a better volunteer - amazon s3master+cl… · a leadership summit. invitation. but then also, we...
TRANSCRIPT
Well, hello. Welcome to this training epi-
sode of Church Fuel and I'm really excited
that you're here today and I'm really ex-
cited that you've taken time to watch this
master class. Today, we're gonna talk
about a new way and what I think is a bet-
ter way to do volunteer training in your
church.
I remember back to when I was pastoring,
you know, we used to say all the time that
our church had this mission that was
really driven, you know, by God, right, but
it was fueled by the volunteers. And so
without volunteers, nothing really could
happen in our church. We would never be
able to hire enough people or, you know,
do the things that we would need to do
without volunteers.
So volunteers for your ministry as well are
very, very important. They're really the life-
blood of a lot of our ministries and
churches. And so when we talk about train-
ing volunteers, people's eyes begin to
glaze over because it's like we're excited
about getting volunteers, and we're upset
when volunteers leave, and there's really
not a whole lot of energy and thought
around the idea of training and volunteers
themselves don't wanna come to training.
A lot of times, you say, "All right, cool.
You're a new volunteer. You're energized,
you're excited, you're ready to serve,
you're ready to make a difference." And
it's like, "Okay, well, we need you to do this
training." You know, it's like people, they
didn't sign up for training, they wanna
help, they wanna do stuff.
And so when we talk about training, I think
it's helpful to kind of break things down
into two categories. All right? What does a
volunteer need to know first? Like when
somebody signs up to serve, what do they
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A Better Volunteer Training
I N S A N E LY P R AC T I C A L | E V E RY M O N T H
need to know first? And we've talked in
the past about some different ways to ad-
dress this. In fact, I'll put the notes here for
you of some different alternatives and
some different ways to kind of address
that first learning. Like what do they first
need to know?
But then there's a second category of
training, like what do they kind of continu-
ally need to know? What do they need to
know now? Not first right when they sign
up, but just on an ongoing basis. And
there is a value in getting together face to
face. There is a value of pulling all your vol-
unteers together and saying, "All right,
here's what's happening. Here's what's go-
ing on. Here's what you need to know."
But the tension is that whenever you or-
ganize these things, right, people aren't al-
ways there. I remember it used to just
drive me crazy. It would just drive me nuts.
Because we'd organize this volunteer
meeting, right, and whether it was for a
ministry or church-wide, and, you know,
we'd plan for it, we'd prepare all these
things, we would get all these things to-
gether, it'd be really good meeting. We'd
work on what we're gonna say and how it
was gonna go.
And then the day after it happened, some-
body would text like, "Hey, sorry I missed
the meeting. What did I miss?" And I'm like,
"What did you miss? You missed an entire
meeting. It was like an hour's worth of
stuff and, you know, to recount it for you
individually would take me as long as it
did to, you know, to tell everybody."
And so it was a big deal and we'd have
these training meetings and I hear from
pastors all the time, they're like, "Hey, if we
get 50% of the people to show up at our
training meeting, then that's good." Well,
what about the other 50%? Do we just say
they're not gonna know or we're gonna
have to get with them individually? And so
it becomes a really tough thing to get eve-
rybody all together efficiently and inspira-
tionally and in a fun way to kind of do
training.
And so through the course of a lot of trial
and error, we stumbled into an idea that I
wanna share with you today. And so to-
day's master class is really gonna be a
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H OW N O R T H P O I N T CO M M U N I T Y C H U R C H G E T S P E O P L E I N TO G R O U P S
look at exactly how we did one specific
thing. I'm not gonna talk about a lot of the-
ory, I'm not gonna talk about the value of
training or the need for training. I'm gonna
assume that, "Hey, you got volunteers that
you wanna get trained and get inspired
and get on the same page, and I just
wanna share with you one idea of how we
did it."
And so this is really a pulling back the cur-
tain and talking about how we did this.
