Childrens Ministry Online

Question to you: When do you recruit?

Posted on22. Jul, 2010 by Kenny.

I’ve been talking to my team about a big volunteer push. More than likely we’re going to do a 2-3 week push in October which I expect will be pretty good. A few years ago we did a really big push in January which was very well received. However, when have you found to be the most effective time to recruit volunteers? I know a lot of people like to do April and May volunteer drives so they’re all screened, trained and ready for the fall. What has worked best for you?

Tell me your story. What’s the most creative or effective thing you’ve done to recruit a boatload of new volunteers? What made it so successful? I’d love to hear some new and creative ideas and strategies that we can implement as we recruit. I’ve found that strong exposure/communication as well as creativity tend to yield great success.

Continue Reading

#Orange10 Day 1: Catching volunteers up to Speed

Posted on29. Apr, 2010 by Kenny.

Over the years, I think I’ve attended more Darren Kizer breakouts than any other. He’s a great presenter and shares some great stuff!

Daren began is talk communicating about a crisis his church recently went through, when a former volunteer was arrested for molesting a child. What helped his church make it through and probably saved Daren’s job was the good documentation that was kept. All this tied into his talk as an introduction, as we recruit and train volunteers, it’s so essential to follow our processes, take our time and do things the right way. Don’t take shortcuts and document thoroughly.

Darren shared some great resources, one was a tool called the VSI which was tool that indicates people’s satisfaction about where they are in an organization. According to this VSI, there are four factors that relate to retention. When an employee or volunteer scores high in these four factors, it relates to them being satisfied and happy in their role.

• Organizational Support – Do they have the tools that they need to be successful? Are they fully resourced? Are they frustrated due to a lack of training or resources? Equip, equip, equip!
• Group Integration – Do they feel like they’re a part of a team? Are there others that they can connect with while doing their role? People need community!
• Participatory Efficacy – If people don’t see success or hear stories of success, they’ll wonder why they’re dong what they’re doing. They need to know that they’re making a difference and that their efforts are valuable to the organization and to others.
• Empowerment – Do they have a say in the game? Can they make decisions or take action? Do they feel as if their hands are tied? This is one of the quickest ways to kill a high-impact leader/volunteer.

In addition to this VSI, Darren shared a great book called 12: The Elements of Great Managing. It too asks great questions that you should ask yourself as one of your volunteers to gauge the environment you’re creating as a manager/leader of volunteers.

• Do I know what’s expected of me?
• Do I have materials to do my work right?
• Do I have the opportunity to do what I do best?
• Does someone care about me as a person?
• Do my opinions count?
• In the last 6 months, has someone checked on my progress?

One of the key take-aways for me was this: What I did to recruit a volunteers is different from what I had to do to keep a volunteer. A person usually volunteers because they want to do something good. They stay becasue they they are getting stuff out of their volunteering.

Some resources that Darren shared are as follows:

Better Safe than Sued
Moodle – a free site for setting up training volunteers
Ubvee

Continue Reading

Newest volunteer shirts

Posted on01. Mar, 2010 by Kenny.

I’ve been wanting to publish this post for several weeks, but I had to maintain secrecy. It’s been really challenging trying to figure out exactly what our new Kids Quest t shirts were going to look like. I’ve gone through several initial designs but since this shirt was a gift for our volunteers, I didn’t want to post it online for feedback where a lot of my volunteers would see it (since a lot of them lurk around this site. Ha!). So, here’s what we’ve got.

About 15 months ago I launched this new shirt for our volunteers. It had been YEARS (I think) since there had been a children’s ministry shirt and the most recent one was a very, bright (as in neon bright) green. I’ll just tell you, I don’t do neon. So, the new shirts were a welcome change. The volunteers loved them. My goal was to make the design a little on the edgy side. I didn’t want your typical children’s ministry volunteer shirt.

