Childrens Ministry Online

Illuminate: Review

Posted on 10. Nov, 2010 by Kenny.

As I said the other day, Illuminate was a total success. Since Saturday, I’ve been in pure recovery mode. I’m just now getting back to somewhat of a normal schedule, but I hope to be back to full steam next week.

However, I did want to reflect on what went well and what didn’t.

First of all, let me tell you what we did. We had about 215 people attend Illuminate. About 65 of them were my volunteers and 150 of them from other churches. Craig Jutila delivered two keynote talks and Michael Chanley, Sam Luce and Jonathan Cliff each led two breakouts. I charged other churches $25 per person to attend. Each conference participant got a conference notebook (padfolio) which included conference cards (information about the conference, Gateway Church, the speakers as well as promotional items from our sponsors) and a shiny new illuminateconference.tv pen. Woo hoo! Lunch was provided by Chipotle. We started at 9:00 AM and finished just a little after 3:15 PM. All Gateway volunteers came for fee and if they needed it, we provided childcare  for their kids. The idea behind all of this was to provide a phenomenal conference experience for our volunteers at little to no cost by allowing other churches to participate in this very affordable event.

The cons:

• The food was a little messy and confusing – We didn’t think through this fully. We’ll probably use Chipotle again, but we’ll just think though the chips, sides and plates and napkins a little more thoroughly. I’ll also bring on a volunteer person who totally owns food so it’s not something someone else has to juggle along with everything else.
• Some of the breakouts need to be better clarified – No doubt about it, I had top notch breakout speakers and I got overwhelmingly positive feedback for all of them. However, one or two sessions probably could have been better defined so it was more clear what people were attending. Also, my second breakout was supposed to be a Q & A driven session and I think the experience varied. I’m not sure if it was because some people expected something different than what we delivered or what. We’ll fix this next year in working out the bugs and also having the content, titles and speakers well developed long before the actual conference.
• Registration was a little confusing for some – We used our web registration through Fellowship One to register churches. Once a church registered, they had to fill out a second form where they put the names of the people they paid for as well as their breakout and food choices. I honestly don’t think that it was all that confusing, but because things were on such a short time-frame, people got a little confused.
• The stage programing was not as well rehearsed as I would have liked – This was the result of the rushed nature of Illuminate. At 2:00 AM the day of Illuminate, we were just finishing the ProPresenter slides and at 6:00 AM, my team and I were rehearsing introductions and transitions… all things I wanted to do the week before. As a result, we did what we could in the time we had to plan and all of us were just plain tired.

The pros

• Significant response from the community and beyond – Although we really only began promoting Illuminate three weeks before the conference began, we still managed to register 150 people from outside Gateway. We had multiple churches say that they would have brought dozens if they had only had a little more time. Probably one third to one half of the attendees came from over an hour away. This tells me that there is a true need for an event like this and Illuminate met that need.
• Illuminate was highly organized – I’m really proud of this one. From the notebooks to food and lanyards to quick check-in processes, people told us over and over again that things seemed well organized. We had very few questions like “where am I supposed to go?” or “How do I find this breakout?” because everything was clearly communicated either from the stage, from their breakouts or in printed form in their notebooks.
• Content was amazing – This is easy when you have the likes of Luce, Cliff, Jutila and Chanley on the speaking roster. I had many volunteers say that they totally were not expecting Illuminate to be what it was. I’m so glad we’re changing their expectations. I had one volunteers confess later that she was planning to leave after lunch, but was getting so much out of the event that she didn’t want to miss anything.
• Incredible Partnerships – I was totally blessed to have three amazing conference partners. Orange, Group Publishing and Yancy all saw the vision for what we were trying to do here through Illuminate and invested in those who attended. I’m grateful for the relationships I have with them but even more grateful that they were willing to take a chance with Illuminate. Especially since so much of it was last minute dealings as well. We were specific in who we asked to partner with us and I heard from more than one attendee that they were glad to learn about products and programs offered by the sponsors.

