KidMin Leader Cast: We Make Professional Kidmin Leaders

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Music.

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Well, hello and welcome back to the kid men leader cast. Today we'll be talking tackling, tackling and talking. We're gonna be doing both about a vital aspect of ministry leadership, building trust and credibility within your volunteer team, whether you're just beginning in ministry or you're looking to strengthen your leadership. As a veteran, this episode is going to equip you to create an environment where volunteers can thrive your ministry flourish. But before we get into all of that, I wanted to invite you to something. We have a newsletter. It's called the kid men newsletter, and I want you to subscribe to it. Go to Kidman newsletter.com,

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Kid men newsletter.com, and when you do that, you can subscribe, and it's totally free. And every Sunday, I send you three insights. So I send you three things that I'm thinking about in ministry, three things I think that are super important in ministry, and it's something that is another way to be able to grow in your leadership, to grow in your ability as a children's ministry leader. And so if you go to Kidman leader.com you can sign up for that for free. I don't spam you. I just make sure that you, if you sign up for that, you're going to get a newsletter and email every single week

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from me, and it's going to be super focused in on three core things for you to be thinking about that week. And so go ahead, check that out again. It's free, and you can unsubscribe at any time, too, if it gets too much, if you're like Todd, you it's not relevant to me, whatever that is something for you to think about and check out. So back to the podcast episode for today. I was I did a poll a couple of years ago with my volunteers and and I had seen some decline in our volunteer retention rates, and I did a poll, and I asked them things that they valued the most, the volunteers who who were still serving, and one of the number one things that they all

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basically said were super important is,

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Do Do they feel like they could trust me as the leader? Do they feel like they could trust me and then, do they feel like I value them? Do they feel like I valued them? That was something that was super important, and it came across in almost all of them. It was in in top three of the things that they indicated on the survey that I sent out, and that really got me thinking about the value of credibility and how to build trust within your children's ministry leadership team, and so I wanted to talk about that today. This is part of our core principles series, which is a series of episodes that I've put together. They're gonna be talking about some things that I feel are pretty core to what it means to be a children's ministry leader. So in today's episode, we're gonna talk about three things. We're gonna talk about the importance of trust and credibility. We're going to talk about the key foundations for you to think through when you're building trust with your team. And then we're talking about how credibility strengthens your leadership and your volunteer engagement. Okay, so those are the three things that we're going to be talking about. So get out your notebook, get out your pencil. We also have a transcript that you can download that's gonna be in the show notes for this episode. And so if you've taken notes, I'm hoping you're taking notes, but if you need to just have the transcript to be able to go through, you can download that from our show notes as well. Go ahead and do that, and we're going to get started with today's episode. So the first thing we're talking about is the importance of trust and credibility. Why TRUST and CREDIBILITY matter? Let's start here.

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You see, trust is really a safety net, right? Trust creates a safe environment where volunteers are empowered to lead. This

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is something that took me a long time to get to. You see, many ministries that I've been a part of, the leader that I had who was above me tended

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to be a little bit of a control freak. They were micromanagers. They'd give me a task and then they would not be able to let that go. And their excuse always was, well, I can't trust that you're going to do what I want you to do. The problem is, is that, over time, when that message is consistently communicated right, even after I've successfully done the task, done it the way that it was supposed to be

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done, they never let the rains go. They never, never stopped clamping down. And what began to happen is I began to think of them as a poor.

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A leader, I began to think that they actually were not good at what they were doing, and that they weren't a leader that I could trust and follow.

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And over and over again in my ministry career, I've seen that played out whether if it whether it being in my own ministry or in others around me.

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You see, trust is a safety net, and when I feel like I can my volunteers feel like I trust them, then they feel empowered. They feel like they can actually do what they're being called and what the ministry is calling them to do.

