Archive for 'Volunteers'
Subs in your Children’s Ministry
Posted on 30. Jan, 2011 by Kenny.
Substitutes. Subs. We’ve all got them. However, how you view them and utilize them makes all the difference in the world. I’d venture to bet that subs in most kidmin situations looks pretty similar. It’s that place where volunteers go when we don’t really know what to do with them anymore. We have ideal and ideals of what a sub list really could be, but often times, it’s not really like that at all.
In my experience, the sublist is usually where people go when they quit volunteering. They usually get to the sub list by one of two methods.
- The volunteer tells you that they can’t really commit anymore and they’d prefer to be on some kind of sub list.
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Anyone in Kidmin using Planning Center?
Posted on 25. Jan, 2011 by Kenny.
Okay, before you say yes, let me narrow it down. I’m looking for people using Planning Center for scheduling volunteer outside of just programing and production stuff. Is anyone using it to schedule nursery volunteers, check-in volunteers and elementary small group leaders? The whole thing?
Several years ago I looked into Planning Center Online and even had one of my campus Childlren’s Pastors give it a try and it just wasn’t a good experience. This wasn’t because it’s not good software, but because it seemed geared mostly toward the program and production side of ministry where those volunteers typically fill a roll for all services on a given weekend where a chidlren’s ministry will usually have different volunteers for every service.… Read the rest
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When your volunteers truly get it
Posted on 17. Jan, 2011 by Kenny.
Working with volunteers can be a very frustrating experience as well as a very rewarding experience it. The frustrating parts are when there just aren’t enough, when they don’t pull through like you hoped that they would or when they just don’t care as much as you do. On the other side, it’s rewarding when they do care as much (or more) than you do and when you have a literally army of people doing great work because of a common vision. What is really rewarding is when put to the test, they do what they’ve been trained to do even when it would be easier not to or even easier to create an exemption to the rule.
Yesterday was one of those moments.… Read the rest
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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.… Read the rest
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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.… Read the rest
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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).… Read the rest
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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.
- 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.
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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.… Read the rest
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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.… Read the rest
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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.… Read the rest
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