Then back in August I launched this shirt. Although I really like this shirt, I only ordered a small number of them for staff, some key leaders and as a shirt kids could buy when they registered for our lock-in. I’m getting ready to make them available online and let volunteers and parents order them. The colors are more fun and bright (closer to what you’d expect for kidmin, but the design is still pretty cool.

Then this last weekend we held a volunteer appreciation party where we gave out our newest volunteer only shirt. The quest actually started 4-5 weeks ago, but even so, I didn’t have enough time to see my grand vision to come life. That will be our next shirt. I can’t wait. I’ll tell you more about what that one is going to look like, but you’re going to have to wait. So, this shirt was a compromise, not exactly what I originally hoped, but something I’m still very happy with. I wanted a design that would be popular with the men but still something the girls would like. The feedback so far has been fantastic. The volunteers love them! I’ve been in kidmin for years and I’ve had many cheesy shirts designed. I still have a lot in my closet (more than my wife is happy about). I’m at the point now that I only want to design shirts that our teenage or adult male volunteers (especially the ones that are somewhat fashion aware) would get excited about. So, I feel like we got pretty close to that with this shirt.

With this shirt in particular, I wanted an off-center design. It’s still hard to find screen printers that will print “over-sized” and print over collars and seams (which is what we originally wanted). Due to time limitations, we ended up having to stick with our local screen printer that could print the standard size and not go over seams. I was at the Texas State History Museum for by birthday and saw a similar shirt with an off-center design on the back, which I had never seen before. I loved it, so decided to do it for this shirt.

We printed 400 of these shirts, 3 colors on the front, 3 on the back. We had two different setup charges as we had this image for the larger adult sizes and this image for the small adult sizes. Our final cost was about $4.40 per shirt. Not bad, huh?

Continue Reading

Teenagers in your children’s ministry

Posted on16. Feb, 2010 by Kenny.

As children’s pastors, we all want ‘em. We’ve all got ‘em. We’ve all been frustrated with ‘em. Often times, we really don’t now what to do with them.

Here are the various types of teens I’ve had help in my children’s ministries. Perhaps you can identify.

The All-Star: This teenager is a rock star. They’re super involved. They’re committed as much if not more than your very best adult volunteer. They’re awesome at what they do and the kids LOVE them. When you look at them, you see “future children’s pastor written all over them.” You wish you had 20 more of them.

The Fixture: This is the teenager who’s excited about serving, even if they don’t show it. However, they’re often not a lot of help. This is the teenager that misses your presentation slides because he’s busy checking his facebook in the tech booth or the teen who’s texting in the toddler room while little Jonny’s got Lucy in a piranha bite to the arm. We like them because they’re better than nothing, but sometimes we wonder if they’re more work than they’re worth.

The MIA: This is the teenager who volunteers to serve in your ministry but never shows up when you need him or her. This teenager may quit without any reason and good luck ever getting a hold of him or her. This teens is notoriously unreliable and we get so frustrated with ourselves when we’ve become dependent on them. Our schedule may show that we’ve got enough workers in every room, but half of them are MIA Teens, so we know that it’s a crap shoot. The MIA may have All-Star or Fixture qualities, but the thing that defines them is their unreliability.

Would you agree that this is a pretty good assessment of your teenagers? Here’s how these teens have broken down in my experience. All-Stars are like diamonds. You love them dearly. They’re valuable. However, they’re pretty rare. Usually you’ll be pretty lucky to find more than a handful. Fixtures and MIAs are a dime a dozen. They’re everywhere and they’re really not hard to find. Sometimes you tend to have more Fixtures than MIAs and at other times it’t the other way around. Based on my experience though, I’ve seen the fixtures gravitate toward elementary and the MIAs populate early childhood. Why? Often times elementary is less work intensive. There’s the possibility that they’ll get to hang out in the tech booth and goof off for a service. They come every week because they like it, but they’re not necessarily that helpful. The MIAs tend to gravitate toward Early Childhood. I’m not exactly sure why, but all I know is that my Early Childhood directors have often been so frustrated by them.

Tomorrow let’s look into what might really be the problem and see if we can work out some kind of solution.