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Second, volunteers can stay engaged and committed when they trust their leader and feel that their contributions are valued. This is huge. See,

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one of the things that happens is how I described earlier, you feel like you're not valued, and when you're not valued. Why am I doing this? There's person I was talking to recently, and at their church, they serve faithfully every single week, but every week, all that the pastor has to offer are a list of criticisms or passive aggressive comments about little things that they felt they could have done better. Now, the person actually thinks that what they're doing is leading. They think that they're doing a good job of helping to manage and help that person to get better, but all that it's actually doing is contributing to tearing that person down. It's helping this leader to feel as though they are not valued, and if they're not valued, then they might as well go somewhere else, where maybe they can find somebody who can value them. It's not building the team up by offering these critiques all the time. It's not building them up to constantly have passive, aggressive ways of things that they have either missed or things they could have done better, that doesn't help them. There's time for evaluation, by the way. We'll talk about that. We're going to talk about how to effectively evaluate your volunteer team and how to give constructive feedback. That's an important skill, by the way,

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but when it's constant and all that you can see are the errors, and all that you can see are the things that weren't done and you don't ever communicate the positive things. Well, that creates a situation environment where trust erodes. You see where there is no trust, the team falters. Where there is no trust, the team falters.

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So let's talk about the impact on team dynamics. Okay, let's talk about the impact that trust and credibility has on team dynamic. On team dynamics. A trustworthy leader fosters collaboration and unity among the team. In other words, they don't care if you are collaborating, they don't care if you're talking to each other. They're not paranoid that you're talking about them. They're not paranoid that you're plotting against them. They don't feel like their idea has to win every time. They trust that their team is able to communicate. They trust that their team is able to do that things without them even being present. This was huge for me. I remember the first time that a pastor kind of flipped me to keys and didn't even attend an event that that I was running. It felt so good. I felt like, man, they really trust me. It was, it was, it was big deal. I was in my early 20s, and I was like, man, wow. I was an intern, and I've been working so hard and and I remember I didn't get everything right, but, but in but, but, but I knew that they trusted me enough. They they knew that that I was going to be able to do this, and they trusted that I could, and they let me do it. They didn't even attend the event. It's a big deal trusting the team and how that fosters unity amongst them.

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Credible leadership brings confidence, which leads to more effective ministry. This is where I came up, actually, with the title on the subtitle for the podcast, Kidman leader, where we make professional Kidman leaders. You see, it's important that you have credibility as on your own as a leader.

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One of my professors in college, she actually told me this. She said one of the reasons that she wanted to continue pursue an incredible children's ministry

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leader didn't need to go to seminary. Didn't need to go and get continue to seek out education. Didn't need to do any of that. She was incredible. She did things at a high level. She didn't need the establishment accreditations. She didn't need the accolades, but she said that she actually sought them out. And the reason why it wasn't because of puffing herself up. She didn't need that, but what she told me was fascinating. She said I wanted to go and I wanted to get my masters, and I wanted to get my Ed D,

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because I wanted my team to see that the person they were following

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had credibility, that I had skin in the game in the children's ministry.

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Area that I had created, things that I'd done, things that resonated with me. Not because education and having degrees makes you better. It helps you, for sure,

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but because it gives your leaders something to fall back on, to say, hey, I can follow this person. They actually know what they're talking about. It brings confidence to the team.

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When your team is confident, when your volunteers are confident, makes them more effective. There's tons of ministries. I know that that constantly are providing opportunities for growth Kids Matter is one they're constantly doing that I NCM

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is another that has workshops and programs where you can get different certificates. Look for those opportunities. If you have the ability to go to seminary, please do that. You know, if you have the means and the ability, I think it'd be a great idea

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to be able to have a little bit of that if in your if in your church you have the ability to be ordained, right, be a huge deal to become ordained within your church, if your church allows for that,

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these are all great ideas for ways that you can build credibility personally in yourself, through credentialing and through training,

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volunteers are also motivated by a leader who is reliable, competent and transparent. Let's tackle each of these individually reliability. If you say you're going to do something, you do it

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now I'm going to admit this is one that I have consistently struggled with, and it's not because it's not because I don't want to for me, I,

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let's say I am a little ADHD, and by a little, I mean a lot. My wife, if she's listening, is probably chuckling at this.

