Check out part 1 and part 2

Volunteer Meetings

We meet with our student ministries volunteers approximately every other month during the school year. Our goal is for the meeting to be a mix of encouragement and training. Typically, we sit at round tables and do some stuff at the tables and some other stuff up-front. We got thrown for a loop on this past Sunday with a scheduling conflict so we ended up going with just one circle of chairs. It turned out pretty cool though.

As an example, here's what we did on Sunday:

Best/Worst Part of Your Week
Prayer Time (ministry or personal needs)
Devotional Thought - Psalm 23
Training - How to CARE for Your Students
Ministry Update - building project stuff, coming events, etc.
Walked through new student ministry room under construction (this was unplanned)

Labels: volunteers, youth ministry

We had a great volunteer meeting on Sunday night. Typically, we try to accomplish three things in our meetings:

Encouragement - We want our leaders to be encouraged. Youth ministry can be draining so they need a place where they can get pumped back up. We always have food at our meetings. We also did a mixer this Sunday that got everybody up and mingling. In the past, we've done Overachiever Awards to honor those who have gone above and beyond.

Communication - Cheesy cliche: "people are down on what they're not up on ." Ok, that's out of the way. Totally true though. Your volunteers need to know what's happening in your ministry, why you're things that way in your ministry, and what's coming up in your ministry.

Training - We do some sort of training each time. This time we went over a lot of logistical stuff for our Sunday morning Bible Study groups.

Our Format: We meet from 4:30-6:00 on a Sunday afternoon. Part of that is all together and then part is broken up (if needed) by jr. high, high school, and college.

Our Current Challenge: I think we had 30% attendance on Sunday. I'd like to see that up in the 70%-80% range by the end of this year. If any readers have any thoughts on increasing that, I'd love to hear it. The one thing I always hear is that the meetings need to have value and then people will come. I think our meetings do have value to those who come....those who don't come may not see the value in it yet. We'll need to work on that.

Labels: volunteers, youth ministry

We had a volunteer meeting last night so I thought I'd share what we typically do in our team meetings.

We meet together about every other month during the school year with all jr. high and high school volunteers. Our turnout rate isn't quite what I'd like it to be. We probably had about 1/3 of our active volunteers theere last night.

Here are the elements of a typical meeting:

• We sit at round tables with up to 8 people at a table
• Eating - we always eat together. This builds relationships, appreciates our volunteers, and is usually delicious. My first year here we asked volunteers to chip in to cover costs, but now we just pay for it with budget.
• Table Talk - we have a list of discussion questions on the table to get leaders talking. Some are just goofy and others ask about how stuff is going in ministry.
• Overachievers - this is the part where we give away a prize to someone who has gone above and beyond what's expected of them. We usually do one for jr. high and one for high school.
• Devotion - Either myself or one of our staff shares something just focused on the heart of our leaders. It's not for them to pass on to students, but just to encourage or challenge themselves.
• Training - We do probably about 20 minutes of training, topics change based on what I feel is needed. Last night was on how to TALK to students.
• Breakouts - We close the night by breaking out into the high school team and the jr. high team to discuss ministry-specific issues. This is where we might run a new idea by leaders, highlight any upcoming events, and see if there are any issues we need to be dealing with.

By the way, just about everything I know about volunteers comes from Katie Edwards. We've HEAVILY copied her staff meeting format from Saddleback. Katie, if you ever read this, you should start blogging. I would read it.

Labels: volunteers, youth ministry

Frustrating morning at church today from two different conversations. First conversation was someone pointing out something about my communication to volunteers that was lacking. I have pretty thin skin and don't take criticism very well (I know this is an area I need to grow in)...so I tend to take things like that hard. Fairly minor issue.....easily fixable.....still hurts to hear.

Second conversation was again frustrating (that's all the details I want to give there).

Then, my wife had some students that were frustrating her this morning. By the time we headed to lunch we just wanted to run some people over in the parking garage at the mall (luckily we didn't).

Mornings like this are hard on me. I know that God is growing me to learn how to better respond to conflict, criticism, and frustration. Still growing...

Labels: leadership, volunteers, youth ministry

Well, as of a walk-in meeting a few minutes ago, I've just lost volunteer #4 in 2 weeks. This one wasn't as heavy a situation. She's decided to move on to another church. Evidently this is the season I'm in now.

Labels: volunteers, youth ministry

I mentioned before that we were losing one volunteer due to some conflict. Well, on Saturday I found out that another one is heading out. Looks like we're heading into re-build mode. It's always tough when people move on (especially when there's a need), but I'm looking forward to re-building much of our Sunday mornings with fresh volunteers. We have a big immediate need now, but I want to take our time finding the right quality people. Long-term that's going to be healthier for us.

Labels: volunteers, youth ministry

We had our meeting last night with the two volunteers who have been in conflict. Another staff member joined me and I was SUPER glad she was there. She really carried the meeting for us. Anyways, to make a long story short, the issue wasn't entirely resolved and one volunteer is probably stepping out of our youth ministry. It also opened up some discussion on our sunday morning program. Short version on that is it needs a lot of work (which I knew), a lot of fresh volunteers (which I knew), and probably some volunteers moving on (which I probably knew but hadn't completely admitted). Anyways, sort of a tough meeting. We'll see what happens next.

Labels: volunteers, youth ministry

I hate conflict. Seriously, I avoid it like the plague. My personality is very people-pleasing and it takes me forever to work up the courage to confront someone about an issue, especially if I feel like they won't like me as much afterwards.

So we have these two high school volunteers who have been butting heads for a while now. I've yet to really see the conflict happen, but hear the reports from each of them after it does. Well, it finally hit the fan yesterday morning and I had one volunteer crying and another who was just pretty mad. So I comforted the cryer and touched base with the other one. And now we're going to have to do a little sit-down in my office this week to work through all this junk.

I think both of them at some point said they needed to work it out "for the kids." Now I agree that they need to work it out so we can minister in a healthy way to students. But that sounds like the angry married couple who sticks it out "for the kids." I don't want people sticking it out for the kids. I want them to stick it out because it honors God and honors the relationship they have as a result of being a part of the same spiritual family.

I hope that healing will happen here. I'll try to post again after the meeting.

Labels: volunteers, youth ministry

Have you ever had a volunteer that just didn't fit? Several months ago, Nicole and I had dinner with a couple who was thinking about volunteering in high school ministry. I plugged him in and, from the beginning, it wasn't a good fit. Most of the students he was working with didn't connect well. I think some may have stopped coming or switched groups to one they liked better. He had a very "in your face", almost confrontational approach. So he phased out as we ended our ministry year at the end of June.

But that's not the end of the story. I've talked to him a few weeks ago and then ran into him again today at Wanda's at CBU. I've never seen him so excited as the last two times I've talked to him. He's now interning with our senior pastor, has stopped his gardening business, and is about to finish up some undergrad coursework so he can pursue a Master's in pastoral counseling. This fits his personality of working with those in tough situations.

The moral of the story: not everyone will be a fit in your ministry. BUT, they will be a fit somewhere in your church.

"Now all of you together are Christ's body, and each one of you is a separate and necessary part of it."

Labels: volunteers, youth ministry