KidMin Leader Cast: We Make Professional Kidmin Leaders

Speaker 1 0:11
Todd, well, welcome to the Kidman leader cast. My name is Todd hixenbaum, your host, as always on the show, if you're a children's ministry pastor, Director, leader, or if you're a volunteer leader, you know that recruiting the right volunteers is vital to the success of your ministry. Today's episode, we're gonna be giving you proven strategies to not only attract the best volunteers, but also to build a strong, passionate team ready to serve the next generation before we get into the episode, I want to encourage you to go to kid men newsletter.com if you go there, you're going to sign up for a free newsletter that comes to you every single Sunday. The newsletter is designed to give you three actionable, usable and real tips, tricks, strategies, things that I'm processing for How to Become a Professional Children's Ministry leader. You can do that for free. Just type in your email address. I'm not going to spam you. I'm gonna make sure that you get those newsletters. And every once in a while, I create resources, usually that are free, that I'm gonna send out to you. I'm gonna make sure you get them. And so go ahead and sign up. That's kid men newsletter.com, go there and sign up. By the way, if you ever wanted to download the transcript, if you ever wanted to be able to review the podcast or be able to see all the other thing the other episodes, I have an easy place for you to go. Just go to kid men leader, cast.com if you go to Kidman leader, cast.com you can see our podcast, all the different platforms that we're on, as well as download the transcripts for the episodes there. It's great resource for you to be able to check out and as always, find us on social media. Just go to Kidman leader, type that in basically at any of the social media platforms, Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok, YouTube, all the places we are there where you can get daily encouragements, daily funny stories, Kidman leader fails that I'm experiencing and more. So go ahead and check us out on all those spaces. Do you know that children's ministries with clear volunteer roles and vision see about a 40% increase in volunteer retention according to a recent study. Let's dive into how you can create a lasting and impactful volunteer team. Here's our episode preview. We're going to review the critical role volunteers play in children's ministry. Not that I feel that you necessarily need to know that, but I think it's important for us to still go over it. I think you understand their importance, how to craft an engaging recruitment message and then practical tips for retaining volunteers and making them feel valued. So

Unknown Speaker 3:20
volunteers,

Speaker 1 3:22
what a wonderful topic. It's probably one of the number one things that people in the world that we live in want to know about. It's also one of the hardest parts of the job. Sometimes it can be like a vortex that just sucks all of your time. So let's we're going to talk about also some resources, some people that I know that can help you to be able to do this even better, right? And I've taken a lot of information, I've learned from some of them and some of my own personal experience to craft what I'm going to call a general volunteering recruitment podcast episode. I'm going to do an episode on every single one of these things that we're going to talk about today in more detail. But for today, I'm going to give you an overview. We're going to start into a series of podcasts on recruiting volunteers. So starting today, we're going to get into a general episode where we're going to go and do an overview of this topic. So first thing, we're talking about the importance of recruiting the right volunteer for children's ministry. We're talking about recruiting the right volunteer for children's ministry. Why the right volunteers matter? Children's Ministry is a unique calling. Volunteers need a passion for kids and a heart for ministry. This is why we don't just accept anybody and everybody, right? We love everybody, but not everybody's called into this ministry. So we need to find the right volunteers. A strong team of volunteers can make a. Lasting impact on a child's faith journey, so important, we have to understand the why behind why we're recruiting volunteers. It matters telling kids the gospel of Jesus Christ, matters helping them to develop their faith and to have a safe space, to have hard conversations all those things that matters, and having volunteers able to facilitate that is important, but it's even more than that, right? We all think of the teachers and the small group leaders. What about the event coordinators, the planners, the people who are the setup and tear down crew

Unknown Speaker 5:36
that matters too. Let's talk about it.

Speaker 1 5:40
What's the impact that the right volunteer team can have? Well, see when volunteers see their role in shaping the next generation, they can serve with purpose and joy, and a well aligned team will help you create an engaging, safe and loving environment for children, it's a big deal when volunteers see their role in shaping the next generation they serve with purpose and joy. We'll make sure our team's aligned, because when we have a team that's aligned, it's going to make a great environment for kids and for families. Volunteers who feel valued are more likely to stay and lead with enthusiasm, which leads to greater ministry effectiveness. See, we want people who want to be there. Want people that want to be there, and when we find those people, when we motivate them, when we equip them, when we train them, when we foster their purpose, their calling to be a part of kids ministry. That's when we have great ministry effectiveness.