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I'll be in a meeting. I'll be talking, and if I don't immediately write it down, what I've what I've communicated, I'm going to do

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many times it'll fall through the cracks. And it's not that I didn't want to it's it's that I simply forgot. And even though I had every intention of doing it, what I had to learn in my career is, even though I had the intention, the follow through is what people actually noticed and cared about. And so I became obsessive about making sure that in every meeting I was taking notes,

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I was making sure that I was writing things down, putting reminders on my phone, I have probably the most complex reminder app system that you've ever seen. And it's not because I'm some organized freak. It's actually the opposite. It's because I know that I'm not, and I've actually had people help me think through how to build my reminder app on my iPhone in such a way that it has reminders for reminders,

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which is bizarre, and it makes me a little nauseous sometimes when I open it up, but I have to have that structure.

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It's it's reliability. When you say you're going to do something, you do, you do it, and it's a way that you build credibility, competency. We talked about training and credentialing, but also being motivated to study

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if you're the storyteller, a primary storyteller, or if you say that you're going to provide a training, making sure you're prepared doing things to make it so that you actually are competent at the task that you're doing. Training is huge. Going back and sitting in workshops, bringing new ideas from these workshops, working on the craft right, practicing puppeteering, practicing with flannel graph, rehearsing your story beforehand.

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If you aren't, maybe that out front person, maybe you're behind the scenes, making sure that your environments are clean, that they're organized, having an appearance of competency is huge, and it builds credibility with your team. And finally, transparency, this one is massive, right?

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Transparency is

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a difficult thing in ministry, because we already feel like we're all sitting behind the looking glass that everybody can see every part of our lives. However, I've met so many ministry leaders who work incredibly hard to make their life and even their career as opaque as possible, make it so that nobody can really see in inside of them. Now I'm not saying that you need to go on Facebook and share every aspect of your life, by the way, I think people, I think we need a lot less of that, but transparency within your ministry is important. If you mess something up, you need to own the fact that you messed something up

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and then work very hard to fix it for next time,

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if a mistake occurs, if there's something that's changing, a process, a procedure, something in the policy, making sure that your team can see that understand explaining, so that they understand the why behind the change.

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Do.

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Doing things in the open, rather in the dark. You see, Jesus even says that

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all darkness is going to be exposed and things are going to come into the light. Understanding that ahead of time and working to make sure that everything that we're doing is transparent is key

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on a personal level as well. Again, not needing to overshare things that are inappropriate but but making sure that you're saying, Hey, I'm tired and I need some volunteers to help me. It's okay to ask for help. It's okay to say, hey, this event is really tough. It's it's meaning that I'm not spending as much time with my family, with my spouse, with my kids. I need some help so that I can be able to have the extra margin to do that. Asking for help from volunteers and also from your leadership is important. That's transparency, not pretending that you have it all together. Because the truth of the matter is this, that the burnout rate in ministry is so high in children's ministry and youth ministry, it's so high that most people in ministry need to ask for help more. They need to say, Hey, this is hard. I need help.

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That's transparency

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burning out, going through divorce because of your burnout, going through divorce because you're not there with your family. Those are terrible end results that usually come because you just weren't willing to be transparent and vulnerable and say, Hey, this is hard, and I need

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help the challenges of lack of trust and credibility. These ones are, I think, are obvious, but I think that they also need to be stated. Your volunteers are going to feel unsupported, undervalued. It's going to lead to burnout, higher turnover rates.

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Well, yeah, if they don't feel as though they can trust you and that you trust them. They don't feel like you're a credible person to listen to, then, of course, they're going to be burnt out. They're going to feel undervalued, they're going to feel unsupported, they're going to feel like what they're doing doesn't matter. They're not even going to understand why they're doing what they're doing. You have the best last episode, we talked about crafting vision. You have the best vision, the best mission statement. You can do all that stuff. But if you don't have credibility and trust, well then it doesn't matter.

