9 Beyond Rotation: Building Your Dream Team

Beyond Rotation

Building Your Dream Team

You do not have, because you do not ask.

The army of God has a lot of demoralized leaders.

It’s the Catch-22 of children’s ministry. We long to provide consistent volunteers to create a safe, welcoming space for our kids. But if we overburden our volunteers by asking too much, we won’t have any volunteers.

Is it possible both to provide consistent volunteers for our children and do so in a way that actually energizes rather than burdens our volunteers? I believe it is, and I will teach you how in this chapter.

If the single most common challenge children’s ministries face today is a lack of consistent volunteers (and I’m pretty sure it is), then most children’s ministry leaders are spending more of our time solving this problem than anything else, right? Sadly, no. We may be putting a lot of time into recruiting volunteers (for this Sunday!), but few of us are spending significant time trying to actually change the volunteer deficit in our ministries.

Few children’s ministries tend to the volunteer recruiting process with anywhere near the investment it requires. So we accept the lack of volunteer support as normal, a fact of life we can do nothing to change.

Why do so many of us avoid spending time on the one problem that, if it were solved, would significantly lower our stress and multiply our ministry with kids? The following are a sampling of excuses (answers?) we’ve heard:

Chances are you’ve been around the block long enough to know that blurbs in the church bulletin, passing around a sheet in adult Sunday school classes, and pastors begging for help from the pulpit don’t work in any sustainable way. But most children’s pastors are still looking for a quick and easy way to recruit volunteers, and when they can’t find one, they simply give up.

Here’s the bad news: there is no quick and easy way.

Here’s the good news: there is a simple one.

Recruiting on Purpose

Most children’s ministries have an intentional recruiting strategy. Most rely on the ask-the-same-people-in-the-same-way plan—a recipe for frustrated staff and burned-out volunteers.

At the same time, most children’s ministers feel like they’ve done everything they know to do to get volunteers involved. Typically, I hear how hard the leader is trying to get volunteers, and yet each week the leader is scrambling at the last minute, desperately trying to fill the last few slots.

It’s not that we aren’t making the effort. But we are putting our effort into the wrong things. Sunday morning pleas from the pulpit or announcements in the bulletin might get us a little exposure, but shotgun announcements aren’t the magic solution we expect.

One Sunday I was so excited because my pastor gave a great pitch for people to volunteer in children’s ministry. It was really good! Twenty-eight people came to the back of the worship space and gave me their names and numbers! I was thrilled. My problem was solved, right?

Well, not exactly. After countless hours working through all the names, only two of them ended up on my volunteer roster. The rest were happy to bring juice and cookies every now and then or serve as subs “when you can’t find anyone else,” but only two were able to step into the roles I was looking to fill.

I was working hard, but in the end, it felt like I was wasting time getting lots of nos (from people who had signed up!). I found myself sporting a pretty bad attitude by the time I was through my list of twenty-eight “volunteers.”

Announcements to everyone might be a step in the strategy, but one step is not a strategy. If you feel like you’ve been working hard and have done everything you know to do to fill your volunteer roster, you probably need a new strategy (or maybe a first strategy!).

Try the following strategy. Set aside a couple of hours a week to focus on recruiting. If this is one of your biggest challenges in ministry, you should be spending a chunk of time each week working on a solution. In all likelihood, you’re already spending more than two hours a week scrambling to fill your volunteer positions week after week. And even if you’re not, if you knew that you could solve your volunteer problem for many years to come, wouldn’t it be worth the investment? Here’s the plan.

1. Pray. Partner with the Holy Spirit by praying for the volunteer leaders you need, not simply that slots would be filled but that those who do serve would find themselves coming alive through their service.

2. Start early. Begin this process in February if you want a full roster of volunteers by August or September. The kind of people you want on your team are typically the kind of people who plan ahead, who are already confirming their fall commitments in the spring.

You want this kind of initiative taker on your team. Time after time, I’ve heard my colleagues in ministry say that the people in their church won’t commit this far in advance. Some people won’t, but many times the right people will.

When we wait until a month or so before we need people to start serving, those who plan ahead have often filled their calendars and their volunteer commitments to capacity, leaving you with people who make last minute decisions. These folks can be helpful in a pinch, but you can’t build a sustainable children’s ministry with them. Asking in advance communicates that the volunteer role you are seeking to fill is as important as serving on the PTA, as a Scout leader, or as a soccer coach (roles that almost always get nailed down three to five months ahead of time).