And so here's how we did it. We did a quar-
terly event in our church that happened
four times a year, once every three
months, and we called it a Leadership
Summit. It's not a very creative idea, it was
not a great name for anything. I don't
know how to name stuff. But it was called
a Leadership Summit.
And what we would do is we would simply
invite every leader, every volunteer, any-
body who served in any capacity to our
building four times a year for this event.
Now, the secret sauce in the event, this is
what I'm gonna break down, we had really,
really, really high participation levels.
Eighty, 90% was not uncommon. And so
we had...The majority of our volunteers
would show up for these events and
here's why I think it happened.
So first of all, a couple of things that we
did is we kind of set this up. We'd put
them on the calendar, we'd plan them out,
and we would invite every single volunteer
who served in our church. But we'd do it
two ways. We would invite them person-
ally. So their team leaders, their ministry
department leaders, whatever structure
and system that we had in place, they
would make sure that every volunteer got
a personal invitation, a text message, an
email, "Leadership Summit is coming up.
Wanna make sure you know about it."
We'd print them out sometimes, we'd mail
to their house sometimes. So a personal
invitation. But then also, we would an-
nounce it publicly. So from the stage, from
the bulletin, from a sermon, we would say,
"Hey, if you're a leader, if you're a volun-
teer, if you serve anywhere in the church,
this is coming and you're invited." So we
had that public invitation and then we had
a personal invitation and together, you
know, both of those methods of inviting
people kind of converged and I think it
really contributed to the attendance of
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H OW N O R T H P O I N T CO M M U N I T Y C H U R C H G E T S P E O P L E I N TO G R O U P S
these leadership summits.
So here's what happened at a Leadership
Summit. Every single time we gathered, it
was a regular thing, it happened quarterly,
but the agenda was the same every single
time. And so every single time we gath-
ered, five things happened and I think this
consistency really helped us build this cul-
ture over time. So first of all, every time we
did a Leadership Summit, there was al-
ways childcare. There was always child-
care. We made the commitment in our
church to say, "Hey, if we're gonna invite
leaders to come up here. We're gonna in-
vite volunteers to come up here and have
a meeting."
You know, 40% or 50% of our church had
kids, then we were going to take care of
those kids. We were gonna provide a
place for them. We said, "Hey, it is not real-
istic to ask parents of kids, single moms,
single dads, moms and dads, right, what-
ever, to figure out what to do with their
kids to come up to the church to have a
meeting." So if we were gonna have a
meeting, we were gonna provide childcare.
Now, that was a big commitment for us,
right? We had to say, "Is this meeting that
important that we're gonna go through
this? Are we gonna pay people to watch
kids? You know, how are we gonna do
this?"
One of the things that we did is we did a
swap with another church in town. When
our church was smaller and this was man-
ageable, we did a swap. We said, "Hey,
we'll use in some of your kids ministry vol-
unteers who are already background
checked and serving in your ministry to
watch our kids on this particular Sunday
night and we will return the favor for you."
Because we didn't want our kids workers
watching kids at our Leadership Summit,
we wanted them to attend the Leadership
Summit.
So we provided childcare every single
time we had one of these summits and it
was really, really, really important. The sec-
ond thing that we always did is we always
had food. We always had food. We said, "If
we're gonna invite people to come up to
the church on a Sunday night or a Tues-
day night or whenever it is, we're gonna
not only need to provide childcare, but we
don't want people to have to figure out
how to eat. We're gonna have food and
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we're gonna pay for it. There's not gonna
be a ticket. We're going to invest in that."
You could do a taco bar, we had barbecue
brought in, we had caterers come in and
provide food. We said, "If people are
gonna come up here, the least we can do
is ease the pressure for childcare and
feed them while they're here." Now, listen,
people aren't coming to a meeting be-
cause there's food, right? Probably. I
mean, some people do. But most people
are not coming because there's food, but
that's a simple way to honor and value vol-
unteers. If you invite them up to the
church for a meeting, for a summit, for a
training, for whatever it is, make sure
somebody is taking care of their kids and
make sure they have food.