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Inconsistent leadership creates confusion and reduces engagement. If, if you're inconsistent, if you're not competent, right? If you're not reliable, if you're not being transparent, if you're being inconsistent, it creates confusion. Nobody knows what's going on if you're not communicating well. And then, of course, engagement is going to be reduced. Of course, people are going to pull away. The call offs are going to start happening. You're going to have people drop out of the ministry. You're going to have people that are less engaged with the mission. They're not going to be as excited and motivated to engage with the kids and with families. Sure, they're serving they're serving the the church Sure, sure they're serving Jesus, right? But, but it's not going to matter. They don't feel like what they're doing matters. They feel like they're they're following an inconsistent leader,

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and the church deserves to have leaders that are consistent,

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that are trustworthy, that have credibility built. Number three, building trust with your volunteer team, transparency in communication. Let's talk about communication a little bit.

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Let's be open about expectations, challenges and the direction of the ministry.

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This one was hard for me. Early on, I was kind of learning on the fly. I was probably given positions that I shouldn't have been in too early in my career.

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There's a danger. I want to talk briefly to my extroverts and people, people who are listening to this podcast. I'm you.

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I had three options. I joke was about this all the time. I had three options in my life for what I was going to be, I was going to be a used car salesman, I was going to be a con man, or I was going to be in ministry.

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I'm really good at talking, and I'm good at using words, not in a manipulative way, but I know the right thing is to say and I'm very perceptive with people of how to say them and when to say them. And because of that, I got in myself into some positions that I probably didn't have the credibility yet to be able to be in.

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And I burned out hard.

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I burned out hard, and I would try to cover it up, and I would try to make it look like it wasn't like I wasn't struggling the way that I was,

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and for me, what was helpful was when a mentor of mine sat me down and he said, Hey, the thing that you struggle with the most is

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you scramble around

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a lot trying to figure things out, and you're figuring them out on the fly, and you're, you're, you're doing a good job,

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but, but I need you to be transparent about it with leadership. But also I need you to be transparent about it in communicating these things to your volunteers. Volunteers, if they walk into a room on a Sunday morning and what you sent out in your email on Wednesday is no longer.

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Were true because you changed it. That's confusing. So we need to be open about our expectations with volunteers. We need to be open

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about the challenges that we're facing in the ministry and that the ministry is facing. And we also need to be transparent about the direction of the ministry. Where are we going? What is the target we're aiming to hit. This goes back a little bit to the vision piece that we talked about last episode, clear, concise, making sure that we're tying everything off to our vision, right? Let's be transparent when changes do occur and they will. Let's communicate well,

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regular updates ensure that volunteers are informed and that they are aligned with the ministry's goals. The last people to find out should never be your volunteers. They're the first people that should be finding things out. They're the first people who should be informed. Your people in your church should be able to go to your volunteers on a regular basis and ask about what's going on in the ministry, and they should be able to communicate that. They should be able to talk about what your VBS is. They should be able to talk about what the goal for your goal and pathway to discipleship is within the kids ministry, they should be able to talk about the vision. They should be able to talk about stories that you've been sharing consistently, right? They should be able to do that. Let's update them regularly on what's going on in the ministry.

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Consistency and reliability. Show up on time. Follow through on your promises. Keep your commitments. This is so important. These are things that sound simple, but they're hard to actually put into practice.

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Showing up on time is one of the biggest things that will make you look like a fool. And I'll tell you this, I find this to be very generational, too, right now, I think everybody kind of knows that that's an important one. It's really important, particularly for volunteers that are in an older demographic. When you don't show up on time,

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that's something that drives people who are boomers, people who are Gen Xers, that drives them absolutely up a wall. They have no tolerance for it. And we can say, well, that's on them, or we can also look at that and say, Hey, we should probably make the adjustment on our on ourself. I sat in a meeting one time, and the leader would consistently show up 2030, minutes late,

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and it just communicated that that the meeting wasn't important. And then you'd sit in the meeting and they'd want to run the meeting and be the leader, and it's like you didn't even and this would happen week after week, and it's like you didn't even give us the the the grace of of being able to show up on time. Why should I take anything that you're saying to me seriously?