Sometimes, we think we can’t begin recruiting in February because we won’t know what we need until summer, because volunteers don’t usually tell us what their fall plans are in February or March! February is a great time to check in with each team member, asking them how they feel about returning in the fall. There always are volunteers who are getting tired, and if we would give volunteers the option to say they don’t plan to return, we will have six months to fill their positions.

More often than not, volunteers keep coming week after week, and no one knows that they are getting tired. They don’t want to disappoint their friend, the children’s director. But then the volunteer has had a difficult time in class one too many times and approaches the director saying something like, “I really hate to do this, but I just can’t volunteer anymore. This will be my last Sunday.”

Now you’re stuck and only have one week to fill that vacancy. That’s not fair to you, the kids, the other volunteers, or the church. I know it can be scary to ask volunteers if they plan to return for the coming year. They might say no! But it’s a lot harder to learn that news at the last minute.

3. Identify your needs. This sounds so simple, but few children’s ministry leaders actually develop a list of all of their volunteer needs for an entire year. There are many reasons we don’t want to do this simple task.

Your list of needs may include all the Sunday school teachers you need, how many people you need on your VBS planning team, special event coordinators, snack coordinators, a children’s committee, and other volunteer roles unique to your church.

When you make your list and see how many volunteers you actually need, your anxiety might take over at first. The beauty of this process is that even if you don’t fill all the positions (and you will if you work the plan), you’ll be way better off than you were before. And if you keep working the plan, you will be encouraged that you’ll never again have to feel this far behind in recruiting volunteers at your church. Once you’ve created your master list of needs, you’re ready for the next step.

4. Make your prospect list. I hope you’ve noticed that you are at step 4 and haven’t asked a single person to serve yet. This process helps us move beyond chasing parents down the hallway right before Sunday school, or asking your family members and best friends to fill in “just this once.”

How many people do you need on your prospect list? Our general rule is that you’ll need three times the number of unfilled positions on your needs list (step 3). So, for example, if you have twenty open positions on your needs list, you’ll need to have a prospect list of sixty.

You may be laughing right now. You’re thinking, I only know a limited number of people, and they already are screening my calls! How will you come up with three times as many prospective volunteers as you have open positions on your needs list?

The key is to tap into networks beyond your own! In step 4 you’ll check with your pastor, your church staff, your current volunteers, and even some of the kids, asking, “Who in our church do you think would be great working with children?”

You’ll scan the church directory for names. You’ll scan the sanctuary for faces. You’ll keep asking for suggestions until you get to your desired number of potential volunteers.

If you’re like most children’s ministry leaders we’ve met, you’ll be tempted to shorten this process (or skip it all together) and start asking people to serve. Don’t do it. Having this list—as hard as it may be to develop—is absolutely critical to the success of your recruiting efforts. Without it, there’s a good chance you’ll be in exactly the same place next year as you are today.

5. Merge your lists. Once you have completed your prospect list, it’s time to decide which people you would like to see in which positions. Put one name in each of the slots on your needs list. Once you’ve got a name in each slot, you’ve identified your dream team.

The key is that you don’t want to decide for anyone without asking them. Start with your first choice for each open position. Even if you think your favorite people will decline, always ask your “dream team” first. Even though you think they are too busy or won’t be interested, give them the opportunity. You never know who the Holy Spirit might be stirring (especially if you’ve been praying)!

One more tip before you start the actual recruiting: ask each person to serve in a particular position rather than generally in “any area of the children’s ministry that might fit best.” If you ask and they aren’t thrilled about the position you offered, you can always ask them to consider other options.

6. Make contact. For many of us in children’s ministry, making contact is the hardest part. Once you’ve got your dream team list in front of you, I recommend you start by sending an email to every person on your dream team list the first week. Make your first message something personal but simple, and give them an easy way to decline if this is not a good time for them. (This will keep your message from sounding desperate.)

You shouldn’t send a group email (e.g., “Dear wonderful potential volunteers”) to multiple people at the same time. People who get those kinds of emails almost always assume someone else in that email thread will say yes. Group emails are simply too easy to ignore, and though they seem more efficient, they always take you much longer in the long run. In the first week, you may want to begin by contacting all your current volunteers to take the temperature of their willingness to serve in the same or a different capacity in the children’s ministry in the coming year.