Continue Reading

Dear kidmin curriculum publishers: Video access

Posted on16. Feb, 2010 by Kenny.

This topic is closely related to my post last week about video curriculum, but from a different angle. More and more churches are relying on video driven or video rich content for their curriculum. Sometimes the video supplements the lesson and at other times the video is the lesson. In either of these cases, using video curriculum has been difficult to equip our volunteers for the service they are leading. I’m not sure if curriculum publishers have thought this through at all. So I get a DVD (or video file for those publishers that are pushing the limits) that I’m going to use at my weekend experiences. However, I have 3-6 lead teachers that have to interact with the video. Or I have 50 small group leaders that really should see the video beforehand so they know how to lead their group best after seeing it.

When I get this video, how do I prepare my leaders?

• I can tell you what I’m not going to do. I’m not going to order 3-6 discs for my lead teacher, nor am I going to order 50 for my small group leaders. That would be financially irresponsible.
• I’m not going to host a training every week (or once a month) just so everyone can see the videos. That would be a waste of everyone’s time.

So here’s what my options are:

• I can just let my leaders not really know what the video is about and have them wing it as best as they can.
• I can make copies of the DVDs and give one to each of my leaders.
• I can rip the video of the DVDs, put them on youtube or vimeo and share the link with all my leaders.

One of those options doesn’t adequately prepare my leaders. Two of those options are technically illegal. However, I know many children’s pastors who do the last two. Why? Because they want to equip their leaders and they don’t see any other way. They don’t want to break the law… they just want the ability to get their teams ready.

Can’t there be a way  or a place where leaders and teachers can view the video on a website that we can direct them to? Maybe the video is kinda crappy, so you don’t have to be worried about someone stealing it.

The same it true with resourcing our parents. In order to equip our parents to lead at home, we’d like to let our parents see the same video their kids saw on Sunday. It can provide a great frame of reference for discussion around the dinner table. However, I can’t in good conscience broadcast videos I’ve ripped and uploaded to youtube. But, I don’t really have any other options. Can’t there be a way to give my parents access to these videos where there isn’t a concern about content being stolen?

Continue Reading

Helping volunteers grow

Posted on12. Jan, 2010 by Kenny.

One of the things I love most about Gateway is that central to the mission of our church is the fulfillment of the Great Commission in EVERY aspect of ministry. For year, my focus as a Children’s Pastor was to help kids know and follow Christ. It wasn’t until coming to Gateway that I really began considering the spiritual health and growth of those serving kids. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve always been concerned about my volunteers spiritual condition, it just wasn’t my job. It was their responsibility to be in a small group or accountable relationship to be growing. I just needed them to help me reach kids. Sure, we could debate the pros and cons of this setup, but Gateway challenged my thinking about caring for and leading volunteers spiritually.

The problem is that many of the volunteers and leaders serving in our children’s ministries aren’t in small groups. Many times it’s for good reason. So what about their spiritual care? Who’s responsible? If I’m leading my area at the pastoral level and Ephesians 4 tells me it’s my job to equip the saints, then perhaps the spiritual condition of my volunteers is my responsibility. Think beyond that for a minute. What if my elementary small group leaders at the 9:30 service were growing together spiritually in the same way a small group would? Wouldn’t that make my team more united, consistant and effective in working together? You bet.

So the diagram above was developed by Gateway several years ago to show how people at Gateway can be cared for spiritually. The stars represent people who are not connected spiritually at Gateway. The idea is to get those who are not connected to link up either with a small group or join a serving team. We all know there are many who gravitate toward serving before they would a small group. However, either path is good. As you can see by the diagram, many people on serving teams are also in small groups. Nothing wrong with that. However, directors and coordinators also try to create groups within the serving team. Maybe 5 of the 9 small group leaders at a service will decide to do a study together. So within that serving team, 5 people who serve in the children’s ministry begin receiving spiritual care and support by a serving group. They serve together and grow together.

