I’m not going to spend much, if any, time talking about politics on this blog. However, I thought that you might just be interested in an alternative to both Obama or McCain. It could happen!
I’m throwing this one out to my readers. I want to find out what you do.
When coming to a new church you usually inherit a lot of stuff. You also inherit volunteer schedules and routines. At Gateway I inherited one things I really like and one thing I don’t like too much. First of all, a majority of our volunteers serve every week. That’s just awesome. The thing I don’t like so much is that traditionally a large number of these volunteers would take the summer months off and a recruiting push would be done in May called "Summer Serve." The idea was that a new team is recruited to serve for the summer while most of the regulars took time off. The advantage was that many of those who signed up for Summer Serve would stick with it into the next year. The disadvantage, you’ve got a whole new team to train and enlist in ministry.
Have any of your guys experienced this? I can tell you that I don’t love it. I’m all for giving my volunteers some time off. I’ll give them time off whenever they need it. However, I don’t see letting all my team off for 2-3 months all at the same time. I understand the "why," but I don’t love it.
So, this Spring we didn’t do it… kinda. Well, I actually got her too late to do an official Summer Serve push. The announcement I made last Sunday was where we would normally do a Summer Serve push (about a month late though), but instead I made it about serving on a permanent basis.
Have any of you experienced Summer Serve? Was it a really successful thing or a necessary evil?
A few weeks ago my blogging friend Sam wrote a very intriguing post here. I was disappointed that there were only two comments… both of them mine. However, I’m pretty sure I know why no one had much to say. I think it’s rare for us to link the Holy Spirit and recruiting together. It kind of was for me too.
A few weeks ago I finished writing an article on the Holy Spirit’s role in recruiting. Writing this article was amazingly refreshing and a great reminder of the things I often forget or neglect. Here’s all I can say. They Holy Spirit wants to help and we need to remember to let him. He proved it to me in a beautiful bit of confirmation that I’d love to tell you about.
I finished writing this article just before the weekend… about letting the Holy Spirit help in your recruitment process. After service that Sunday, my wife came up to me and said, "Remind me to tell you about the person I saw in the garage (our coffee/bookstore) today." It wasn’t until later that night that I remembered to ask. She then went on to tell me about someone she saw earlier that day. There was this man who came up to the husband of my Early Childhood Director. He seemed very outgoing and fun. More importantly, he really engaged with his kids… he had them eating out of his hands, so to speak. Sara said, "you gotta get this guy on your team."
So, I then sent an email to my Early Childhood Director’s husband. I prefaced the email saying, "This is a highly unusual request." I went on to tell him what Sara saw and that I’d like to connect with him if he’s not serving somewhere else. He wrote back within minutes. He said that this guy had served in the Children’s Ministry for years and totally loved it. Even more, the guy had even said that day that he was thinking about plugging back into the Children’s Ministry. Now tell me, does the Holy Spirit want to help or not?
We’ve got a very big promotion coming up at Gateway Church. Very Big. Actually it’s so big that we’re going to host four parent meetings to explain all that is happening. To be honest, we don’t really need the parent meetings, but its another opportunity for me to speak vision to our parents, so we’re going to anyway.
Our 9:30 and 11:00 services see similar sized crowds, but our 12:30 service has a fraction of the participants.
So, on August 24th, were making some big changes.
It’s big changes for us, but we’re really excited. We’ve got a lot of fresh faces to recruit. It isn’t really any more kids (well, maybe some), it’s just more rooms and opportunities to serve. I’ll be keeping this blog up to date on our promotion efforts.
I mentioned yesterday that we’re recruiting volunteers and developing leaders for the fall promotion on August 24th. We actually did a push from the stage yesterday, but we’re looking for way more volunteers than we can get from that. I’ve been talking to my staff about how we can "saturate" the vision in as many venues as possible. Here are some of the ways we’re going to (or hoping to) get the word out among our church.
My team had a few other ideas as well we’re going to look at for the future. The key though is to saturate. We need as many people as possible to know what’s happening this fall with the kids.
What other ways can we saturate the vision in the next few months? Any ideas?
Okay. I know of three full time job positions available right now that are hiring immediately. Like, the positions needed to be filled YESTERDAY. Let me tell you a little about the positions:
Elementary Director: This is a full time position at a church here in Austin, TX. It’s a cutting-edge church reaching the lost and disconnected in this very "cool" city. A large percentage (I want to say over half, but I can’t confirm) of attendees have come to Christ in this church. Church attendance at this campus (multi-site) is over 3000 with an average of 500-600 kids. The Elementary ministry is moving toward a large group/small group model and needs an experienced leader to take the ministry to the next level.
Children’s Pastor: This is a full time position at the same church mentioned above. This position is for a Children’s Pastor over one of the video campuses. The campus (launched in January) runs close to 450 attendees. A strong leader who is flexible, creative and a great team player is needed to grow the ministry of this campus both numerically and in quality.
Children’ Pastor: This is a full time position for a brand new church plant in San Antonio, TX. This plant realizes that the Children’s Ministry is one of the most important ministries in a church reaching young families, so they’re "setting up" the future CP with a great opportunity. The church is being planted in on of the fastest growing areas of San Antonio, which is largely unchurched. It’s the opportunity of a lifetime.
What these churches need:
If you or someone you know is interested, please forward questions/resumes to me at kenny@childrensministryonline.com. Both of these churches are non-traditional churches reaching the post-modern/Gen-X population which is very different from most traditional and many contemporary ministries. It’s messy and raw, but totally fulfilling. If you’re lame, please don’t send a resume. If you don’t have experience leading Children’s Ministry leading 100-200+ kids, you may not have the proper experience. If you’re a Children’s Pastor, Elementary Director or heck, even a Middle School Pastor (who just doesn’t yet realize how cool children’s ministry is yet) who is looking for something new and different, then shoot me your resume. Even if you are currently in a position and you simply want to explore what these opportunities might look like, just send me an email (there’s not anything wrong with that at all, so don’t feel guilty about it).
