Tag Archives: Volunteers
Want more volunteers?
Posted on 26. Mar, 2012 by Kenny.
In the Fall, I have the honor of speaking at the Institute of Children’s Ministry ICM in North Carolina and became friends with Jason Vernon, a pastor in North Carolina’s research triangle. Although he is a senior pastor, he’s a huge advocate for Children’s Ministry. I happend to be on his church’s website today and I saw something I really liked. His church, RTP Community Church is not a huge church. Rather, it represents the demographic of most churches in the United States. However, I was highly impressed by how they manage their volunteer process on their website.
It reminded me of Jim Wideman’s principles as illustrated in his book STRETCH. If you’ll organize your systems, you’re only preparing yourself and making capacity for growth. If you want more volunteers, you have to prepare yourself to handle them. That’s what I saw on the RTP Community Church website.
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Illuminate Updates
Posted on 01. Nov, 2011 by Kenny.
It’s been a few months since I’ve posted anything about Illuminate, so I thought I’d catch everyone up. It’s truly been a wild and exciting ride this year.
The Austin event is just 11 days away. I’m expecting about 500 kidmin folks to converge on the Gateway Church campus on November 12th and it’s going to be amazing. I’ve got a stellar line-up of speakers. Check it out:
- Jim Wideman
- Sam Luce
- Michael Chanley
- Gina McClain
- Dan Scott
- Amy Fenton Lee
- Jonathan Cliff
- Matt McKee
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Birmingham Illuminate Conference: Coming Soon!
Posted on 29. Jun, 2011 by Kenny.
In case you missed it, Illuminate is a new conference specifically targeted to volunteers. We’re bringing the best in Kidmin to local communities for an affordable but powerful conference. Read more about our plans for Illuminate here.
So, Birmingham is rapidly approaching. The Early Bird price actually expires on Thursday. So if you live in the Birmingham area and you are planning to attend the conference, be sure to take advantage of the Early Bird pricing right now!… Read the rest
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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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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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I need help with a report
Posted on 30. Aug, 2010 by Kenny.
Okay, I’m crowdsourcing a problem I’ve run into. I found the PERFECT volunteer report for Fellowship One. We check all of our volunteers in every Sunday. We keep up with our volunteers as well. If one drops out, we make their ministry assignment inactive. This way, I can run a report and pull up the names of only those who are active. Likewise, I can pull the same report of those who are inactive to see who isn’t serving anymore.
As PERFECT as this report is, it’s got one little problem. Actually, it’s big enough to make it report frustrating. I’ve sent in a request to have this enhanced, but I’m hoping that someone out there can help me before I hear back from the fine folks at Fellowship Tech.… Read the rest
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Question to you: When do you recruit?
Posted on 22. Jul, 2010 by Kenny.
I’ve been talking to my team about a big volunteer push. More than likely we’re going to do a 2-3 week push in October which I expect will be pretty good. A few years ago we did a really big push in January which was very well received. However, when have you found to be the most effective time to recruit volunteers? I know a lot of people like to do April and May volunteer drives so they’re all screened, trained and ready for the fall. What has worked best for you?
Tell me your story. What’s the most creative or effective thing you’ve done to recruit a boatload of new volunteers? What made it so successful? I’d love to hear some new and creative ideas and strategies that we can implement as we recruit.… 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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Newest volunteer shirts
Posted on 01. Mar, 2010 by Kenny.
I’ve been wanting to publish this post for several weeks, but I had to maintain secrecy. It’s been really challenging trying to figure out exactly what our new Kids Quest t shirts were going to look like. I’ve gone through several initial designs but since this shirt was a gift for our volunteers, I didn’t want to post it online for feedback where a lot of my volunteers would see it (since a lot of them lurk around this site. Ha!). So, here’s what we’ve got.
About 15 months ago I launched this new shirt for our volunteers. It had been YEARS (I think) since there had been a children’s ministry shirt and the most recent one was a very, bright (as in neon bright) green.… Read the rest
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