It’s a great model and were seeing some great things happening spiritually in the lives of our volunteers. All this helps us make a greater impact on the lives of kids. It’s modeling what we expect to see happen in the lives of kids as well. What do you think?

Continue Reading

Another thought on volunteers

Posted on17. Aug, 2009 by Kenny.

Two weeks ago I did a little series on requiring parents to serve. Last Sunday night I was at Taco Bell with one of my volunteers (to me he’s more of a friend than “volunteer”). He had been reading my posts and shared with me his story about volunteering. Over a year ago I had a chance to share vision to our church and recruit new volunteers. My friend’s wife signed him up. He was reluctant to volunteer, but she knew he liked kids. His intention was to sign up for something he could do every other week. However, when I talked to him about becoming a small group leader, I didn’t really give him an option other than every other week.

One year later and my friend is one of the best volunteers I’ve ever worked with. He’s a small group leader at two of our four services and he along with another friend helps me lead our child dedication services. He’s passionate about kids and he steps up in a major way. There’s no doubt that this guy has it in his blood.

What if his wife hadn’t signed him up? Perhpas he’d still be sitting on the sidelines. I’m conviced that there are other men and women who can revolutionalize our ministries. They just need to be asked.

Continue Reading

Volunteer Week – Developing Leaders

Posted on21. Feb, 2009 by Sara.

So, this week we’ve chatted about a number of volunteer topics:

• Assessing our volunteer culture
• Recruiting new volunteers through expos and cold calls
• Providing an orientation process for new volunteers
• Training volunteers

Now it’s time to examine the leadership structure within a ministry.

WHY HAVE LEADERS?

You cannot do this job alone. Why? Because you are limited. You have weaknesses. If you don’t believe me ask your spouse…or your teenager.

With a team of leaders you have a team of increased time to pour in the ministry. You have more hands and feet to do the work. And you have the collective strengths and talents of many people.

You will be more effective if you develop leaders.

THE PATH TO LEADERSHIP

Here are a few things to consider:

1. Rome was not built in a day.

2. God rewards those who are faithful with a little with more responsibilities.

Why are these two points important? Continue reading.

Sit down with a piece of paper or a whiteboard and map out your dream structure for your children’s ministry. What is your vision? What are your steps to accomplish that vision? What people do you need to make that vision happen? If you had an endless supply of amazing volunteers, what roles would you put in place to bring about your vision?

Draw nice little organizational charts of your dream structure. Type up job descriptions for your dream roles.

(NOTE: If you have no idea what I just said, ask around and find a project-planner type to sit down with you. Or call me! I love project plans! I get excited about them like some people get excited about candy or Christmas.)

Now…remember points 1 and 2 from above?

Your dream will not happen today. It probably won’t happen tomorrow either. So pull out your calendar and map out a time line of when you’d like to bring it about. Create steps to your big goal.

Assess your current people. Who is dependable? Who has talents that fit some of your dream roles? Watch your volunteers and pray for guidance. Then personally invite the volunteers you think you can see as leaders to step up their commitment. Give them specific new responsibilities. Over time as they are dependable in those roles, add more responsibilities.

ADMINISTRATORS VS. LEADERS?

Children’s ministry is made of two things – tasks and people.

There are Mary’s in this world. They love people. They love to sit around with people – listening, conversing and interacting.

Then there are Martha’s in this world. (As a sidenote I do think Martha is misunderstood. If Jesus was coming to my house, I’d want to make a little lunch for him. Wouldn’t you?) These people make lunch. They get jobs done, sometimes forgetting people along the way.

I think sometimes in children’s ministry we get distracted by our tasks. These tasks can be curriculum, theology, out-of-control storage closets, ratios, etc. We raise people up to accomplish the tasks.

But we forget our most important resource – people!

Training people to lead people is much harder than training people to accomplish tasks. Why? Because people have feelings.

So in your dream organizational chart, don’t forget to include both administrators of tasks and leaders of people.

WHAT ARE THE QUALITIES OF LEADERS?