So, Illuminate was a success. I’m so proud of what my team pulled off. The biggest lesson we all learned though is that time is of the essence. We have already booked November 12, 2011 as the next Illuminate Conference in Austin, TX. Jim Wideman is the keynote speaker and I have verbal commitments from several breakout speakers that are going to knock it out of the park. Having all of this planned out months and months in advance will help us tremendously!

Here are some pics of the Conference Notebooks and materials included.

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Digital, Physical or both?

Posted on 23. Sep, 2010 by Kenny.

So I have a question for you that I really need an answer to. Really, I need best practices. When it comes to your volunteer applications, how do you store them? Digitally, physically or both?

We use Fellowhship One and so we scan applications and attach them to a volunteers profile via requirements. Since we also run our background checks through F1, that report shows up in F1 as well. It’s nice an convenient to have it all right there in F1. However, we’re still keeping a physical copy of the actual application. My question is this: do I still need a physical copy anymore? I mean, I’m already relying of F1 to store the only copy of my background check and I know that my data is backed up, so if F1 crashed, my data is still going to be there. I probably have a better chance of losing my original files by fire than I do losing them to complete and total data failure.

So, what do you think? What do you do?

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Scheduling software

Posted on 21. Sep, 2010 by Kenny.

I have a question to ask of the community here. I’m looking for a good ministry scheduling program. Something that allows you to set up recurring serving schedules for volunteers, that allows you to mark people as “going to be out” and allow other volunteers or subs to sub in without it affecting normally scheduled schedule. Anyone know of anything?

Two suggestions I’m not looking for is Planning Center or IDMe. Planning Center is awesome, but it’s more geared around one service and is ideal for worship services where they same group of musicians or such are there for all the services. I need something that can possibly schedule around the same service, but different volunteers at each service. IDMe actually is the best I’ve seen for ministry scheduling, but the only problem with it is that it isn’t web-based (at least it wasn’t a few years ago). It would be ideal to access it from anywhere as well as send out communication right from it.

Do you know of something else out there? Are you using either of the two I mentioned in a creative way that works? Let me know and share the ideas!

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Volunteer Recruiting Efforts

Posted on 21. Sep, 2010 by Kenny.

Yesterday I posted my big vision for Kidmin volunteers at Gateway. I think the vision for this came when I realized that we’ve been hovering at the same number of volunteers for the past six months. I wouldn’t say I was shocked, surprised or any other specific emotion. I just didn’t know. It seems that we do a great job of maintaining. We have approximately the same number of people volunteer as volunteers step out for whatever reason.

This simply means we need to be more intentional over the next 12 months in order to see significant growth. I figured that we’ll do two things.

1. I’d like to have two big volunteer expos or volunteer drives where we make a big deal out of it and can recruit in big church, capturing a lot of those who don’t have kids or those who haven’t connected anywhere yet.
2. I’d like to have some internal campaigns/competitions where we engage our volunteer base to recruit for us, getting them to think about replacing themselves.

This weekend we just finished a volunteer expo. It was a huge success. However, I’d love to do another one in the late spring, even one that was specifically for the Next Gen. These big pushes for volunteers will help us to get 70-80% toward our goal. Check in tomorrow and I’ll tell you what we did for this expo, and how we got 1/3 of the way toward our goal.

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My big vision for volunteers

Posted on 20. Sep, 2010 by Kenny.

Let me tell you about the vision I’ve had. I actually just started communicating it about 5-6 weeks ago. In recognizing where we need to go as a ministry, I knew that we need significantly more help. As far as room coverage and functionality is concerned, we’re pretty good. However, to have a truly small span of care, we’ve got many positions to fill.

When I’m with or talking to Jim Wideman, I’m always challenged. He talks about develop his first, second and third string of volunteers and backups for his backups. Jim Wideman is an incredible leader and gifted in this area, but there’s no reason why we can’t have a similar experience in our ministry.

