Tag: volunteers

6 Questions Every Volunteer is Asking

Today, I’m blogging for Breeze Church Management Software on the topic of volunteer retention.  Here’s a sample…

In church world, we’re often scrambling to recruit enough volunteers.  It seems like there are never enough.   Here’s a thought:  What if our volunteers stuck around?  What if we didn’t have to recruit as many volunteers because the majority of our volunteers stayed engaged? What if our volunteers loved serving so much that they stayed involved?  How much more efficient and effective would or ministries and churches become?

I believe this scenario is possible.  In fact, I’ve seen it happen year after year in our church.

I believe any ministry or church can achieve high levels of volunteer satisfaction and retention by answering 6 questions that all volunteers are asking…

Check out the rest of the post here.

4 Strategies for Recruiting More Volunteers

Hey Friends,

Today, I’m guest blogging for Breeze, which is a pretty amazing church management software, check it out.  Here’s a sample of the post:

 

One of the most frequently asked questions I hear from ministry leaders is:

“How do we get more volunteers?”

The success of our churches and ministries often depend on the quality and number of our volunteers.   The seasons in which we don’t have enough volunteers are both stressful and exhausting while the seasons in which our volunteer teams are full and healthy are often life-giving and fruitful.

So, how do we motive our people to move from sitting to serving? I have four strategies that have proven effective in our church.

Click here to read the rest of the post.

Make it Happen

I’m currently in a blog series about creating a magnetic volunteer culture.  I believe that fantastic volunteers–specifically small group leaders, are the key to a transformational student ministry.  Here’s what I’ve written on the topic over the last few weeks:

How to Take Your Student Ministry to the Next Level

Give Them What They Want

Raise the Bar

Today, I want to share a little about making it happen.  What do you need to do to create a magnetic volunteer culture?

 

MAKE IT RIDICULOUSLY FUN

If you want a magnetic culture, people must love serving in your ministry.  It has to be a blast!  I’m convinced that in our ministry, volunteers have more fun that students.  We purposely target aspects of our programming at our volunteers.  We create videos that will be funny for our students and hysterical for our volunteers.  We put on a leader retreat that is over the top.  Essentially, we believe that if you want a magnetic volunteer culture, you must create a volunteer experience so compelling and fun that volunteers would rather be at your program than anywhere else.
Another easy way to make it ridiculously funny is swag.  Give your volunteers free stuff!  It keeps them happy.  It makes them feel valued and it is great marketing.
If you need more ideas on how to make it ridiculously fun, here’s a post I wrote on how to pull off an epic volunteer retreat:  click me

MAKE IT FREE

Step two in making it happen is to remove every obstacle that hinders a volunteer from serving effectively.  One of the biggest obstacles in student ministry is money.  Events, trips and retreats cost money.  It costs money to take a student out for coffee.
Let’s be honest, some of the best student ministry volunteers are college students because they are close in age to students, have tons of energy and (whether they believe it or not) have tons of free time.  What college students don’t have is money.
If you want a magnetic culture, remove the obstacles that prevent volunteers from doing great ministry.  The first and biggest is money.  In our ministry context, we have decided that volunteers will never pay for events, trips and retreats.  We’ve had to rethink some of what we do in order to pull this off but it has been worth it.  We’ve even gone as far as to create a fund for our volunteers who don’t have the money needed to take students out for coffee or lunch.  We believe in one-on-one conversations and we want our volunteers to do amazing work so we have removed the obstacle of money for them.  Make it free.

MAKE IT OBVIOUS

People want to know how they’re doing.  It’s part of human nature.  This is why we have grades, why we keep score and why cars have speedometers.  We want to know how we’re doing.
Also, it feels like a million bucks when you know you’re killing it–when you know you are meeting or exceeding expectations.  Everyone loves that feeling!   So, if you want a magnetic volunteer culture, promote that feeling!  Make the expectations and grading scale obvious and clear (in writing) and then encourage the heck out of your volunteers.
The truth is that most people don’t like quitting something they are really good at.  When you make the expectations obvious and when volunteers know they are doing a good job, they are very likely to stick around for a long time and tell their friends that your ministry is a great place to serve.  Boom…now you have a magnetic volunteer culture.