I once created a leadership scale. I picked some qualities that mattered to me in my leaders and a created a scale of 1 through 5, 5 being the best.

Here are some of the qualities that mattered to me in leaders:

• Dependability
• Creativity
• Kindness Toward Others (To their face and behind their back)
• Ability to Navigate Conflicts Graciously and Honestly

As I watched my volunteers and spent time with them, I would mentally make notes of where they were in these qualities. I also would spend hours each week talking with volunteers through email, phone calls, lunches, etc. As I got to know them better I would make notes of their experiences and talents.

Then one-by-one I would start matching volunteers with leadership roles. I would meet with them and personally invite them to increase their time investment in the ministry.

INTERVIEWING LEADERS

Gateway Community Church has a next step for aspiring leaders – a leadership interview. It was one of the more grueling interviews I’ve ever had. It blew any job interview I’ve ever had out of the water. In the interview process, we chatted about my beliefs, my behaviors, how I’ve handled various tricky situations, and my current struggles that might embarrass our church. Wow!

I’d recommend this step for your leaders. The Bible says that we are like precious metals tested by fire. Turn up the heat on your volunteers a little. See what they’re made of. The quality ones will walk through the fire and your ministry will be stronger for it.

TRAINING LEADERS

A coworker at my last church gave me some advice on training leaders. I know this advice was not from his own head, but with my apologies to the original author, the source has been lost in translation.

He suggested these steps for leaders:

1. Tell them what to do

2. Show them what to do

3. Do it together

4. Watch them do it

This is a great way to transition your leaders into their new roles. If you’re a control-freak like me, it also gives you a chance to trust your ministry baby to another leader.

ONGOING DIALOG WITH LEADERS

Again, with my apologies to the original source (if it’s you, please credit yourself here!), Kenny once heard that people will not just do what we expect, they will do what we inspect. So once you have leaders in place, set up a review process. Be a part of their ministry from time to time. Have debriefing sessions to chat about their course. Give them a forum to seek your advice and guidance.

Continue Reading

Volunteer Week – Training Volunteers

Posted on20. Feb, 2009 by Sara.

A couple years ago, Kenny and I and our colleagues experimented with training volunteers. We did a big expo and recruited nearly 100 new workers in January. At the end of February, we held a seminar-style training on Saturday morning.

Why did we choose seminar-style training? We wanted to give our volunteers the chance to dive a little deeper into topics that really interested or concerned them. Also, we were a multi-site church and we wanted our volunteers to see and feel the energy of the entire team assembled at once. We hoped this might encourage those who felt isolated in their work.

SCHEDULE

Our schedule looked something like this:

8:45 a.m. – 9:15 a.m. – Continental Breakfast and Roundtable Discussions

9:30 a.m. – 10:00 a.m. – Large Group Assembly

10:15 a.m. – 10:45 a.m. – Workshop 1

11:00 a.m. – 11:30 a.m. – Workshop 2

11:45 a.m. – 12:00 a.m. – Closing Assembly

THE DETAILS

For the ROUNDTABLE BREAKFAST we posted signs on the tables based on ministry areas, encouraging volunteers to meet others who worked in their areas. We set index cards on each table with icebreaker discussion questions specific to each area – “How long have you served?”, “What’s the funniest story yet from your experiences?” and “How do you deal with <fill in the blank> scenarios?”

We wanted to accomplish these activities in our LARGE GROUP ASSEMBLY time – teambuilding, encouraging and training. We started with an icebreaker game to encourage the volunteers to interact with each other. Then our worship band led a short worship set and our senior pastor spoke a short encouraging thank you message to our volunteers. We ended with a funny skit demonstrating some of the key training issues we wanted to address.