Unknown Speaker 6:53
But what's the risk that we have

Speaker 1 6:54
of recruiting without a strategy? Some of us, hey, you know, I did this early in my career. I didn't necessarily have a strategy that was crazy. Two men got a hold of me, Nick Blevins and Josh denhardt, and they just basically shook me and said, that's silly. You need to have a strategy, sir. And you need to think about that, sir, before you just go out here recruiting all willy nilly. So what's the risk of doing that without a strategy? Here's here's why they were telling me how dumb I was. Recruiting for the sake of filling spots can lead to burnout, disengagement, or even a lack of ministry impact. You see, when all that we're doing is we're trying to plug holes in a sinking ship,

Unknown Speaker 7:38
there's always more holes, and

Speaker 1 7:41
eventually that boat's going to sink, and when it sinks, you're going to burn out. They're going to burn out. They're going to become disengaged from the ministry. They're going to be disengaged from the kids, and nobody's going to be happy, nobody's going to enjoy it, nobody's going to want to sign up to be part of that ministry, not long term at least, and it's gonna lead you to nothing but frustration, nothing but bitterness, even, and eventually can lead you to totally burn out and even leave the ministry. I sounds like I'm being extreme, but, and I kind of am, but I'm doing it for a reason. It's that important. It matters. It matters. Volunteers who are not fully committed may inadvertently disrupt the ministry environment. I have done this so often in my career, where I've recruited people who weren't the right person who weren't fully committed, and it totally threw things off. Maybe they had their own agenda, right, and they were just chasing down their own agenda. Or maybe, maybe they weren't all the way committed. So they're always missing meetings. They were always late. They were always whatever, right? Well, what ends up happening is it messes everybody else up. People get bitter. They start going, hey, this person, what's going on over here? And then it can breed. And then all of a sudden you have a volunteer team that's totally disengaged. The right volunteers matter. So how are we going to get the right volunteers? Well, we're going to start by crafting a compelling volunteer recruitment message. Remember a couple episodes ago, we talked about vision. I would not even. I would not even. I would pause this podcast right now, and I would go back, and I would listen to that episode. I believe it was episode two, and I would listen to it on how to craft an engaging vision for your children's ministry. I would sit, spend some weeks sitting with your leadership team, with some of your core volunteers, I would craft that message, and then I would come back to the spot, and I would hit play again. That's how important I think that it is to have a vision for your ministry, because you're going to want to connect it. You want to connect your recruiting message to that vision. Okay? So here we go. You're going to root it in purpose. We're going to root it in purpose, or on purpose. You're going to want to frame your volunteer opportunities within the context of the mission. I'll give you an example. The mission for my church is helping children to grow in their relationship with God by connecting families to the Father, by connecting children to God, right? So what am I going to do? Well, let me give you an example. This is something that I would say, if I was recruiting somebody, maybe for the nursery or toddlers room here, here's what I would say, we're not just looking for people to watch kids on Sunday in the nursery. You see, we're looking for people who are passionate about nurturing the faith of the next generation of our church. You see how all of a sudden, now it's connected to a bigger purpose. It's not just you're going to be in here changing diapers and making sure that the kids are safe and not touching things they shouldn't be or whatever. No, you are fostering the faith next generation. That's a bigger purpose. That's a bigger deal. We're also going to be specific, and we're going to want to be transparent. We're going to want to clearly define what each volunteer role involves, whether it's a classroom assistant, a small group leader, set up and tear down crew and event coordinator, Assistant, VBS director, a nursery work. I don't care whatever it is, we're going to be clear, specific and transparent. Here's an example as a small group leader, you'll not only teach Bible verses and Bible stories to kids, but you're going to build relationships with the kids that are going to last far beyond just a Sunday morning, right? What that's going to communicate is that, hey, you know, maybe you have a real talent for teaching.