So, about a month ago I began telling my staff that my goal was to double our volunteer base in the next 12 months. I’ve done this before when in a rapidly growing church or coming into a run down ministry that I was going to turn around, but that’s not the case here. Things are fairly healthy and we’re currently running more volunteers than we’ve ever had before. In addition, our church is growing, just not at any kind of “rapid” pace. So, doubling our base would be a purely intentional thing that will take a lot of effort as well as God’s help.

So, we’re currently at 300 volunteers at our largest campus. Probably half of our volunteers serve every week. In the next twelve months, my goal is to have 600 volunteers. In addition, I want 75% of our volunteers to serve every week. I’m very excited about this vision and I’m looking forward to working through various strategies and efforts with my team to make this happen. Tomorrow I’ll share how we did something these last two weeks to get 1/3 of the way there.

So, what’s your big vision for your volunteers this year?

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BRB. I promise.

Posted on 18. Sep, 2010 by Kenny.

You may have noticed a major lack of content here on the blog. Well, I took a week of vacation which was sandwiched by an out of town conference/retreat and a full-on volunteer expo. So, the dust is beginning to settle and I’ll be getting back into a regular blogging routine this week. You missed me, right?

So, what is it that’s had me so busy?

Leadership Networks Innovation Lab

My NextGen team and I were invited to spend a day in Dallas with Leadership Network to begin a year long Innovation Lab with five other great churches pushing the limits of what Family Ministry looks like today. It was probably one of the most powerful retreat/conference/breakout experiences I have ever had. I’ll tell you more about it later, but this gathering was absolutely transformational for our team.

Vacation

While I was in Dallas, my wife and Titus went on to Atlanta to visit with family (where Titus had his first visit to the urgent care… I’d already taken him to the Dr. the Monday before). I arrive to Atlanta on Friday and had a nice long lunch with my friend Matt McKee. We spent the next 5 days in my hometown of Valdosta, GA with my parents. It was very restful, except that Titus still was not feeling well at all and had another visit to the urgent care in Valdosta). My family and I almost died while caught in a horrible lightning storm while tubing down a river in North Florida… check here for the video). We then wrapped up our vacation with 3 days at Fernandina Beach on Amelia Island. That was the perfect ending to our little vacation, even if it meant one more visit to the Dr. (this time at the hospital which included chest x-rays).

Just so you know, Titus is fine. Just a really pesky cold.

Volunteer Expo

Last Sunday, we recruited more than 200 people for various Sunday serving opportunities, more than 100 of them for NextGen alone. We’ve got another week for the expo, so I’ll write more about what we did next week.

So, that’s what has had me so busy. I’ll look forward to some new conversations with you in the coming weeks.

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#Orange10 Day 1: Catching volunteers up to Speed

Posted on 29. 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

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#Orange10 Day 1: Building an apprentice mindset

Posted on 29. Apr, 2010 by Kenny.

My first breakout, hosted by Brian Vander Ark & Tim Vandlen was about some of the most important and strategic work we’ll do as a leader – duplicating ourselves into others. The fact of the matter is that one day, we will be replaced. One day it’s going to be over for us. It’s like death and taxes. However, there’s two approaches in dealing with this idea of being replaced.

• We can passively let it happen
• We can intentionally prepare

Most Children’s and Student workers are focused on what they do. Programs. Worship. Events. Emails. Recruiting. The problem is that most churches are distracted by the urgent and they neglect the important. If we set our sights on the future, what our future needs will be above our current needs, we’ll treat our volunteers differently. Rather than use people, we’ll develop people.

Here are a few ways a church can implement this strategic work of developing people who replace themsleves:

1. Create the expectation in your volunteer and staff environments. Do this by putting it in everyone’s job descriptions. Do this by modeling it yourself. In addition, create multiple entry points into the ministry.
2. Mobilize your volunteers to replace themselves. You can only really know 30 people, so it’s essential that you leverage your volunteer’s and their circle of influence. Teach your teams to recruit out of vision, not need. Most importantly, know that leaders aren’t moved by the passionate plea from the stage, they want to be asked. Replacing ourselves is very personal. Entrust this important task to every volunteer to hand select the person who will replace them.
3. Engage students in serving opportunities as part of their discipleship process. The beauty of this is that students can work out what they’re learning and wrestle with spiritual concepts int he context of serving. However, it’s important to help your adult volunteers know how to work with students. It’s important to give students something significant to do.