MAKE IT DOABLE

Here’s one of my pet peeves in student ministry:  ministries that require too much from their volunteers.  “Listen, we’re gonna need you here Sunday mornings for the service, Sunday night for the youth group service and Wednesday night for small groups.  We also have events twice a month, a fall retreat, a winter retreat, a summer retreat and four mission trips…”
We all know that student ministry is crucial and we all know what is at stake but no one can pull off that volunteer load for long.  You might get a few crazies who have no lives but over the long haul, you’ll only manage to hang on to volunteers for a year or two at the most.  Great student ministry–the kind that truly transforms lives, requires long-term investment over years of a student’s life.  You have to make volunteering doable!
In our ministry context, we keep it simple.  Our program only meets once a week.  We only ask our volunteers to show up for 3 hours once a week because we want them to have the time to get on the student’s turf.  Our training meetings are attached to our programming.  We only require 3 events per year:
  • a leader/parent brunch (2 hours)
  • a leader retreat (1 night)
  • a winter retreat (2 nights)

When you make the volunteer load doable and manageable, volunteers feel like their ministry is sustainable.  Did I mention we take the summer off from programming?  Our volunteers come back after a summer break ready to absolutely crush it.  It’s great.

 

So, if you want to make a magnetic volunteer culture happen in your student ministry, make it ridiculously fun, make it free, make it obvious and make it doable.

 

 

photo credited to Nick Saltmarsh via Flickr

Raise the Bar

In in the middle of a blogging series on creating a magnetic volunteer culture.  A magnetic volunteer begins with giving them what they want:  community, a mission and a guide.  Today, I want to talk about raising the bar for our volunteers.

Over my student ministry career, I’ve noticed something.  People want to know what the standard is.  Everyone wants to know how they are doing.  That’s why we have grades.  That’s why we keep score.  That’s why we celebrate accomplishments.  In addition, everyone wants to know what the rules are.  That’s why we have speed limits.  That’s why we have regulations.  That’s why God gave Israel 10 Words.

It’s the same for volunteers.  It’s disorienting when you don’t know what you’re supposed to be doing and how you’re doing.  A magnetic volunteer community requires clarity on expectations.  This will help improve your student ministry in two ways.  Volunteers will typically play by the rules.  And, volunteers will rise to the bar you set.  So, let’s raise the bar!  Here’s what I mean.

 

RAISE THE BAR FOR EXPECTATIONS

What exactly does a small group leader do in your ministry?  What are their roles?  How often should they meet with students?  What do you want to happen during small group time?  What events should they attend?  How would they ever know if they are meeting those expectations?  Clarifying these things will bring peace to the hearts of your people and raise the impact of your volunteers’ ministry with students.

Secondly, how do you want your volunteers to behave?  Do they know how they are expected to behave?  What are your standards for dress, language, social media behavior, driving and meeting with students?

It can be uncomfortable to be a volunteer and to sense that their are expectations but to not have clarity on what the expectations are.  The clearer we are on communicating what the boundaries are and what winning looks like, the more healthy and magnetic our volunteer culture will be.

If you’ve never put together something like this, here are a few examples from our ministry:

SG Leader Expections

FM Covenent Staff

One last thing, if you’re going to have expectations, you have to be willing to enforce them.  Volunteers are the backbone of everything we do in our student ministry.  We simply must have great volunteers who are invested and committed.  If a volunteer isn’t fulfilling expectations we will have up to three meetings with the volunteer:
1. Clarify the expectations 
“Hey, you haven’t been meeting the expectations.  I just wanted to meet with you to make sure we’re on the same page on what the expectations are.  Can you do these things?  Yes?  Great!  Let’s meet in a few weeks to check on your progress.”
2. Set a deadline
“Hey, you’re still not meeting expectations.  Can you do this?  Yes?  OK.  I’m giving you 2 weeks to implement these things.  If you’re still not meeting expectations, I’m afraid we’re going to have to ask you to step down.”
3. Enforce the expectations
“Hey, you’re still not meeting expectations.  I’m really sorry but I don’t think this is a good fit for you.  I’m asking you to step away.”
In most cases, meeting number 1 is all it takes because the volunteer thinks, “Oh!  They are actually serious about this.  I better step it up!”