Third thing we did, always, always had
childcare, always had food. The third thing
we did is we always had some worship
and here's the deal. We always had some
music, so a time of worship. And what was
cool about this is our band would do this,
but they didn't have to have a bunch of ex-
tra rehearsals because they played the
greatest hits. I mean, they just played the
songs that our church love. They played
the songs that our volunteers love. They
played the fan favorites.
So there wasn't a bunch of rehearsals,
there wasn't a bunch of set up. We did
ours on Sunday night, we typically left eve-
rything kind of set up ready from Sunday
morning, but our band would be able to
lead these songs and do them without a
bunch of extra rehearsals and our church
loved it, right? There's something powerful
when just the leaders of the church, just
the volunteers of the church kind of get
together and worship and sing the songs
that everybody knows and that every-
body loves. There's something powerful
and really cool about that.
In a way, these volunteer...what we called
Leadership Summits were like many nights
of worship and it was a really cool thing,
everybody's singing really loud because,
you know, it's the songs they love. And so
we always had childcare, we always had
food, we always had worship.
Then number four, we always gave out an
award. We had these awards printed
up...or not printed up, but made up. They
were heavy metal, you know...not heavy
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metal awards. That would be awesome if
there was like a heavy metal award. It was
a metal award that was heavy. That
makes more sense. And we would cele-
brate one or two volunteers who just went
over and above.
And so we'd ask through our systems like,
"Who's done an amazing job? Who's done
an amazing job?" And we would find a cou-
ple of people. We'd always take time to
recognize and celebrate a volunteer and
we would give them this award and every-
body would clap and give them a standing
ovation and we would take several min-
utes to kind of talk about why they were
awesome and what they've done and how
it connects to the mission and just lift up
and celebrate and honor a few individuals
who were just doing amazing jobs.
Now, when we talk about this, I always get
some pushback from people. It's like, "Well,
hey, we can't honor everybody. Everybody
is really important and if we just really call
out a few, isn't it gonna like offend some
other people?" Now, what we found was
the exact opposite. Was that when we
lifted up and celebrated a few, all felt hon-
ored, all felt [inaudible 00:09:28], all felt ap-
preciated.
And these cool awards, I would go over to
people's house and they would have them,
you know, in their house on a bookshelf,
up on a mantle, and they really meant
something to people. And so we would
give out these awards and we did it every
single time we gathered and kind of who
was gonna get it kind of became a thing.
And then number five, always did this
every single time, is to always gave out ad-
vanced information or key information. I
would make sure that I was always there
for these. I would make sure that I always
had a few minutes of very important infor-
mation to let people know. And it was stuff
that was coming in advance. It was stuff
that was coming down the line that the
rest of the church didn't know.
And this is a really important principle,
that information is really a form of appre-
ciation. Your volunteers and your leaders
in your church, they should know stuff be-
fore everybody else knows. I remember
one time I was working at a church, liter-
ally, on staff at a church, and in a sermon,
I found out that we were starting another
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service. And I was like, "Wait a minute. Like
I'm on staff, how did I not know that we
were doing this?" And I felt devalued. Like
how am I not important enough to know
this? I'm finding out with the same thing as
a [inaudible 00:10:31] guest.
But here's the deal. Your volunteers will
feel honored and appreciated when they
know advance or inside information. And
so I always made sure at our Leadership
Summit to make sure I say, "Here's what's
coming. Here's something big. You know,
here's something that I'm ready to unveil
to you because you're making this happen
and I want you to know first." And those
five things, we did every single time we
gathered.
Now, let me say this. I wanna pause right
here. None of this felt like training. None of
this felt like come up and have a training
meeting so you can learn how to volun-
teer better. But training was woven
through all of that. As we were giving out
an award, we were mixing in little trainings
about our vision and mission. As I was giv-
ing out information, I was mixing in very
important information that volunteers and
leaders needed to know in different areas.