It’s time to take a break. It’s time to pause and focus on what’s most important.

Here are some of the resources they recommended:

• 7 Practices of Effective Ministry
• Simply Strategic Volunteers
• Making Your Chidlren’s Ministry the Best Hour of Every Week

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Volunteer Appreciation Event

Posted on 02. Apr, 2010 by Kenny.

A little over a month ago, we held our annual volunteer appreciation event. Last year it was a Christmas party, which I’m not entirely a huge fan of. It just seemed as if there’s already too much happening at Christmas time. So, we picked the end of February since there’s literally nothing exciting happening at the end of February.

This year’s event was so much fun. Over and over again the volunteers have told us how much they enjoyed this event. What did we do? A city-wide scavenger hunt. My elementary director did this at her previous church with much success, so we decided to give it a try this year. Essentially, we assigned volunteers into groups of 4-7 based on the region they lived, not by which ministry area they served. We hoped it would mix things up a little and give some of our people an opportunity to get t know others. After they were grouped together and everyone had arrived, all the groups took off for a two hour scavenger hunt across the city. Every group had at least one person with an iPhone or equivalent and so while the teams were out, we received a steady stream of pictures from everyone.

Once everyone came back, we had a catered dinner from Carrabba’s that was absolutely delicious and surprisingly financially reasonable. I shared a little about the successes we’ve seen in the last year and how we’re moving forward for 2010. In addition, we had our pastors’ wife come and share (she started the children’s ministry 11 years ago when Gateway was planted). It was perfect having her share about how it all started.We dismissed everyone after this giving them brand new volunteer t-shirts for the next year.

It was a great party and next year we’d love to see an even higher portion of our volunteers come out. We’ll come up with something new and different, but I think we’ve learned that the secret to a good volunteer party is something active and requires people to engage beyond the surface level.

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Googe Docs tips and tricks: Embedded docs

Posted on 29. Mar, 2010 by Kenny.

Yesterday I featured Google Docs as my app of the week. Let me show you another reason why, a prime example of why you might want to start using Google Docs in your ministry today.

Do you ever have to manage any kind of volunteer schedule? In the past I remember having created the schedule and then sending it out to all my volunteers. Now that we live in the digital age, one mass email and I’m done. Not too shabby. However, how long until that schedule is obsolete? Hours? Minutes? Volunteers call and email with their changes making the schedule you just emailed to everyone outdated. It would be pointless to email everyone with a new schedule every time it changed. Luckily several options exist.

1. Create the schedule in a Google Doc and simply share the document. I’ve done this before. It’s really not a bad idea. You can manage everyone’s rights and it allows everyone to see what the most current schedule looks like. There are some downsides though. Not everyone has used Google Docs. Some will be confused. Some will never look at it. In addition, you have to paste in everyone’s email to share the document with them which can be time consuming. In addition, you have to keep track of who you’ve shared the document with. If they’re no longer a volunteer, you may want to remove them from viewing rights. It’s good solution, but there’s still a hassle.
2. Here’s my favorite and the simplest option. Click on the “share” button and choose to “publish as a web page.” Essentially you can create a live page on the internet where people can always come and see the most up to date schedule. When sending out the schedule, rather than attach it like you’ve done in the past, sent them a link. The can go to this link at any time and see the most up to date schedule. If you manage your own blog or site, you can even embed your doc to one of your pages. For instance, I can permanently display my elementary schedule at mywebsite.com/elementary/schedule. My volunteers can simply bookmark that page and always go there to see when they’re working.

Want to see it for yourself? Below is the embed of of a spreadsheet I created several months ago. Before I left for Colorado, I was doing a little research into other mountains I might have climbed if I had enough time. Check it out.

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