RAISE THE BAR FOR INVESTMENT

Creating a magnetic volunteer culture requires investment.  Volunteers who feel like they are being invested in and growing are likely to stick around for a long time.  The beauty is, when you invest in volunteers, they grow and volunteers who are growing make fantastic leaders.
However, we have to be honest about human nature.  Very few people grow naturally.  We get comfortable.  Most of us require pushes, big and small.  Who has the relational authority and equity to make these pushes?  The people we trust–the people who we are confident love us and have our best interest at heart.
We have to understand that while we need our volunteers to grow, we don’t automatically possess the relational authority to ask them hard questions, challenge their habits or call them into deeper spiritual practices.
If you want the relational authority to speak truth into a volunteers life, you must first invest.  They must know that you care.  This means that your volunteer community must be built on quality relationships, and someone on the student ministry staff needs to be driving the relational culture because investment matters and investment can’t happen outside of trust.

RAISE THE BAR FOR COMMITMENT

Here’s my one sentence descriptions of how high school girls feel about their small group leader…
Freshman year:  “I bet you’ll ditch us.”
Sophomore year:  “You actually came back?!?”
Junior year:  “If you ditch us now we’ll kill you!”
Senior year:  “Can I be in your wedding?”
Graduated:  “Will you be in my wedding?”
Sure, I’m oversimplifying, but my point is that it takes time for a small group leader to gain the trust of students but when trust is achieved, the relational connection becomes powerful.  If a small group leader has invested and stayed connected, by the time that small group is in the last two years of high school the potential is phenomenal.  I’ve been continually amazed by the quality of relationships that develop when a small group leader stays invested for years.  It’s incredible and the spiritual impact is unlike anything else I’ve seen in ministry.
When an adult comes alongside a group of students and invests in them over the long-haul, the result is pure magic.  On the flip side, I recently spent a couple days buried in the statistics of our student ministry.  One of the measurables I was studying was retention.  My questions:  Why do students drop out?  What are the factors that contribute to good retention?  The clearest indicator I found was the student’s small group leader.  If their leader bailed during high school, the student was very likely to walk away.
More than great programming and content, atmosphere or experiences, the most powerfully attractive factor we have in student ministry is the small group relationships.  In many ways, our success is contingent on the longevity and commit of our small group leaders.  We must raise the bar here.
Magnetic volunteer community requires raising the bar in three crucial ways:  raising the bar for expectations, raising the bar for investment and raising the bar for commitment.  I hope you’ve found this helpful.  I’ll be sharing more ideas soon.
photo credited to koocbor via Flickr

Give Them What They Want

I believe the most important factor in a transformational student ministry is a team of magnetic volunteers.  That’s why I’m devoting an entire blog series to building a magnetic volunteer culture.  The first step is to give them what they’re looking for.

GIVE THEM A COMMUNITY

Young or old, Gen X or Millennial, we all want to belong.  We long for that feeling of “family.”  This longing is hardwired within us.  We are at our best when we have a place to belong.  Your volunteers are looking for a community.  Give it to them.

I’ve discovered that when you build a culture that provides volunteers with a place to belong it’s really hard to get rid of them!  I’m serious.  It might sound crazy, but we have a hundred and a half small group leaders and it really isn’t that hard for us to recruit them  It’s common for us to turn away applicants because we don’t have enough small groups for them to lead.  Mostly, I believe this is because we have a reputation of providing our volunteers with a second family.