7. Keep contacting. Perhaps the most important step is to keep contacting. Each week, you will hear from a few people. Some will say yes. Some will say no. Others will say maybe. But the vast majority will not respond at all! Don’t be surprised or disappointed by the lack of response. It is simply part of the process.

Once you’ve established your weekly contacting rhythm, you’ll want to focus your two recruiting hours each week on making progress with every open position on your list, going back to your list of prospects, until your open positions are filled. Don’t worry about finding just the right time to call or send a message. Just let them know why you’re calling and that if you don’t hear back in a few days, you’ll try again. Most people will take their time responding to you, even if they intend to volunteer.

If you’re playing catch up, this is going to be more work at first, because you’re recruiting for this coming Sunday and next fall. But if you dedicate two hours each week to the priority of your long-term recruiting, you will never again suffer the type of volunteer deficit you currently have.

When Volunteers Rotate

Most children’s ministries have settled into an uneasy and complicated rotation system with their volunteers. We don’t want to wear out our volunteers, so instead of giving them a mission they can sink their teeth into, a calling that will actually change children’s lives, we ask them to help out by filling a slot once a month.

Most of us have known (and some of us have been) people who have had a calling to children’s ministry, who couldn’t imagine not being with “their kids” every Sunday. It is these kinds of people you want to build your children’s ministry on.

When it comes to recruiting great volunteers, most of us start with this assumption: Despite the fact that I think there is no more important ministry in the church than children’s ministry, I’m pretty sure no one in our church would be willing to give more than an hour and a half or so a month. Maybe the committed folks would be willing to work with kids two Sundays a month. So I won’t even ask anyone to serve every week.

When we approach the recruiting process this way, we rob people of the chance to fall in love with children’s ministry the way we have. So we always start by asking people to work with children on a weekly basis. Here’s why:

Again, you’re probably thinking, I’ll never get weekly volunteers in my church. It’s just not possible. If that is going through your mind, here’s my challenge: this year, ask everyone to serve weekly. If they all say no, you’ll have the joy of being right. If even one of them says yes, you’re making progress!

Knowing that moving to a model of weekly volunteers may not happen in the first year or two of working the sustainable children’s ministry process, I’m going to introduce a few volunteer-rotation models you can use during the years of moving your ministry to more consistent weekly volunteers.

Rotation Option 1: One Weekly, One Rotating

Just because not all your teachers can serve every week doesn’t mean that you can’t have one consistent, weekly teacher in every setting. There’s a good chance you’ve already got a handful of volunteers who want to be with the kids every week. If you have six classes, you only need six people who are willing to serve weekly.

This person might serve as your lead teacher, but they don’t have to be. You may find it more workable to have your rotating volunteer prepare the lesson each week and let your weekly volunteer serve as the master of ceremonies for the class and as the person who knows each kid’s story a little better.

Some churches call that weekly, relational volunteer a shepherd; others call them assistant teachers. Regardless, it’s nice to have that one familiar face, and whether they are leading the class or are more hands-on with the kids, everyone wins when you have this kind of consistency in your ministry.

Rotation Option 2: Every Other Week Teams

Another approach is to put together teams that serve together every other week. I know a church in Washington state that has an A team and a B team. The same people serve together every time they serve.

This arrangement makes scheduling easy for the staff, provides consistency for the volunteers, and gives the kids the predictability of steady leadership they can feel comfortable with. Even though they don’t have the same teachers every week, children get to know two groups of leaders and have the blessing of twice as many godly adults in their lives.

Volunteers using this configuration find a rhythm of support with each other, especially on those days when the class is less than a homerun. And when a sub is needed, they have a natural resource to call on with the other team.

Rotation Option 3: Shorter, Consistent Commitments

We’ve seen some churches successfully ask for weekly commitments from volunteers, but for a shorter amount of time. One church does a workshop rotation model in five-week segments. Their volunteers commit for five weeks, and then have the option to come back the next five weeks or take a break and come back later. This also affords a level of consistency for the kids and allows volunteers who might not be able to commit for a year to make a meaningful commitments with a short time horizon.

Another church structures their rotation by asking volunteers to work every week for a month and then take a month or two off. Kids will get to know more adults this way, and it is easy for volunteers to commit to something they know they are able to complete.

Rotation Option 4: Combining Rotation Models

Some churches combine multiple rotation models. For example, if you hope to have one consistent teacher and one rotating helper, you might consider a shorter commitment for the consistent volunteer, say a semester rather than a whole year.

