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I’m continuing a series of post on what I’ve been learning about recruiting volunteers for children’s ministry. You can check out the first post below.

“Help we need more volunteers!”

So, what are we doing to recruit volunteers? I’m glad you asked… but let me start with what we haven’t done.

We haven’t publicized our need. We haven’t asked for help from the pulpit or in the bulletin. We haven’t held any enlistment campaigns. We haven’t sent letters of flyers home to parents (we did do this once a couple of years ago but we probably won’t again). We haven’t made “cold calls” to people not serving. We haven’t required people to serve… ok, enough of that. I think you get the picture.

Is there anything wrong with these approaches? No, they’re fine and sometimes necessary, but there are a couple of dangers that accompany these types of widespread approaches.

1. You look desperate.

“But, I am desperate” Yeah, I know… me too, but we can’t appear that way. Who wants to climb aboard a sinking ship or get involved with a ministry that appears needy? People want to be a part of a winning team and if they think you’re floundering they’ll avoid you like the plague. If you want to publicize something don’t start with the need, start with your wins. Tell people what’s going great. Then let them know that they could be a part of it… if they want to.

2. People respond out of guilt.

Most of the time the people who respond to public appeals for volunteers respond out of guilt. This might seem fine at first, but trust me, you don’t want these people. Not that they’re not good people, but if they only signed on to your ministry because they felt obligated, then they’re probably not going to be happy or satisfied in their service. People who don’t enjoy what they doing in ministry are like time bombs. They are going to blow up and walk out. The only question is when and how many people are they going to take out with them.

To make sure we have people that aren’t responding out of guilt we give people lots of “outs” in our application process. We’re constantly telling volunteers that our goal is not to fill the holes but to help them find a place in ministry that they love. If that happens to be outside of children’s ministry, all the better. A lot of times people ask us, “Where is your greatest need?” We refuse to answer that question, because our need is not the key factor. What’s important is what are they good at and what will they enjoy doing. If they don’t know what that is, we’ll help them discover it, but our goal is that every volunteer loves their ministry and is equipped to do it well. We never want anyone who is guilted into serving

These are some of the things we’ve found that don’t work. But what is working… that’s still to come.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Guess what… nedgable (or “nedjible”) isn’t dead. Even though it has been quite a while since I’ve posted a blog. Between Adventure Week and writing our fall curriculum I’ve been pretty busy. I’m still busy but Gina McClain has coaxed me out of hiding.

I had the chance to meet her at Orange and she encouraged me to keep blogging. She said I ought to just check out what people are talking about on cmconnect.org and post my thoughts. We’ll I’ve ignored that advice for about 6 months now but then I read something she posted about training volunteers on cmconnect. Turns out, we just accidentally stumbled upon what I think is going to be a great idea for volunteer training. So here goes…

We have several things we do to help train our volunteers.  All our new volunteers train with a master teacher for 4 to 6 weeks before they begin. We’re working to have coaches who move from group to group to provide on the job training. And we have a once a year, half-day mini conference that we call the children’s ministry summit.

In past years our summit was mostly logistical training and motivation. This year we decided to take it a step further. Our children’s team dug in and developed 8 different workshops to train our volunteers. During our summit we let our volunteers choose two of theses workshops in addition to one logistical training in their ministry area.  The results were incredible, our volunteers were so grateful for the training they received and they all wanted more.

Now, I realize this is nothing groundbreaking so far, and if you’re expecting something profound you may want to stop now.

Still reading… ok.

We’ve also found a good deal of success with holding parent meetings and volunteer orientation, called BrookwoodKiDs 101(this is another post) concurrently with our worship services (9:00, 10:30 and 11:59).  What we’re finding is that volunteers (and parents) don’t want to come out to meetings or events outside our regular service times. But they will take advantage of an opportunity while they’re already here on Sunday.  So we found a room and now we offer orientation once a month and parent classes about every other month.

Now since we’ve already developed our workshops, it’s easy to teach them over and over. So we’re planning to add these workshops to our Sunday morning rotation, about one workshop a month.  What we’ll ask of our volunteers is that they attend four workshops per year, two at the summit and two on Sundays. Outside the summit that’s only one every six months. And it’s on Sunday while they’re already here so it’s convenient.

The end result is that the average volunteer will get about 4 hours of ministry training per year. Very motivated volunteers could get a lot more. We’re thinking we could develop different tracks for new and experienced volunteers. We can even hand off some of these workshops to volunteers and develop even more training topics.

This all kind of happened by accident but I’m really excited about the possibilities. I’d love to hear what’s working for you.

Popularity: 20% [?]

One of the volunteers in our children’s ministry is the CEO of a large company. I had the opportunity to meet with him yesterday to talk about the children’s ministry at our church. I thought I was meeting with him to help him understand what we’re trying to do in children’s ministry…


That’s not exactly how it went down.


Instead he spent an hour and a half telling me why our children’s ministry wasn’t as effective as it could be. Now, You have to know this guy to appreciate him. He’s not a jerk. Most guys who try to tell you what your doing wrong are just complaining or trying to grab power. But this guy loves God, loves our church, loves our pastor and I know he wants what’s best for us.


Even though I knew all this I was still a little defensive. Yeah, this guy knows a lot, but he doesn’t know anything about leading a children’s ministry. I tried to do what I know I’m supposed to do in this situation and just listen and have an open mind. But I have to admit I’m not very good at that, so instead I went with the “healthy debate” approach.


At one point as we were “discussing” small group environments I mentioned something about Northpoint church. The response I got from this guy was interesting,


“Who the h— Is Northpoint?”