Each small group leader in our ministry context serves alongside 8-10 other leaders in their “house.”  These leaders sit together at weekly leader meetings and collaborate to lead programming in a house every other week.  In addition, each of these “houses” has two volunteers within it whose primary role is caring for and guiding small group leaders as they lead their students.  Year after year, these “house” teams evolve into something like family.  It is common for our “house” teams to meet an hour before our programming for a leader meeting and to then go out for apps and drinks after our programming because they simply love being together.

If you give your volunteers a place to belong as well as a place to serve, you will create something powerfully magnetic.  It’s amazing to watch.

 

GIVE THEM A MISSION

Not only do we want to belong, but we want to be part of something bigger than ourselves.  We all long for a cause worth giving our lives to. Volunteers are looking for a mission to invest in.  Give them what they are looking for.

One of the biggest mistakes that student ministry leaders make is asking too little of their volunteers.  It’s easy to think that we’re inconveniencing volunteers so we end up saying things like, “Look, if you just show up and keep the kids from breaking something, I’ll buy you dinner.”

We do just the opposite.  We ask our leaders to pour their lives into students.  Right up front, we tell them that this is a massive investment–it’s exhausting, it’s long, it’s hard and oh, and we need you for at least four years.  How can we ask for all this?  We can because we paint a compelling picture of why this investment is so epically worth it and we can show it in the lives of graduated students and their leaders.

We’re investing in the next generation.  We say things like, “In a culture that has largely abandoned teenagers, you have an opportunity to be a mentor.  The impact that your investment will have is incredible.  Listen, in our ministry, you’ll be the youth pastor.  You’ll be the one who knows our students–what they are going through and what they need.  It’s a huge responsibility and an amazing opportunity.”  I’ve learned that this is a mission that many young adults are willing to invest in–especially if they experienced the benefits of a spiritual mentor when they were young.

Give your volunteers a mission to live for.  Don’t make the mistake of asking too little of your volunteers.  Paint a compelling picture of why small group leaders are so powerful in the lives of students and invite your volunteers into the mission.  Then, watch them get to work and just a warning…be prepared to be amazed.  Volunteers who find a place to belong and are sold out to a worthwhile mission are incredible to watch!

 

GIVE THEM A GUIDE

Students aren’t the only ones on a spiritual journey.  Our small group leaders need investment, direction and care too.  In other words, volunteers are looking for someone to guide them–someone has to have the maturity, resources and time to do this because your ministry is only as good as the quality of your volunteers.  If your volunteers aren’t growing then your potential is being stifled.

As I mentioned earlier, in our ministry context, each volunteer is placed within a “house” team.  Each of these teams has a leader of each gender that we call a coach.  A coach is a volunteer who has ministry experience.  Most of our coaches led a small group of students before becoming a coach.  They know all the tricks of the trade and are great at offering advice and tactics for leading small groups.  In addition, our coaches are typically a few years down the road from our small group leaders.  They are more mature in their faith and more established in life.  Because of this, we ask them to invest in the lives of our small group leaders.  We give them a budget and require them to meet up with their leaders one-on-one over coffee and lunch and journey with them.

We firmly believe that our ministry rises and falls with the quality of our volunteers and that’s why we invest in them so heavily.  Providing them with a built in mentor is a great way to invest in them.  Maybe you don’t have the personal or the budget to create a second tier of volunteers to “coach.”  If this is the case, I think that person needs to be you.  One person can really only deeply invest in about 6 students.  If you have more than 6 students in your student ministry, then it’s time to start investing more into your volunteers than you’re investing into your students.  It’s simple math.  Go for the more strategic investment.

So, how do you create a magnetic volunteer culture?  It all begins with giving them what they’re looking for.  I believe every person longs for a family, a mission and a guide.  If you are able to provide your volunteers with these three things you’ll be well on your way to a powerfully magnetic culture.  Stay tuned.  I have a few more ideas on building a magnetic culture and I’ll be sharing them over the next few days.