Unknown Speaker 11:58
Maybe that's a real thing that you have. Maybe you're really good at it,

Speaker 1 12:02
but the best story that you can tell isn't gonna be able to hit and make an impact if you haven't done the work of building relationships with your kids, if they don't know you, if they don't feel like they trust you, if you haven't built relationships, it's not gonna matter. It's not gonna matter at all. So you're going to need to do the whole job, not just the part that you like. Flip side, right? Maybe people are great at being able to connect with children, but if they're not able to effectively study, if they're not able to effectively teach and and put this story together, this lesson together, whatever it is you're communicating to kids, well that's also not good. It's not that we're looking for perfect volunteers. It's that we're looking for people who can be transparent in the things that they need help in developing. One of my favorite things to do is to develop volunteers. Very rarely will you ever find somebody who has all the pieces that you need, but if they're willing to go through the process of training and learning, if they're willing to to grow and maybe even learn some new things. Boy, you can do a lot with that. That's awesome, but we're going to be specific and transparent about what the need is, and then we're going to align our recruiting message with the ministry's vision. I already talked about this a little bit. We're going to ensure that the message reflects the overall vision of the children's ministry in the church. Here's an example. If our church's mission is to lead families to faith, then what we're going to do is this, if our church's mission is to lead families to faith, your role as a volunteer directly connects with that vision by sharing the gospel with the next generation. That makes sense. We want to always make sure that we're aligning any of our messaging, any of our branding, any of the things that we're doing. It needs to align with the church's overall vision and mission. Then this is huge. We're going to show the impact that volunteers can make this is where collecting stories is so important. We're going to show examples of tangible ways of how volunteers have changed the lives in our ministry. Let me give an example. Imagine that a child who comes to church is shy and insecure. Maybe they don't totally know what to expect and they're unsure. They haven't really been around church before, but because of the faithful service of insert volunteer name, they've been able to grow into a confident young person who, after they left our children's ministry, was so excited to be able to connect in student ministry and have meaningful relationships. Right? Can you see how when you can begin to share these stories and go back and say, Hey, here's what being a part of this team did, and here's what volunteer service can do in serving the gospel and serving the church. When you collect those stories and you talk about them in your strategy of helping volunteers and recruiting volunteers do. So that's when you begin to multiply. It's big deal. So what are some effective strategies? Here's the part that everybody's going to like bookmark and like want to talk about and go back to I get it. What are some effective strategies for recruiting volunteers for children's ministry? First, we're going to make use of the church's existing network, okay, whatever that looks like. So we're going to engage with current church members, especially those with children or a passion for students and youth, right? We're going to go to the people who already are bought in, right? A lot of people, there's a debate, should we talk to parents, or should we give parents the break for that hour? I actually think that parents often make some of the best volunteers because they are bought into that children's ministry. They're down there every week dropping their kids off. They want to see that ministry succeed. I think they're a great resource to go to and ask to volunteer. Maybe you have a policy in your church that volunteer can't serve in the same room as as their child. That's fine, but they can plug into other areas. I have volunteers who want to serve because they want to be near their kid on Sunday mornings. Great. They can serve at check in, they can serve as a greeter. They can serve in as a leader or an assistant in one of my other rooms, right? I have that policy at my church. Well, okay, great.

Unknown Speaker 16:24
Plug them in, train them. Love them.

Speaker 1 16:27
Oftentimes, parents are a great way of being able to do that. Maybe, maybe you have a new membership class, a new members class that your pastor hosts on whatever, a quarterly basis, twice a year, whatever asking if you can get in and have a minute to speak in that new members class, big deal. Talk about the children's ministry. Talk about what it is that you and the volunteers do share some of those stories. Never know who's going to turn up

Unknown Speaker 16:58
using social media.