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It's important show up on time, follow through on promises. If you say they're gonna have glue sticks in the classroom, make sure glue sticks are on. Are in the classroom. If you make a commitment to do, provide an email once a week updating them on the ministry. Make sure that they get that email every single week.

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Volunteers trust leaders who demonstrate consistency in their words and actions. Don't be too double minded. Don't be don't be double tongued. And say one thing but do another.

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They trust leaders who demonstrate consistency in word and in action.

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All right, empathy and active listening. This one's huge. This one's huge.

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Understand your volunteers personal challenges and encourage open communication.

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People ask me all the time, you know, you meet with all the all sorts of people who are you meeting with? Like, why are you needing to talk about ministry with all these volunteers? They just work in the nursery. I look at it this way, if you volunteer for me, I just became your personal connection to a ministry staff person. I'm the

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person that you're going to come to if you have your child is sick, if somebody's in the hospital, if you're in the hospital, if you're in the hospital, I'm the one that's coming to visit you,

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and I want to know that. I also want to have open communication enough for you, for you to tell me that I suck, that I'm that I've messed up, or that you feel like you're struggling and that you need extra support and that you need extra training, or that you need extra help, right? I want to be able to understand you the things that you're going on, and that's going to rely on open communication and then listening actively to their concerns and showing that you value the input that they give when they're talking and communicating these things, we need to be actively listening. I'm gonna do a whole episode on active listening and what I've learned about it. I think it's I think it's an underrated piece, and it's something I struggle so much with. I still struggle with this at times. We're

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going to talk about active listening

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number four, building credibility as a leader. All right, so let's actually start to build.

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Build the credibility we've already talked about competence and knowledge, but equip yourself with knowledge about children's ministry and lead by example. Reading books is a great way of doing this, by the way, like it's probably the cheapest but also most high yield return thing that you can do is reading listening to podcasts. You're already, if you're listening to this right now, you're already doing that right,

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but continuing to better yourself. Books is a great way. Podcasts are a great way. YouTube videos Great. Way

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higher cost, but also really good workshops, online workshops, I know I NCM is constantly doing this. A lot of children's ministry organizations and children's ministry leaders are doing this consistently.

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This is an important thing, and it's a place where you can get a lot of knowledge and development,

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sharing, training, opportunities and resources to build confidence in your leadership. You know, I know it sounds like you're bragging when you talk about the things that you read, when it talks about the confidence. Conferences you go to, but sharing these opportunities and the resources with your team, it builds confidence, because they're looking at that going, Wow. This person has actually gone to these things. They've done these things. This. It must be important. Wow. This is something that's important enough that sharing it with us, we should go in and and check that out too.

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It's a great way of building confidence. It's a great way of building your own competence,

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integrity and ethical leadership. Uphold moral principles and act with honesty, especially in facing challenges. Don't lie about it.

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Don't exaggerate.

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Don't make it look like you're doing better than you actually are. Don't make it look it's not your fault when you mess

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up. The best thing that you can do in the midst of a challenge, especially if it's it's something that you've messed up, is to say that was my fault. I apologize, and I'm going to do everything that I can to do that the right way the next time,

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when you stand firm on your values, your team knows they can trust you, even in tough situations,

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let them know. Hey, here's how I'm going to handle it when there's conflict amongst volunteers, or if a volunteer has conflict with me, and then follow through on exactly how you said you're going to handle conflict.