Those of you who are perfectly happy and in the place that you know God has set you in, please do me a huge, HUGE favor. Will you send me some names of people who you think might be a good fit for this position? I ask people all the time if they know anyone who is looking and I get the "No, most the people I know are serving somewhere." To be honest, I’m not interested in those who are looking (well, I am if you know someone). I’m looking for some high quality people and more than likely they are already on staff somewhere. I want to contact them. I had a defining moment in my career as a CP where I was recruited away from the church I was at. I was not happy and it was a total "God" thing. I’ve also been contacted about positions while at another church and I’ve politely said "I’m not interested." But I was glad to be asked. So, will you give me some leads on people I can contact about joining two very exciting ministries here in Texas? I would be very appreciative.
I’ve learned something very interesting since arriving here at Gateway. They’re very intentional and specific about leaders. This is probably why they have two full time staff members dedicated specifically to leadership development.
When I was at previous churches, I always had leaders as well as volunteers. Other ministries had leaders as well as volunteers. However, my leaders didn’t always look like the student ministry leaders… or the adult ministry leaders either. What I called a leader may look totally different from what the student pastor called a leader. However, we would often sit around the table in meetings and talk about our leaders and every probably assumed that we were talking about the same thing. We weren’t. No one had ever set a standard of what a leader looked like.
Here is what leadership looks like at Gateway. We have:
It may sound complicated, but it isn’t. A leader is someone who is spiritually leading others. An emerging leader is someone who is partially through the leadership process (interview and such). They may be leading people spiritually, but not without someone else’s direct oversight. Potential leaders are those who have the stuff of leadership. They just need to go through the interview process. Coordinators are people who are leading people with tasks. No spiritual oversight at all. Volunteers are those helping in ministry.
So, when we talk about leaders here at Gateway, we all know exactly what we’re talking about. Having a leadership development staff is very helpful. They keep a pulse of how we are doing in leadership. Every month I’m have to turn in a report about my leaders. When a leader drops off, I must let them know. When I find more potential leader, I report it. They hold me accountable. Leaders don’t slip through the cracks here without someone noticing it.
Lately I’ve been a crazy reading man!
I just updated the ‘Books I’m Reading" and Books I’ve Read" widget on the right. Unfortunately I’ve been reading Bringing Up Boys
So, if you’re interested in reading any of these books, I’ll let you know what I think in the coming weeks. If you’ve read some of them, I’ll look forward to your comments!
Last week I read an incredible post from the Access: Elevation blog. It concerned how you communicate available volunteer positions to potential volunteers. Again, it’s one of those “don’t communicate the need, communicate the vision” ideas. However, Larry Brey communicated perfectly how serving is the opportunity of a lifetime. It’s a personal invite to participate in the single most powerful movement and organization in the world. The Church!
Bravo, it’s a great post that many can take and adapt to their volunteer/recruiting process.
However…
There is something I need to clarify. Something that appears to be missing.
Yes, I think it would be incredible if we communicated this message to potential volunteers. Yes, I believe that serving in the church (especially in the kids ministry) 
IS an opportunity of a lifetime. BUT, (listen closely) too often we don’t treat it that way. It’s easy to communicate how important the job is and how great an opportunity it is, but after we fill that spot we sometimes check that one off the list, move on to the next one and neglect the person who just bought what we were selling!
If we truly believe that serving in the church is the opportunity of a lifetime, then we’ll treat every position with total respect. We’ll clearly communicate to our new volunteer. We’ll adequately train our new volunteer. We’ll walk beside them to make sure they’ve “got it.” Anything less and we’ve become nothing more than a used car salesman, resorting to whatever’s necessary to fill a spot.
I know that’s not our heart, but perhaps we “make room” and prepare for the volunteer to fill the spot before we begin recruiting.
Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been hearing some interesting stories from some of the men who serve in the Children’s Ministry here at Gateway Church.
One guy told me about how he and his wife responded to a plea for help in the Children’s Ministry. One day the Children’s Pastor turned to him and said, “I think you’d be perfect to operate and voice the Elmer puppet (our preschool character).” Now this guy is incredibly passionate about “being” Elmer and is also overseeing a dad’s group.
Another guy started volunteering in the classroom where his daughter attended. At that point in time, he was an agnostic. Now he’s one of the lead teachers (no, he’s not an agnostic anymore). He wears a cape to work with the kids. Why? Because he’s passionate about being a hero to these kids.
I observed (I haven’t met him yet) another guy who is the host of our Preschool Elmer’s Clubhouse (he’s the emcee). He’s one of the best I’ve seen. I asked about how they found him. I was then told that his wife dragged him into it. She wanted to serve and didn’t want to do it by herself. One day someone handed him the microphone and he hasn’t given it back yet.
There are many more stories just like these, I just haven’t discovered them all yet.
I’ve had this thought in my head all weekend. Sometimes in efforts to recruit for the children’s Ministry, we communicate “need.” Yeah, that one isn’t usually good. “They” tell us that we need to recruit by communicating vision. Yes, this is the way to go. However, I think there may be something else to consider. I think we may need to communicate that we’re doing “them” a favor by letting them come volunteer. Yeah, I said that right. For many people, their greatest passion may be loving other peoples’ kids and they don’t know it yet. It may be serving snacks, running computer check-in, operating a puppet, running sound, teaching from the stage or leading a small group. They just may not know until they give it a shot. So, think about that the next time you get to make an announcement from the stage in “big church.”
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