developed a volunteer role called “Coaches,” and we’ve had the opportunity to share these ideas with other churches. This volunteer structure can be incredibly useful in your ministry, whether you have 30 or 60 or 200 or 800 volunteers. And keep in mind that this type of structure is not just applicable for churches and children’s ministries, but any type of organization that is volunteer-dependent and where leadership development is a goal.

What Volunteer Coaches Do

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EDITOR’S NOTE: We would like to welcome Joey Espinosa to the Kidmin1124 team.  We are certain that you will find his contributions to be useful and illuminating.  Please take a second to welcome Joey by commenting on this article below.

I work in an after school program with two other people (all of us part-time) and a handful of volunteers. As with most ministries, we are highly dependent on our volunteers to have an impact on the children who come and who want to come.  In fact, we currently have a waiting list due to an insufficient amount of leaders.

Recently, in a discussion about volunteers in our program, someone told me that we need to treat all volunteers the same. According to this logic, because all volunteers give something, they are equally valuable, and should be given parallel responsibilities and privileges.

I disagree!

Volunteers do have equal value, but that’s because value is intrinsically from the God who created us and saved us.

But volunteers are also different. They have:

• Different strengths,
• Different levels of responsibility, and
• Different rewards.

Therefore, they should not all be treated the same.

Different Strengths

Volunteers with unique skills, experiences, and passions should contribute in specific ways. The failure to recognize and act on this principle is one of the biggest mistakes a leader can make. It’s one way that I erred for years in ministry. I would see a need and then look for any warm body to fill it.

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I know that this is not a secret, but I also know that it is an art.  The single greatest thing that I have done in order to keep myself productive is to batch my tasks.  Since I started doing this, I’ve learned more about why it works and have even seen ideas like the pomodoro technique that refine the idea, but batching is just something I started doing because it made sense.  Let me explain it to you a little (please keep in mind that I am not an expert in this by any means and I will share some expert links at the end of the post).

Batching is, quite simply, working on batches of similar tasks.  For example, rather than open up my curriculum website once a week and downloading the upcoming curriculum, I download the whole month’s curriculum at once.  I even try to edit as much of the month as possible in one sitting.  I use batching in my secular job all the time as well.  I even do it at home.

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Jim Wideman shared his heart about the importance of volunteers in the afternoon session at the Illuminate Conference.  Here are some of the comments that he made.

We should bring people alongside and give them a place to serve the church.

Serving others is God’s plan for his children and we, as volunteers, are called to serve two ways:

1.  God has called us to serve children.

2.  God has called us to serve our leaders.

When serving is hard and we are tempted to complain about what God has called us to do, remember Paul.  If you went up to Paul and started to complain to him, he would say, “I wrote 3/4 of the Bible and we didn’t have ink.”

The secret to seeing your dreams come true is this: “Help others reach theirs.”

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One of the greatest examples that Jesus showed us what serving really means wasn’t standing in front of a crowd.

It was kneeling at the feet of His disciples.

Jesus knew that the Father had given him authority over everything and that he had come from God and would return to God. So he got up from the table, took off his robe, wrapped a towel around his waist, and poured water into a basin. Then he began to wash the disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel he had around him. John 13:3-5

During our time in Children’s Ministry we are not only called to serve families, but each other as well.

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One of the breakouts that I chose at the Illuminate Conference was Sam Luce’s session, At Your Service.  This was a great session with Sam, which came as no surprise.  Here are some of the thoughts that he shared with us.

We can create environments that can be barriers or bring people to God

(He shared this video) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7_dZTrjw9I

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When Kenny Conley announced that he would be doing his Illuminate Conference in Birmingham, I was thrilled because that’s just about 3 hours from me, and I could take my volunteers to this conference that was geared specifically for them.  And Illuminate-Birmingham did not disappoint.  Here’s some of the thoughts that Jim Wideman shared in the opening session on Time Management.

Time management is in the Bible: (more…)