The thing is, he wasn’t being argumentative, he really didn’t know. At that’s when I realized something, most of my volunteers don’t know who Northpoint is either, and they don’t care to. I think it’s easy for us to get caught in the church box. If you’re in ministry it’s where you spend most of your time. We go to church conferences, read ministry blogs, buy “church leadership” books. We become experts in field that doesn’t always relate to the people we’re leading. Just because I know what I’m doing it doesn’t mean my volunteers know what I’m doing. I think it’s possible that we become blind to this because when we start spouting off all our “church knowledge” to our volunteers they just assume we’re right and back off.


Fortunately, the guy I was talking to isn’t the type to “back off.” He didn’t have all the answers.  Some of his ideas we’re way off. But he did have a very different perspective and he asked some questions in a way that I hadn’t thought of before. At the end of the day talking to this guy who knew nothing about ministry helped me learn a lot about how to do ministry.


I’ll wrap this up with a few of questions for you. How do get out of the “church box?” Who are you talking to that challenges your ideas and perceptions? Who has a completely different outlook on life that could challenge your status quo? If you don’t have someone like that I’d encourage you to seek them out.


Also let me hear from you. What are some of the ways you’ve found to get an outside view of church and ministry?

Popularity: 69% [?]

Last week I introduced a series of posts based on lessons I learned in a workshop I attended years ago. (apparently it was MANY years ago if you listen to some of those who commented on the post ☺) The workshop was called “Growing the Children’s Ministry You’ve Always Wanted” and it was presented by Gordon and Becky West. The principles I learned there have had a huge impact on my ministry and I wanted to pass them on in hopes that you will find them equally valuable.


First, an illustration. Take your best guess…


How much is an eight-foot piece of rebar worth. You know, plain old steel plugged into a mold and formed into a bar. Of course prices could vary, but usually it costs around $5. What if I took that same amount of steel and refined it a little more and formed it into horseshoes? Now it’s worth around $10.50. Ok, let’s take this a little further. Suppose I take the same amount of steel and form it into needles. If I did that it, it would be worth nearly $5000. Let’s take one final step. What if I took the same amount of steel contained in a $5 piece of rebar and formed it into fine Swiss watch mainsprings. In this case the steel would be worth nearly $250,000. That’s not an exaggeration!


Here’s the principle:


It’s not the material; it’s how the material is used that creates value.


Now a question:


How are you using your volunteers?


Are you investing in your people and doing everything you can to help them reach their full potential, or are you “plugging holes” with your volunteers? In the first five minutes of that workshop I realized why my children’s ministry was failing. It was because I thought I was a children’s minister. I mean, that was my title, right? However, the reality of children’s ministry is that if you want to grow the children’s ministry you’ve always wanted, you can’t be a children’s minister. You must be a volunteer minister.


If you have more than 10 kids in your ministry you’ve already got more kids than you can effectively minister to by yourself. Think about, Jesus chose to disciple only twelve men and He’s God. It would be pretty arrogant of me to think I could effectively disciple twenty, right?  This means, if your children’s ministry is going to be effective, you’re going to have to invest most your your time not in working with kids but in developing volunteers.


There’s much more to come so stay tuned. For now, I’ll leave you with this. What are you doing to develop “watch spring” volunteers in your ministry?

Popularity: 72% [?]

Do your kids have somebody? A while back, God really brought something to my attention. I started looking at our children’s ministry and realized that it was possible and sometimes probable that a kid could come to our church, check-in, go to small group, go to large group, check-out and leave and nobody ever got to know that kid. I mean the large group program was great, the small groups all had their curriculum, we had enough volunteers, but in some places kids were just drifting in and out. They were not getting connected. They were not known.

For us this realization caused a fundamental shift in our vision for ministry. Our mission became not only to help kids know Jesus—but to help kids know Jesus and be known personally.

As I started talking to our volunteers about this I asked this question, “How many of you came to know Jesus because of a program, a bible study or a curriculum?” A few had, but for most the answer was no. Then I asked, “How many of you came to know Jesus because of somebody?” And guess what, nearly everybody answered yes to that question. I’ve asked these questions dozens of time to hundreds of people and it always comes out the same way. Think about it, no one says, “You know that (insert your curriculum name here) curriculum, third grade, second quarter, fourth lesson… it really changed my life.” But most can say that Mrs. Becky, Mr. John, a parent, a friend, a neighbor—it could be anybody but it is almost always somebody who really made a difference in my life. For me there were several somebodys, but one that stands out is my junior high band director Rodger McClendon. We called him Mr. Mac, and he saw something valuable in me when there wasn’t much to see. Most of my teachers (at school and at church) had written me off, but Mr. Mac invested in me and it changed the course of my life.

Our goal cannot be to have the best most amazing programs. Great programs and solid curriculum and teaching are important. However, our primary goal must be to connect our kids to the best most amazing somebodys.

Here’s the good news. As we’ve started sharing this vision with our volunteers, they get it. They’re beginning to understand that success is building a relationship and being a Godly example even if you never get to the lesson plan. They’re beginning to realize that connection requires a commitment and most of our volunteers who used to serve once every six weeks are starting to serve every week. Even better, this resonates with the people we’re recruiting for ministry. Not many people are interested in volunteering for a program but they are very interested in joining us to make sure that every child is known personally.

So here’s a question for you. What are you doing in your church or organization to help connect your kids with great people who can invest in their lives and make a lasting difference? I’d love to here from you.

Popularity: 39% [?]