 

 

photo credited to timlewisnm via Flickr

 

1 Practice That Could Transform Your Student Ministry

Most of us would agree that volunteers, particularly small group leaders are absolutely crucial to a strong student ministry.  A healthy, mentoring relationship with a caring adult is the one thing we can offer a student that they can’t get anywhere else.  It’s is imperative that our small group leaders are amazing!  Why is it, then, that we often invest so little in our small group leaders?  They ought to be our number one priority.

Years ago, our student ministry team stumbled upon a practice that has transformed our student ministry.  I honestly believe that our volunteer team is stronger than any I’ve seen anywhere else and our strength is built upon one simple practice that any student ministry can implement.  It’s so simple, easy and cheap that I can’t figure out why more student ministries don’t embrace it.  What is it?  Cloning.  You take your best volunteers and you simply clone them.  It’s genius!  OK, not really.  I mean that would be cool, but that’s not what I’m talking about.  Read on.

The super secret amazing practice that we stumbled upon is an hour long, weekly leader meeting, at the beginning of our programming.  Seriously, that’s it.  Every week, whether we are at one of our church campuses or in homes, the night begins with an hour long leader meeting that includes 4 components:  food, community, instructions and training.

 

FOOD

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Including our leader meeting, our typical night of high school programming lasts for 3 hours.  You can’t ask volunteers for 3 hours without feeding them!  Besides, food is always a great way to say thank-you and it is foundational for building community, which is what we’re all about.

 

COMMUNITY

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We believe that small group leaders are at their best when they serve as a community.  Weekly leader meetings have helped us build quality community.  Here’s how it works: each volunteer is placed in a team of volunteers–usually 8-10 people.  This team always sits together at every leader meeting.  Our goal is that this team would function like a small group.  Eating a meal together every week greatly contributes to the family culture that we’re attempting to build.  We firmly believe that in order to build real community you need consistency and time.  A weekly leader meeting that includes a meal ensures that both components happen on a weekly basis..

 

INSTRUCTIONS

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In order for a great night of student ministry to happen, all the key players need to be on the same page.  The third component of our weekly leader meetings is instructions.  This part is easy and most student ministries already do this.  We usually take about 5 minutes to walk through the night and make sure everyone knows what to expect, the goals, and the roles they need to fill.  One important point is that all of our volunteers and staff already know what will happen before our leader meeting because they (hopefully!) read our leader blog.

 

TRAINING

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In my experience, most student ministries are somewhere between poor and terrible at training their volunteers.  It’s difficult to find time and training events are often poorly attended.  What if, instead of 2 or 3 training events throughout the year, you did 30 minutes of training every week?  If your student ministry only meets during the school year, like ours, you still get 16 hours of training (32 weeks x 30 minutes of training).  And how much do you really think volunteers retain from a 1 or 2 hour training event?  Weekly 30 minute trainings are the way to go!  We love this model.

So, what do we train them on?  All kinds of stuff!  We talk about small group leading practices, our philosophy of ministry, how to handle crisis situations, how to talk about sexuality with a students, we invite our best small group leaders to share their best practices, we talk about how to partner with parents, how to do a one-on-one meeting with out being weird…basically, we train them on everything!  We find this training time to be incredibly valuable because we know that our student ministry is only as strong as our volunteers.  Let’s put it this way:  discipleship in your student ministry will only be as effective as your disciplers.

 

So there you have it–one practice that could transform your student ministry.  It’s all about elevating your volunteers through an intentional weekly volunteer meeting.  What do you think?

 

 

pizza image credited to rdpeyton via Flickr

Lego image credited to Nick Royer via Flickr

Chalkboard image credited to Jeff Warren via Flickr

My Favorite Volunteer Celebration Ever

A few weekends ago, our Family Ministry team threw down my favorite volunteer celebration ever.  I still have a perpetual fist pump going.  Look, maybe it’s not the best volunteer celebration in the history of the world but it’s the best one we’ve ever done.  If you’re interested, here’s what we did.

TASTY TREATS

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The first order of business in any great party is food.  Without good food the whole enterprise is in trouble.  I’m just saying.  Our volunteers came into the building and were treated to cheesecake and coffee.  In my book, that’s a win.

