Connecting With Your Busy Volunteers
Often some of your amazing volunteers are adult leaders with families, including smaller kids and it's a challenge for them to give more time to your ministry than just the few hours each week during your service. These are usually not your small group leaders, but the ones who do the countless small things necessary to keep your ministry running smoothly. Because of this you may find that you have a difficult time connecting with them to create a sense of family. I have a few simple suggestions:
Talk with them and let them know you are aware their time is valuable and you appreciate the time they volunteer to your ministry, but you don't want it to be just another ministry in church, you want it to feel like family.
Ask if you could meet just twice a year and then strategize with them a time on their schedule... Saturday morning... Sunday night... or another time.
Make sure you put it on a calendar well in advance.
Often some of your amazing volunteers are adult leaders with families, including smaller kids and it's a challenge for them to give more time to your ministry than just the few hours each week during your service. These are usually not your small group leaders, but the ones who do the countless small things necessary to keep your ministry running smoothly. Because of this you may find that you have a difficult time connecting with them to create a sense of family. I have a few simple suggestions:
Talk with them and let them know you are aware their time is valuable and you appreciate the time they volunteer to your ministry, but you don't want it to be just another ministry in church, you want it to feel like family.
Ask if you could meet just twice a year and then strategize with them a time on their schedule... Saturday morning... Sunday night... or another time.
Make sure you put it on a calendar well in advance.
Related Items
It doesn't matter how great you are at communicating or loving teenagers, unless you get good at recruiting and keeping volunteer leaders, all of youth ministry will be an uphill battle.
The size and strength of our volunteer leadership team plays such a pivotal role in determining the success of our ministry. Experience tells us that our youth ministry will never grow larger than our leadership base can handle. For it is imperative that we are able to care for the students the Lord entrusts to us.
So, grab a cup of coffee and join me as we tackle perhaps the number one challenge in all of youth ministry, "Effective Recruitment Of Volunteer Leaders."
Lovingly,
I hear it all the time... "I just can't seem to grow my leadership team. I get people to volunteer and then they quit a little while in, or they won't even try." Everything rises and falls on leadership. We all know the expression; but the implications of it in youth ministry are huge. We all know that we don't have the hours in the day to do all the work it takes to run a youth ministry by yourself, have a life, and still make a significant impact in a few student's lives.
In this Youth Leader's Coach, "Key Hurdles In Growing Your Leadership Team," I unpack the six key hurdles you need to face if you want to multiply your leadership team. You'll smile during some sections of my honest mentoring dialogue and maybe even "ouch" during some of the others. Whatever the case, this Youth Leader's Coach will speak to a youth ministry topic we all deal with on a regular basis. And just for the record, if no one has quit your leadership team in the last couple of months, you're doing better than most.
Lovingly yours,
This iVolunteer resource is a COACHING RESOURCE for volunteer youth leaders who want to be the BEST they can be!
Ever feel like there's just not enough time in the day to accomplish what you "have to," let alone anything you "want to"...like volunteering? You're not alone. So many of our hearts long to say "yes" to ministry, but our calendars scream "no way." The good news is that life doesn't have to boil down to "either/or," it truly can be "both/and."
Allow me in this iVolunteer, "Finding Time To Do Ministry In A Busy World," to share what I've learned balancing the multiple worlds of ministry, work, and family. In addition to discovering ways to become more EFFECTIVE and EFFICIENT, you'll learn how to maximize your "red tag" investments!
Lovingly,
We all know that good volunteers are hard to find, but they're even harder to keep! There's a million legitimate things that can cause great people to quit, but it's our role to help manage those things effectively so our volunteers will stay in the game long-haul. That's why I wanted to share this resource with you.
In this month's Youth Leader's Coach, "16 Reasons Why Good Volunteers Quit," I'm sharing from my more than 40 years of experience 16 of the most common reasons I've found why good leaders quit and how we can tackle them effectively.
Lovingly,
In Luke 10, we read where Jesus sent out His first groups of "volunteers." And when they returned, Jesus gave them their first leadership lesson. He said, "I need to talk to you about JOY."
There are a lot of leaders out of ministry because leaders tend to mismanage their joy. That's probably why this was His first leadership lesson to His volunteers. "The joy of the Lord is our STRENGTH." Thus, you've misplaced your strength if you've misplaced your joy.
In this month's Youth Leader's Coach, "Christ's First Leadership Lesson To His Volunteers," I'm sharing leader to leader on a topic that Christ thought was important enough that He taught it to His volunteers before anything else...JOY. Regardless of what the season looks like for any of us, we must choose to manage our joy as we do this ministry thing. So, listen in because it's a BIG DEAL!
Lovingly,