Our WORKSHOPS were the meat of our seminar. We invited a few guest speakers and asked staff and key leaders to teach various topical sessions. A few of our workshops included the following topics:

• Orientation for New Volunteers
• How to Deal with Angry Parents
• Puppeteer like Jim Henson
• First Impressions – Make Our Ministry a Welcoming Place
• All You’ve Ever Wanted to Know About Classroom Control
• Database Training for Check In Volunteers
• Child Development – What Can Kids Do at Every Age? How Does It Apply to Children’s Ministry?
• How to Lead a Child to Christ (This was our most popular session! You’d be surprised how many people are scared to do this!)
• Improve Your Public Speaking Skills to Kids

SUMMARY

I have mixed feelings about this approach. Three to four hours on a Saturday morning was pretty demanding, and only about one-third of our volunteers attended. Also, the schedule was pretty tight. We asked for feedback from attendees, and most people said they felt the workshops needed to be longer. However, most who attended also said the training was very useful and was well worth their time.

We considered doing the seminar a second year, but expanding to invite other churches in our area. I liked that idea, because the time and resources spent on the training would have a wider audience. Churches that might not be able to afford the big national conferences could also have access to local quality training.

What do you think? Would you like to see trainings like this available in your area? Would your teams participate? How would you hurdle the time barrier?

Continue Reading

Volunteer Week – Welcoming New Volunteers

Posted on19. Feb, 2009 by Sara.

One day I called to check on a volunteer. He’d agreed to volunteer, but according to the ministry director, he’d never showed up. Our call went something like this:

Me: “Hi. Can I speak to Mr. Jones?”

Him: “No Mr. Jones lives here. Only a Mr. Johnson lives here.”

Me: “I’m sorry. Is this <insert phone number here>?”

Him: “Yep.”

Me: “Well, perhaps I have the wrong name. Do you attend <insert church name here>?”

Him: “Yep.”

Me: “Hmm…have you volunteered in our kid’s ministry?”

Him: “Yep. I signed up a couple months ago and worked every week for about a month. But no one ever spoke to me, and I wasn’t really sure what I was supposed to be doing, so I stopped working about 2 weeks ago.”

WHAT???!!!!!

We actually had a volunteer sign up and show up for duty for a whole month AND NO ONE EVER SPOKE TO HIM?! AND WE HAD HIS WRONG NAME ON FILE?! Are you kidding me?!

Needless to say that particular ministry director did not last long. (No. It wasn’t Kenny.)

So ladies and gentlemen, let me ask you: “What is your volunteers’ experience?”

Remember how our mamas used to tell us to mind our manners? (At least mine did, but I grew up in Alabama and that’s what mamas teach there.)

Manners go a LONG way to transforming a ministry. Here are a few ways manners and simple kindness could make the difference for your ministry:

HOW DO YOU WELCOME VOLUNTEERS?

Unless you’re lucky enough to recruit a children’s ministry veteran, there is a really good chance your new volunteers are…well…NEW!

You remember how you felt your first day of high school at a new school? Or your first day on the job in your first real adult grown up job? Or how you felt the first time you went to dinner to meet your girlfriend’s parents? AWKWARD!

That is how your new volunteer feels. They feel new and awkward.

Have a heart! Help them out!

Here are a few simple ways to do this:

1. Call them before their first day of service. Introduce yourself. Ask them some questions. Find out their interests. Try to match them up with jobs that fit their interests. Find out who they already know. Try to pair them up with people they know.

2. I’m probably stating the obvious here – for safety reasons, have a process for new volunteers. Include applications, background checks and reference calls. Make sure these people are safe to be with your kids.

3. Take away the fear factor. Children’s ministry doesn’t have to feel like a fraternity hazing process! Have an orientation training. In today’s world, this could be a video and a bulleted list you email to them. Have some frequently asked questions and answers. Let them know what to expect, when to show up, what to wear, etc.

4. On their first day of volunteering, have someone show them around, or if you have the time, personally do it. Introduce them to other volunteers in their classroom.

5. Follow up on them. Call to see how their first day went. Check in a month later to see how it’s going.

First impressions are vital to your ministry’s success. What first impression does your ministry give new volunteers? A simple “Hello and how do you do?” friendly welcome to new volunteers may go a long way towards retaining your volunteers for the long term.

Continue Reading