Speaker 1 17:01
Go through the list of who else follows your social media pages, for the church, for your kids, Facebook group, or your Instagram page, whatever it is you do, look at the people who are following. Go into go into the friends list, the followers list, and then contact all those people. Hey, you seem to be connected, at least. You want to follow along with what's going on. Do you want to actually serve in the ministry, too? It's a great way of being able to get people interested. The other way is this, and this is kind of a grind, but asking your current volunteers who they would suggest, and then following those leads, I think it's a great way of being able to get volunteers, or at least leads for volunteers. Here's an example. Have you considered asking parents to serve with you in the children's ministry? They already have a heart for kids. They're familiar with your culture, or the people who are bought in, they're familiar with the culture start. What's most familiar when it comes to recruiting volunteers? Then you're going to host volunteer information sessions. Okay, great. So you're doing the individual reach outs, but what about an all call? Maybe you do this once a quarter. Maybe you do this once every third, right? Every at the beginning of every semester, right? Fall, Spring and Summer, you're going to hold special events where you can personally share the vision, or back to that vision, word of the children's ministry, in the specific needs that you have. Maybe you're going to create something that's called volunteer 101, where you explain the heart behind the ministry and the vital role that these people can play. You're gonna do a registration so that you can have them answer a questionnaire ahead of time. It's a Google form, super simple. They're gonna fill that out. They're gonna send it ahead so that you can have an idea of where they may be interested. Then you're gonna ask some of your current volunteers to be Table leaders that are gonna sit at the table with the people who are interested in the ministry to be able to help answer questions or even laugh at the jokes that you're going to tell that make people kind of interested in what the heck it is that you're doing right.

Unknown Speaker 19:14
Host events, give them information,

Speaker 1 19:18
feed them. I'm a big advocate for feeding people. I think people I think people come to things, if you feed them, then we're going to offer flexible roles and commitments. There are some things that I'm inflexible on right, like you have to come to trainings, and if you can't come to the training, then we're going to have to work out how we can get you the information, right? But I think that if somebody says that they can serve twice a month, we don't bend what the role is. We shift what role we put them in, right? Maybe they say they can only serve, okay? Well, what we do with our teachers is is they have an opt in for every. Faster, right? But they serve every week. Maybe they can only serve twice a twice a month. Okay, how about if we have you in a in an assistant role first, or maybe you're at the greeting area, or maybe you're check in, right? We don't, we don't flex the role and change the role. We change the role that they're being offered. Does that make sense?

Unknown Speaker 20:22
But we're flexible with it. We have multiple options. If

Speaker 1 20:26
people want to serve great. We have our needs, and we're not going to bend on them. Can bend on what we show them where they can serve. Here's an example. We're going to offer a range of volunteer opportunities. We're even going to offer one time event help ideas. We're going to show them everything. We're going to make sure that whatever their availability is, there's something for them, there's something for them to serve. See, we need volunteers who can commit not just when is convenient for them, but also what's convenient for the ministry, right? Maybe it's convenient for them, but if it's not convenient for the ministry, then why do you have them? So we're going to offer a whole bunch of different options, and we're going to make sure that their needs meet and fit our needs as well, not just vice versa. You're not going to be desperate when you're recruiting, you're going to be strategic when you're recruiting, when you're recruiting. I mentioned this earlier by having your volunteers asking them for leads, but you're going to use your current volunteers as ambassadors. One of my goals this year is to make sure that in our surveys, I'm including a line where I'm encouraging volunteers to give me one name of a person they think would make a great volunteer. And I I've been toying with the idea of making it mandatory, actually, um, upon pain of death. No, I'm just kidding. Um, but, but, but, I want to hear more from my volunteers on like, Hey, you guys are in circles that I'm not a part of. Like, who are the people that you're thinking of that you believe would be great at leading kids or at check in, or as a VBS volunteer, or as an event volunteer, whatever like who do you think? Maybe it's somebody I've never thought of. Maybe it is somebody I've thought of, but I want the names. We're gonna use our current volunteers as ambassadors. We're gonna empower them to recruit their friends and family by sharing their personal experiences. We're gonna have we're gonna prep them or say, Hey, I know it's kind of intimidating. It's a little bit weird. What if you just say this, share a story from their life about their time volunteering, of why volunteering matters, and how has it impacted their walk in faith. Can you do that? Can you share a story of how serving with children has impacted your relationship with God. That's all you have to do. When we prep them, when we equip them, and we encourage them. That's how we begin names.