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Here's how we're going to handle it, if there's a parent or family that XYZ. And then follow through on that. When you communicate this, these values, and then you follow through on it builds so much confidence in you. It gives so much credibility to you. People begin to say, hey,

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he might be whatever, but, but he says what He means, and he means it, and he does it,

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delivering results and accountability, regularly measuring and sharing the results of your ministry, whether they're good or bad, is important. A we had X amount of children go through our baptism class. That's down this much from last year. What what changed? Here are the things that I'm I'm seeing that I've personally done that I think changed, and I don't know that it was great. I had this idea and I don't think it worked. Or, Hey, you guys, what did you do? Like you guys are doing something that's that's contributed to your kids

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being able to recite so many more Bible verses? What did you do? Share us with us. What you did, you know, measuring things and then sharing those results huge. Hold yourself accountable for ministry goals and outcomes. Okay? And I know this is a self defense tactic, okay, but most ministries, most churches, they have, you write strategic goals for the year, and

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what ends up happening is your strategic goals, we kind of guard privately, and they're kind of embarrassing, because we feel like they reveal the things that we're not good at. Now,

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I've worked in ministries where it was dangerous to share your strategic goals, right? Literally, it was dangerous, and pastors weaponized them, and they would use them against you, and they would almost belittle you and

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get it been there, done that understood. I'm going to pretend and assume that you're in a healthy ministry environment, that is a non healthy ministry environment, and I would highly encourage you to begin praying about where God is leading you next if you're in that situation, because that is terrible, and I've been there get it.

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However,

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your ministry goals are not something for you to set once with your your immediate superior, with your leadership, and then never look at or talk about again. And then at the end of the year, when you're doing your staff evaluations, you basically figure out how to make what you did fit those so that you can just move on. And it's another box to check, because what you're doing when you do that.

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You are

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about your kingdom and growing your kingdom, and not God's kingdom, right? We need to make sure that we are having accountability with our ministry goals and outcomes. Now, if you're in a healthy ministry environment, you're helping to establish and set those goals, right? We talked about in the last episode vision, and how to create vision. Well, your vision should be tied directly to goals that you and your leader are setting for that ministry, for your children's ministry. So if that's the case, if you're actually following through and doing that, then hopefully what that means is that you are able

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to be accountable for those because those are the things that everybody else is aiming at too.

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Holding ourselves accountable for our ministry goals and outcomes is important.

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Communicating trust and credibility, effectively,

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consistent messaging. We talked about messaging in the last episode, and I know that people are are getting, get weirded out by that it's like, oh, that's manipulation. That's lying, that's yada yada. Got it? It's not. Reinforces trust and credibility by regularly meeting through emails and ministry events. Let's make sure that we are being consistent, that we're saying the same thing in all places. We're not telling people in person, but in emails, we're saying something different. When we consistent

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every Sunday, we're I do this a lot. Every Sunday, we should be reminding volunteers of their role in impacting children's lives every week,

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and it when we do that through the messaging that we share with them on Sundays. Hey, you know, remember that one of our core verses is Deuteronomy, chapter six, verse seven, right? We're encouraging parents today. We're equipping parents today to be able to take what we're doing in Sunday School home, to be able to talk with their kids about it all week,

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huge. We're going to we're going to share success stories using real examples to show the impact of the ministry and the importance of each volunteer's contribution. We're going to share stories consistently. We're going to share testimonies from families, children volunteers about how the ministry is changing lives. We're going to share stories and say, hey, look,

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you know, on our team, if you're part of our team,

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you can trust us. We have a lot of credibility over here. Look, what we're doing sounds like bragging. It's not people like to play for a winning team. They like to be a part of a winning team.

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When we share those stories, our trust and credibility go through the roof. People want to be a part of a winning team. Then we're going to personalize the message. We're going to make sure every volunteer sees how their role is vital to the success of the team. You

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can say something like this, as a small group leader, Sunday school teacher, you're not just teaching, you're helping to shape this child's spiritual world view.