We were mixing, we were disguising the
training inside of all these things. We were
building up people in an environment that
they enjoyed, that was relaxed. They
weren't coming and taking a bunch of
notes, feeling like they were in a seminar. It
felt like worship. It felt like a gathering of
family when we did this.
Now, those are five things that we did all
the time, but there was a sixth component
that happened and the sixth one rotated.
So the first five, we did every single time
we had one of these quarterly leadership
summits. We'd always have childcare, al-
ways have food, always sing our favorite
songs, there'd always be an award, and
we would always share key information.
But the sixth thing rotated around. The
sixth thing was kind of the meat of the
night, right, if you will. The sixth thing was
kind of the thing that got the most time
and it rotated around and we rotated
around between four different things, so
throughout the year, we would hit all of
these.
First of all, we would unveil the vision for
the year. So at the very first Leadership
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Summit of the year or the very last one of
the previous year, we would unveil here's
what next year is gonna be about. And it
was kind of a state of the union. I would
usually do these. It was kind of a here's
what's coming, here's our plan.
It was a detailed rollout of what we were
trying to accomplish in that next year and
our volunteers loved hearing that. They
loved hearing where we're going, you
know, here's what we're gonna do. And so
I would kind of do a state of the church ad-
dress. I would kind of recast vision for our
volunteers and I would build them up and I
would train them in the process, but it
would be a kind of a here's our vision for
the year.
Then the next one, we could bring in a
guest speaker. I remember a couple of
times we had a couple of different guest
speakers come in who are just pastor
friends of mine and they would do some
training, or they would do some inspira-
tion, or they would do, you know, a bible
study, or they would do, you know, almost
just an entertaining talk even.
But I found that there's people that would
love to come in and speak to your volun-
teers. I've even gone to some different
churches and spoken to those volunteers
and build them up and say things right to
build them up and encourage them that
maybe they've heard before, but it means
something a little different when it comes
from a guest. So we did a guest speaker
once a year.
Third thing is we did break out training.
Now, this looks a lot like training, right, be-
cause after the singing and after the wor-
ship and the award, we'd say, "All right,
we're gonna break up into some areas for
some ministry-specific training." And our
kids' people would go one way, our guest
services people would go one way, our
small group leaders would go one way,
and we would be able to do department-
specific training.
And this is really where these ministry lead-
ers could get down into the nitty-gritty.
"Hey, here's some new policies and proce-
dures that we need to know about. Here's
a new way of doing things. Here's some pri-
orities for the worship ministry. Here's
some small group issues that we're gonna
deal with." That really felt like training, but
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it was in the context of the Leadership
Summit, with the food and the childcare
and all the support that went along with it.
It wasn't like, "Hey, just come up and we're
gonna meet."
And then the last thing we would do, we'd
rotate this around, is we'd do something
fun. We'd just have something fun. We
would say, "We're not gonna have a
speaker. We're just gonna have something
fun." I know of some churches who have
done, you know, kind of like the Oscar
Awards or the Emmy Awards, or they roll
out the red carpet and they have an ex-
tended celebration. I know a church in
Texas that they did like an '80s style prom
and everybody got dressed up and it was
really weird and I'd be miserable at that,
but, you know, they loved it.
You can do...there's all these different
things you can...just fun, just something
fun. Like a fun event where you can cele-
brate your volunteers and just let them
connect relationally. Sometimes we de-
value that, but that feels and has the
same net effect of inspiring and so much
like can be more important than training
in certain environments. So we'd always
do those five things and then the sixth
thing, we would rotate it around, but it
would fit within this rhythm, we're having
the leadership summit.
Now, I think this worked for our context
and I think something like this may work
for your context for some really, really,
really powerful reasons. First of all, it was
fun and relational. Like this whole idea and
we're saying, "Hey, we're having a leader-
ship summit. You're invited," and I would an-
nounce it from the stage. It was really
light-hearted. It was really fun. It wasn't se-
rious. It wasn't, you know, deep. It was fun,
it was a relational.
