Church Volunteer Training

Does your church volunteer training really hit the mark?

Here is an excerpt from Group Volunteers - Tuesday's Tip to answer that question:

1. Make sure your volunteers know your ministry's overall mission. Never assume your leaders know your goals if you haven't told them (or told them recently) what they are. People who don't know how they fit into the big picture quickly lose their enthusiasm. Also, always tie your training in to a specific ministry goal.

2. Leave time at the end of each training session to make sure they understand what you taught. Encourage, prod, and beg them to ask questions about what they're learning. Never end a training time without asking them to repeat, somehow, what they've learned. Group activities can help reinforce spoken teaching.

3. Tell your volunteers where they can get more information on a training topic. Refer your leaders to printed and video resources that can give more in-depth information on a particular topic. Church Volunteer Central members can point their people to thousands of free resources on our site, including online training.

4. Don't assume your volunteers "got it" the first time. Don't be afraid to hit a crucial training topic more than once. For example, if you train your adult leaders on building relationships with teenagers, hit the same topic at your next meeting with a lab experience. Invite youth group members to the meeting and have your leaders use them as guinea pigs to try out their new skills.

5. Give volunteers a booklet of important training tips. It's important for your adult leaders to have an ongoing reminder of what they learn in training meetings.

[Adapted from Group magazine, the world's most-read youth ministry resource. See www.youthministry.com for more information. This post is from Group Volunteers: Tuesday's Tip. These tips can go directly into your inbox, and you can click here to go to their site to receive them.]

Top 5 Volunteer No-No's

[From Ministry Best Practices by Bill Reichart]

Volunteers are the life blood of any church or ministry. Without those who generously give of their time, talents and energy - nothing would be able to be accomplished by the church (humanly speaking of course). Here are some volunteer no-no's and pitfalls to avoid when working and communicating with volunteers.

1. Never ask a volunteer to help “YOU.”

Ask them to help the church, or help in a classroom. Don’t make it a personal favor to you. Personal favors won't stand up over the test of time.

The focus shouldn't be about YOU.

2. Never thank a volunteer for helping “YOU.”

Remind them of your overall vision and purpose when saying Thank You.

For example, "Thank you for helping us reach all these kids this morning. You’ve been a great help to all of us!” vs. “Thanks for helping me out. I don’t know what I would have done without you!”

And ... the church name should be prominently displayed on any thank you correspondence. Make it about the Church or organization, not me!

3. Don’t ask the same volunteer to do the same thing over and over.

Don’t abuse the willingness of one person to ALWAYS help when needed. Mix it up! Don't go to the same "well" all the time.

You want to avoid not giving others in the church the opportunity and privilege to serve.

4. Never show any displeasure with church leadership to Volunteers.

Teach the Power of Buy-In! Representing our leader’s choices as our very own. This shows our volunteers that we are a strong team, and are working together for a common goal.

Even if it is someone else’s fault, make it our fault (this is where the power of the Gospel comes in - we can own fault when we know that we are SECURE in Christ). If everyone would do this, then rumors and displeasure with leadership would be stopped early and often!

5. Never ask "How did it go today?"

“How did it go today, or this morning?” is an unhelpful question. The question is too vague, and you are certain to get merely a one word answer, "fine".

Ask questions that are directed toward the specific outcomes you and your volunteers are working toward. When you do this, it will give you and your volunteers a real and concrete sense of how they are doing, and it will provoke with them a real discussion of issues or concerns that perhaps need to be addressed.

[ht: littlepastor]

Church Resources - National Volunteer Week

A resource-packed Web site recently launched a campaign to equip churches for national volunteer month in April and for volunteer week later this month.

The site, http://www.christianvolunteering.org/, offers a searchable directory of nearly 3,000 volunteer opportunities in 1,800 organizations aimed at equipping churches to volunteer in their communities.

ChristianVolunteering.org’s partners include big-name Christian ministries such as the Salvation Army, World Vision, Gospel Communications, the Association of Gospel Rescue Missions, Campus Crusade’s Here’s Life Inner City, Christian Community Development Association, and the Urban Youth Worker’s Institute.

“The purpose of this campaign is to get more volunteers from churches serving out in the community with the goal placing over 1 million volunteers in the next ten years,” the Web site explained.

The campaign highlighted the discrepancy between faith-based volunteer activities within church walls and volunteer work in the community.

According to the United States Department of Labor, faith-based volunteers are the largest pool of volunteers, representing over 34.8 percent of volunteers. The value of the time donated by faith-based volunteers is $51.8 billion each year in the United States alone, according to the Corporation for National and Community Service and the Department of Labor.

But very little of this volunteering occurs outside the church. Only 7 to 15 percent of volunteering through churches help the larger community, according to Lester Salamon of the Institute for Policy Studies of Johns Hopkins University.

In response, the Web site provides resources to encourage churches to launch a community volunteer program.

Pastors can find ideas for sermons on service and justice in the sermon outline directory. They can also have their church small groups conduct Bible studies on the importance of service and justice, and then have the small groups use the Web site to find local volunteer opportunities.

The site provides the following toolkit:

• Directory of over 40 sermon outlines, bible studies and small group materials on the importance of service and Christian social justice
• Group volunteer opportunity search for churches and small groups that want to volunteer together
• Church volunteer toolkit and Wiki encyclopedia on church volunteering
• Webcast presentations to train volunteers and volunteer coordinators
• Multimedia directory of thousands of sermons, workshops, videos and MP3s on justice topics
• Short term missions directory with opportunities across the world

National Volunteer Month is April and National Volunteer Week is April 27 to May 3.