 

CHAOS AND FREE STUFF

After tasty treats, we corralled everyone into one of our auditorium spaces and played a variety of mixers and stage games.  We pitted department against department because we’re competitive like that.  Here’s what we played:

  • Always start with a Raffle…because free stuff is awesome!
  • A mixer called In Room Scavenger Hunt.  Click here for a description.
  • Powerade Flip Out.  It’s the Minute to Win it Game called Stick the Landing except we play four people at once flinging bottles on the same table.  Essentially it turns into madness with players blocking each others shots and throwing each others Powerade across the room .  It’s a riot.  I’m pretty sure we stole the idea from Stuff You Can Use.
  • Head-to-Head Flappy Bird.  Somehow our tech geniuses figured out a way to put two iPads on the projector screen at the same time.  I don’t even know…but it’s amazing.
  • Clumps.  A great mixer with a weird name.  Here’s how to play.
  • Quiz Bowl Time with Andy LoveHandles.  Sorry, this isn’t really duplicate-able.  One of our team members plays a game show character who throws Little Debbie Ding-Dongs at contestants when they get an answer correct.  It’s a little dangerous and a lot hilarious.316814814_219c1f4ed3_q

FUNNY PEOPLE

For the next element, we brought in a local improv group called River City Improv.  They were a huge hit with our volunteers.

 

MEANINGFUL WORDS

After the improv group, our Senior Pastor of Family Ministries, Brian VanderArk shared a few thoughts about “moments.”  I’ll send you his notes for $500.  Actually, he’ll probably just give them to me if you want them.  The key was, it was short and meaningful.  Volunteers heard, “What I do matters!”

 

CUTE KIDS

To cap the night, we showed this thank-you video.

Volunteer Celebration: Thank You from LifeLine Student Ministries on Vimeo.

 

There you have it.  The best volunteer celebration ever.  Feel free to steal any or all of it…except the video.  That would be weird.

How to Get More Volunteers

Recruiting student ministry volunteers can be a little difficult.

“Hey, do you want to be a small group leader?”

“Why would I want to do that?”

“Because you want to give up every Sunday night for the next four years?

“I’m out.”

“Oh, and we’ll need you to give up a few vacation days for camps, retreats and a mission trip or two. Did I mention that you’ll need to have your students over for sleep overs, go to swim meets that last all day and then listen to them process their latest breakup for approximately 10,000 hours?”

“In that case, sign me up!”

The trouble is, we’re absolutely dependent on great leaders.  With great small group leaders we will have a great student ministry–almost guaranteed.  With sub-par leaders or not enough leaders we’ll have minimal impact–even with amazing programming.  So how exactly do we recruit enough great leaders?  Since our student ministry team is entering our recruiting season, I’m in the mood to talk about a few lessons we’ve learned.

Lesson #1 is the power of story.  Let’s talk numbers.  Last spring, our senior teaching pastor invited the people of our church to serve in our student ministry.  He did this from the stage.  Now, our senior pastor is fairly influential.  He has written a few books and is a great preacher.  Every week, around 10,000 people listen to his sermon.  Wanna know how many people signed up to serve?  Five.

Five people signed up to serve when our semi-famous pastor gave a well-crafted and impassioned plea to serve.  5 people.  Ouch.

This year, we adapted our strategy and filmed a video of one of our all-star volunteers–a volunteer who has led the same group of girls for 7 years.  Here’s the video we showed to our church a few weeks ago.  Go ahead and watch it.  I’m going to skip it because I don’t want to cry…again.

My Story: Molly Rayman from LifeLine Student Ministries on Vimeo.

 

This year, after showing this video, 65 people signed up to serve in our student ministry.  65! I’m not strong at math but that’s pretty close to a million percent increase from last year.  What did we learn?  Story wins.  People resonate with stories.  Everyone wants to be a part of something big and meaningful.  People want to join a cause but aren’t motivated to get up out of their seats until they see it, hear it or experience it through someone’s story.