People get to eat, they get to connect,
they get to see people maybe they didn't
maybe get to see on Sunday because
they were working. So it was very fun and
very relaxed and very relational. And the
fact that it regularly occurred, it was on a
rhythm, it meant that people knew they
had built-in times and if people had a posi-
tive experience of the last one, they would
project that forward to the next one.
Number two is it really helped us create a
culture. For us to do these things, to put
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them on the calendar, for us to commit to
say, "We're gonna do this every three
months. We're gonna always pay for food.
We're gonna..." We had a budget for this,
we had a plan for this. They were pretty
big deals. I mean, it was a big deal on our
calendar and even in our budget to do
this event. But what that did is it helped us
create a culture. It helped us create...
You know, culture is created by the things
you always say and the things you always
do. So you know how we always say
around here? That's a great way to create
culture. But the things that you repeatedly
do also help create a culture. And so the
fact that we gathered every quarter to
honor and celebrate and talk about how
to get better as volunteers, showed that
we valued volunteers in our church. Like it
was not just something we needed, it was
something we valued. And so that regular
rhythm of doing this every quarter...And
you may say, "You know, well, that's...We're
gonna do it twice a year. We're gonna do
it once a year." But for us, the quarterly
rhythm was right and that's why it worked.
And then the third thing I think this worked
is because people attended because it
was a training event that wasn't a training
event. Why do people come? Because
they get to connect, they get to eat, they
get to hang out, they go to worship, they
get to hear information. It wasn't like we're
having a training meeting. That sounds
boring. That sounds like there's gonna be
PowerPoint. But this didn't feel like a train-
ing meeting, but it was training. It didn't
feel like a Rara session, but it was that. It
didn't feel like just a night of worship.
That's only gonna appeal to a certain seg-
ment of your church, but there was wor-
ship at it.
And so the overall feeling of it, because it
didn't feel like a training event, really al-
lowed us to kind of intentionally below
those lines and push training out in a way
that was much needed, but also well re-
ceived. And so this event worked really
well for us. We called it a Leadership Sum-
mit. You may call it something else. You
may do it in a different rhythm. You may
put different elements in place. But one of
the things that...
What I would encourage you to do is to
create an environment where you inten-
tionally celebrate leaders, where you inten-
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tionally celebrate your volunteers, and you
can mix training into that. But sometimes,
it's helpful just to gather people together
and kind of hide the training in there. You
know, it's like we're gonna hide some vege-
tables in the milkshake. We're gonna do
training, but we're not gonna call it train-
ing.
And so this is how it worked for us and I
just wanted to kind of unpack that a little
bit and show you how it worked. I've got
some resources and some more stuff you
can read on how this worked for us, but I
encourage you to take this idea, process it
with your team, and say, "Hey, would some-
thing like that work for us? Could we train
our volunteers by doing more of an event
or a gathering that didn't feel like a class
or a seminar? Would these ideas work in
our church?"
So if you've got questions as to how this
worked, I'd love for you to hop into the
Facebook group, ask those questions. You
know, one of the things I love about our
community is there are so many different
kinds of churches, large churches, smaller
churches, churches in the city, churches
out in the country, churches in big cities,
you know, churches in small towns, differ-
ent denominations, different traditions are
represented. And I love hearing how our
churches are taking this information, con-
textualizing it, and changing it up to suit
their needs.
And that's a really a cool thing about the
Church Hill community. Is that you can not
only just learn, but you can share. So we'd
love to hear how you're training your vol-
unteers. We'd love to hear how you're put-
ting these things into place. Because if
you've got a great idea, we need to know
it, we need to hear about it. And so encour-
age one another, share ideas with each
other, and the Facebook group is a great
place to do that.
But, of course, if you've got any questions
about any of this, you can email us, you
can reach out, you can call us anytime. So
process this idea, leadership summit, kind
of will this work on your calendar? Will this
work in your rhythm? And we'd love to
hear back from you and see if something
like this can help you train your volunteers
at a much deeper and a much more fun
way. So thanks for watching. I hope you
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have a great rest of the day and God
bless.
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