But whatever model you choose, strive for consistency across your ministry or you’ll find yourself with a major headache on your hands. When you have one person who can commit to every six weeks and another who can commit to every four, and another who wants to work the second Sunday of the month, it creates more work for you and more confusion for your team. As the leader, you can decide on the model you want to use and ask your volunteers to commit to the rotation model that makes the most sense to your culture. It goes without saying: the worst rotation model is one that is filled in week by week, always at the last minute, leaving you reinventing the wheel every Saturday night. Period.

The Care and Feeding of Volunteers

Now that you’ve got a process for recruiting and scheduling your volunteers, it’s time to build the process for keeping those volunteers engaged, trained, and enthusiastic about their work in the children’s ministry. I know. You’re thinking:

I joined a new church about two years ago and quickly volunteered with the children’s ministry. It was an eye-opening experience. For the first time in twenty years, I wasn’t in charge. I didn’t know where the extra scissors were kept, and didn’t know if kids were allowed to go to the bathroom alone or not. I got a great lesson in how anxious a new volunteer can be. I volunteered because I wanted to help. I wanted to meet all the expectations. I just wasn’t sure what those expectations were.

Certain things just shouldn’t be left to chance (or interpretation). Things like discipline policies, ratios, bathroom and diaper-changing policies, and pickup procedures cannot be made up by new volunteers each week. These are important enough that everyone needs to be on the same page.

Thankfully, the staff took me through their onboarding process. Each week, a leader took me aside and went over five or six points of training, and as I learned the policies and expectations I became increasingly comfortable in my volunteer role. By the time I was finished with these meetings, I knew this was a church that would value my contribution because they had already invested so much time in me. I knew I wasn’t just filling a slot.

The icing on the cake was a training meeting for all the children’s ministry volunteers. The lead pastor started the session. It wasn’t just his presence that got my attention (although that did say something about the importance of children’s ministry in this church). When he said something like, “This is how we win in early childhood,” he went on to explain the main objective with children of that age. He went on to describe a win with our elementary kids too. I was inspired—and relieved. In very simple terms, I knew how to be successful in my role as a children’s ministry volunteer.

The same will happen for your volunteers. As they learn what success looks like, and they know which standard to measure their contribution by, their anxiety will lessen. And on top of that, they know when to celebrate!

Making Training Irresistible

Even though you might agree with me about the importance of volunteer training, you might be hesitant to put the training together yourself. In almost every church I visit, I hear the same responses about teacher training: “We have tried, and no one comes.”

Let’s make that reality our starting point. People are less and less likely to come to meetings anymore. If we know that’s the case, you can still take responsibility (as the onboarding children’s ministry staff did for me at my church) to meet with new volunteers one-on-one or in small groups.

Though not everyone will be able to come to the big meeting, you can still make sure they get all the information they need to launch well. A flexible coffee or lunch date with a volunteer or two can go a long way toward making sure your volunteers are getting clear directions and the necessary support as they step into their roles.

We know that most people don’t want another meeting, but we can make sure the meetings we have are worth their time. Try these ideas and see if you don’t have an easier time getting folks to come to your volunteer meetings next year!

Reframe it. No one looks forward to being talked at. But people love to be celebrated and to have fun. You don’t have to call your get-together a “training” event (yawn). Send invitations, and make it feel like a party. My rule of thumb is this: everyone needs to be invited three different ways if you want them to come. A mass email just won’t do it. The more personal your invitation, the better your chances of having a great turnout. I like to mail an invitation about three weeks out, send an email two weeks out, and make a personal call the week of my event. I know that takes some time, but the benefits you will reap from personally reaching out to your team are well worth it.

Create a culture of value. Everyone wants to be a part of something that matters. Make sure they leave your event inspired. Maybe a testimony (live or on video) from a young person, parent, or volunteer who has been blessed by the program. If all they receive from the gathering is information that could have been emailed to them, they didn’t need to come to a meeting.

Make it fun. You don’t need to talk that long to get your training done, so make the event into a party. Take the time to let your teachers build community. Use a fun game or activity as a part of training them in how to teach more effectively. At one event, we used a Jeopardy! game to teach our safety policies, and gave out play money for them to use to bid on donated items at the end of the night.

Respect their time. I know this is difficult, but if you want your volunteers to come back next time, start on time and end on time. It shows people that you value them and their time, and that you will keep your word.

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