Posted on November 2, 2009 - by rfrank

9 trends in CM leadership – part 4

Trend #4: Limited budgets and busy volunteers require creativity in training

Volunteers are more important than the people they serve. Stop and think about that. Do you agree? It’s not that the kids aren’t important, but it’s volunteers who interact with the children week after week to influence their lives. Consider that Jesus spent more time with his twelve than he did any other group of people.

Volunteers are important and need to be trained. Training would be easy if it wasn’t for budgets and busy schedules. You can’t afford to bring the world’s best trainers to your church; and if you could, good luck getting everyone to show up. This forces you to be creative in your approach to training.

1) Blogs. Some churches have created traditional blogs and video blogs to train their volunteers.

Justyn Smith, children’s pastor at The Church at South Las Vegas, says, “I use a ‘secret’ blog and podcast site that only my volunteers know about. I also allow my leaders/teachers to post their thoughts and encourage others to discuss them so we can all synergize to come up with solutions or better ways of doing things.”

2) Podcasts. A podcast is a broadcast of multimedia information (usually audio) over the internet. It can then be played on a mobile device or personal computer.  Churches are choosing to deliver podcasts on a regular basis so volunteers can listen on their own schedule.

Phillip Harris, children’s pastor at Lawrenceville Church of God, says, “We’ve often shared inspiring and training messages in audio and video formats. Some we’ve made on our own, but we’ve also passed along many that we got from others (like Jim Wideman and reThink). Simple and effective.”

For churches that do not want to create their own podcasts, there are other options. Two such examples are Children’s Ministry Talk and Children’s Ministry Podcast. Children’s Ministry Talk (www.childrensministrytalk.com) is a podcast devoted to providing straight talk for children’s ministry leaders, by children’s ministry leaders, on all things related to children’s ministry. It is hosted by Dick Gruber, Jason Rhode, and other children’s ministry leaders. Children’s Ministry Podcast (www.kidology.org/podcast) is hosted by Karl Bastian and his sidekick puppet, Gus. Together they discuss children’s ministry and provide helpful insights and tips for children’s pastors, leaders, and volunteers.

3) Twitter. Children’s pastors like Sam Luce at Mt. Zion Ministries Church plan to use Twitter to connect with their volunteers. “I am still working out the kinks. I think it is going to be great for my teen/college-age helpers and is much better than email. For my adult volunteers, it may be a tougher sell.”