So, how do you get more volunteers?  Tell stories.  Get your best volunteers on screen on or stage and let them tell the stories of what it’s like to journey with students.  Go ahead and try it but you better create enough positions to accommodate the million percent increase.

The Power of Stories

We have incredible small group leaders in LifeLine.  Our volunteers are simply the best.  One of the things we are doing this year is highlighting our leaders by sharing their stories. I’m a big believer in stories, whether students or leaders. We, as people are captivated and moved by stories. We’ve done our best to leverage this phenomenon in our ministry.

Here’s a story video of Katie Turner who is one of our top notch volunteers.  Props to Ryan Humm for shooting, Al Shepard for editing this and Lindsey Bandy’s apartment for uh…hosting the shoot.

Katie Turners Story from LifeLine Student Ministries on Vimeo.

How to Pull off an Epic Volunteer Retreat

When it comes to pulling off an epic volunteer retreat, the key is understanding what it is that you want to accomplish.  Over the years, we’ve honed our focus down to three things. We want our volunteers to walk away from the retreat feeling connected, inspired and valued.  Our retreat is all about connecting volunteers to each other and to God, inspiring them to become the best volunteers they can be and valuing them for their uniqueness and their investment.

A KILLER THEME

We happen to believe that fun is spiritual and that taking the time to meticulously plan out a fun experience communicates value to our volunteers.  The key element of fun for us this year was our 80s theme.  Everyone came to the retreat dressed like it was 1983.  The soundtrack from the weekend was exclusively from the 80s.  All the games, prizes, decorations and snacks were from the 80s.  This theme added an incredible amount of fun and structured fun communicates value.

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COMMUNITY

Our goal is to weave community into every aspect of our volunteer retreat because we believe that volunteers who serve in community are better volunteers.  Because of this, we ask our cell families (teams of volunteers) to carpool and eat dinner together on the way to retreat.  We house each cell family together and build in cell family discussion in response to each session.  Aside from these elements, we believe that the very nature of getting away together as a community of leaders, staying up late playing volleyball or Setters of Catan, and eating meals together builds community.

GUEST SPEAKER

In our ministry context, we train our volunteers every other week.  Our volunteers hear from us a lot.  Because of this we will often bring in a guest speaker for our retreat simply because they bring fresh stories, language and perspective to the conversation.  This year we asked Brian, our Senior Pastor of Family Ministries and Ian Nacy, a local youth pastor to come and inspire our volunteers.

CONTENT THAT COUNTS

If you’re going to take the time to get your volunteers away, you should make it worth their while.  You need to communicate something valuable.  This year, our schedule included 3 sessions–two on Saturday and one long session on Friday night which included a 40 minute worship set.  If the retreat is all “fun” elements, your volunteers will be asking why they needed to come in the first place.

Here’s our schedule if you’d like to see it:  Retreat Schedule

THE VALUE PLAN

There are two ways to do a retreat.  There is the, “we have $5 to make this happen because we didn’t plan for it” and there’s the “we’re going to pull of an epic experience for our volunteers.”  We’ve found that it’s the little things that communicate value.  Choose a camp with nice facilities.  Tell the camp what meals you’d like to eat so you don’t end up with cafeteria corn dogs for lunch, bring great snacks, give away something big, put care into the programming elements and for crying out loud, don’t make your volunteers serve on their retreat.

LEAVE THEM WANTING MORE

In my opinion, one of the most important elements to a good retreat is when you end it.  It’s always tempting to try to do too much and keep your volunteers for too long.  We’ve struggled with finding this balance over the years but we’ve landed on this truth:  It’s always best to leave them wanting more.  If they can’t wait to come back next year then we’ve nailed it.

We start our retreat at 7:00 on Friday night and end it at 2:30 on Saturday afternoon.  It may seem to short but we don’t feel the need to cram hours of training into our volunteer retreat because we already train our volunteers every other week.

 

So, the key to an epic volunteer retreat is understanding what you want to accomplish.  For us, it’s all about connecting, inspiring and value.  What’s your goal and how do you achieve it?