Unknown Speaker 23:10
All right, so you've got,

Speaker 1 23:14
you've got some volunteers. How are we going to sustain the volunteer commitment? This is the retain part. This is hard, so let's get into it. We're going to build a strong community amongst our volunteers. We're going to create a family like atmosphere where volunteers can support one another and grow in their faith together. We're going to host regular volunteer gatherings to pray. We're going to host regular volunteer gatherings to train we're going to share stories in maybe a volunteer super text thread. We're going to encourage one another in our own Faith Journeys. We're going to create a culture that raises up and makes much of Jesus and one that is transparent, one that fosters trust. We're going to do that by praying for our volunteers with them, sharing meals with them and sending encouragement texts in group chats. We're going to send scripture for them to check out. We're going to help to build a strong community. When you volunteer on your team, they're going to know that they have people that care about them. Actually, we're going to regularly show appreciation acknowledgement. We're going to thank volunteers often and profusely. We're going to celebrate the efforts, whether they are big or small. I mentioned in a previous episode, I was walking through the church and I thanked volunteers who were preparing communion. Right? They do this every month, and been doing it for years, but like, I just wanted to thank them. Hey, thank you for doing that. That's a big deal. So you're part of helping our church to worship and come and sit at the Lord's table together and celebrate that Jesus is alive, His death and His resurrection like thank you for doing that. That's a big deal. Wow. Whether it's big, whether it's little, let them know you appreciate it. Make it a point to send thank you notes. Make a volunteer highlight of the month. Celebrate milestones like birthdays, marriage anniversaries, anniversaries of service. Do that? Spend time build systems around it. Building Systems is one of the biggest things I'm going to do an episode on this, building systems

Unknown Speaker 25:44
for managing volunteers, do a whole episode on that,

Speaker 1 25:48
then provide we're going to provide opportunities for growth in leadership. This is training. This is training. We're going to give our volunteers opportunities to take on more responsibility and develop new skills. We're going to send them to workshops. We're going to give them books. We're going to send them this podcast right like we're going to send them podcast episodes, YouTube links. We're going to send them scripture references. We're sending them devotionals. We're going to make sure that they have every opportunity to succeed and to grow and develop, not just for their role, but also in their faith. We're going to offer those quarterly trainings. We're going to talk about how to run an effective training in another episode as well. Then we're going to help them, not just to do their job well, but then to mentor others and give them the opportunity to take on even more responsibility. And that's going to be a positive thing, not a negative thing. Well, let's kind of recap this episode. This is a general overview of volunteer recruitment. It's not exhaustive by any means, but it's an overview. We're going to talk the next several episodes about how we can recruit, train and retain volunteers. Okay, let's recap. We talked about why recruiting the right volunteers is essential for building a thriving children's ministry. It's important. We talked about how to craft a compelling, mission focused recruitment message. And then we talked about a few broad tips for keeping volunteers engaged and committed long term. Okay, here's some action steps. I have a challenge for you again this week, this week, take a moment reevaluate your volunteer recruitment strategy. Are you effectively communicating the purpose behind your ministry? How can you ensure volunteers feel supported and valued? Does your recruitment strategy reflect the values and the mission of your church? Are you just recruiting to plug holes, or are you strategically recruiting people who are like minded and who are motivated by the same purpose and message of the gospel. Evaluate yourself. Look at your recruitment strategy. All right, when you take this episode, when you share it with another children's ministry leader who you think needs to hear this message, then what I want you to do is I want you to go back and listen to that vision podcast. I believe it was episode two, because I think that all of us need to make sure that we're recruiting volunteers and connecting them to the vision of our ministry. And then I want you to email me. Todd at Kidman leader.com submit some questions, maybe some topics that you'd like me to cover I enjoy. I'm a student of children's ministry, and so I love hearing from you about what I can help create that will serve you. Well. Alright, let's close in prayer, Lord, we we just thank you for every volunteer who steps into the lives of children to share your love. Share the gospel. We pray for new volunteers who will join these teams and help us create an environment where children can grow in their faith. Bless the volunteers, Lord and bless the leaders listening to this episode today continue to guide them as they serve

Unknown Speaker 29:18
in Jesus. Name. Amen. You.

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