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That's a huge deal. We need to consistently, consistently, consistently, be sharing that with our volunteers,

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keeping TRUST and CREDIBILITY alive. So okay, we've established it. But how do we keep it going? We're gonna have regular team gatherings, we talked about this last episode.

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We're gonna host retreats, team meetings, events that are gonna build relationships and reinforce trust. Those are our trainings that we're gonna do quarterly. Those are our off sites, where we take our core group of of leadership and we're gonna dream with them, right? We're going to use these times to celebrate successes. We're also going to use it to focus, to refocus on the mission, on the ministry's vision, and

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then we're going to offer continuous support and encouragement. We're going to do that by regularly encouraging and thanking volunteers for their hard work. We're going to send notes of appreciation to them. We're going to call them, we're going to text them, we're going to check in with them. We're going to share our own personal devotionals that we've been reading. We're going to share resources with them. We're going to do it

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and tie it to our ministry's values. We're going to make sure that they know, hey, I appreciate what you're doing. I'm encouraging you to keep doing what you're doing. You're following what God's called our ministry to do. You're following what God's calling you to do. And

Unknown Speaker 34:26
I'm going to say, talk about this a lot, but need to be open to feedback. I was very close to feedback earlier, and I looked at it as criticism. And I think I'm going to say this again, if you're in a healthy ministry, feedback is not criticism. Feedback is something that helps you to improve. I understand it can be weaponized. I've been in churches where it has been weaponized against me, and that's never fun. That's always terrible. And I would encourage you again to begin praying about how God and where God is going to move you to, because that's never okay, and that's that's yucky, it's horrible.

Unknown Speaker 35:00
I understand, but we're going to create an open door policy where volunteers feel comfortable sharing ideas and concerns. We're going to do regular surveys, and we're

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going to have them put their names on them.

Unknown Speaker 35:14
It's okay to have them put their names on them. It's also okay if you feel like you need to start doing that by having them not put their names on them, that's okay too. We're going to do regular surveys asking for feedback. Ask your volunteers, what can I do to support you better in your role?

Unknown Speaker 35:29
Okay, so we talked about a lot

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today, so let's, let's kind of recap the key things that I want us to think about from this episode. We're gonna trust. We're gonna build trust and credibility, because they're essential for leading volunteer teams in children's ministry, we're going to build trust, but to do that, it requires transparency, consistency and empathy. Credibility comes from competence, integrity and through consistently delivering results, doing the things that we said we're going to do.

Unknown Speaker 35:58
Remember that you can download the transcript from today's episode, if it would help you to be able to read that so that you can add that into your notes. You can do that through the show notes, through whatever podcast player that you use. Here's what you do. I need to take 15 minutes this week, and I want you to reflect on how you can build more trust with your volunteers. Are you consistently communicating. Are you consistently showing up for them? Are you being transparent? Are you allowing for them to have a feedback

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a feedback system to be able to communicate with you when you're talking with them? Are you actively listening? What are you doing to build your own core competencies? You're listening to this podcast, which is just a great step. What are you reading? What workshops are you attending? Who are you listening to? To build your own competency.

Unknown Speaker 36:47
Let me take some time this week and look into that. All right, I want you to take this podcast. I want you share it with your volunteers. I want you to share it with your ministry leaders. And then here's only, Oh, the other thing I want you to don't need to email me at Todd, at kid men leader.com email me, and I want you to submit questions for episodes in the future. I want you to tell me a topic that you'd like for me to cover on the podcast, and then I want you to like and subscribe and review this podcast on Apple podcast. Spotify podcasts, wherever it is, you get your shows and listen to them. I

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want you to go to Kidman leader, cast.com,

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and you can see all of this information and so much more.

Unknown Speaker 37:31
Let's pray as we close out today. Lord, thank You for the volunteers who serve in children's ministries everywhere, the people who are listening

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today

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help us to lead with integrity. Help us to lead with trust so that we can create a strong, unified team that impacts lives for your kingdom. Jesus, name. We pray. Amen. You.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai