It’s one thing to find a bunch of people who are willing to do something for the church. Beyond the necessary background checks that every position should have at your church and the dedication to keep up with it, many of the positions can be filled with a warm body. Donuts ministry, day care, and welcome groups all are fairly basic stuff. Do not get me wrong, they are valuable volunteers (well, I have a hard time justifying $200 in donuts a week when the homeless shelter is in need), but the skills required are minimal.
Your tech team should not be a place for just anyone. In fact, when you get beyond the emergency stages of your tech team (you know, two spots are not filled every week and you have to take on the job of three people), you should seriously consider these four steps for finding the right volunteers for your tech team.
- Do Not Stop Asking For Volunteers. Just because you hit the quota of volunteers does not mean that you should stop asking. People get sick, pregnant, and move away all of the time. At the very least, continuing to ask allows for you to have people on standby at a moment’s notice and alleviate some of the pressure off your shoulders. Even better, what if you found a graphics design guru that could help take your presentations from good to great, all because you decided to not stop asking for help.
- Consider Multiple Teams For A Rotation. If having one team for every week is a good setup, having four teams for a month on a one week a month rotation is amazing. For some of you, this is a real challenge and it may be a stretch for you to just get two teams that rotate every year. I recognize this and would encourage you to still strive for a bigger team. What this does is allows your volunteers to have room to switch out when they are on vacation or needed somewhere else. At the same time, four people who are putting together the Pro Presenter presentations each month can bounce ideas off of each other and as the Bible verse goes, “iron sharpens iron.” (Proverbs 27:17) This will require more overall work for you, but the task of last minute crises dwindles to nearly nothing.
- Require Resumes and Experience. This may seem like a silly thing for some of you, especially since they are volunteering their time, why the need for such formality? It does not have to be explicitly a resume (though, I would say it is the best option). You could have instead a “what do you know how to do” sheet to give them before assigning them a job or an actual assessment test, though that seems more for the volunteer managers and those who need to know how to do all the parts of a job exactly right. Set expectations and standards. Do not just let someone who has no knowledge jump on your sound board, mess with all of the knobs, and reprogram everything. Life would be terrible for you.
- Say No To People. This may be the hardest thing. Several times in ministry I have asked people for volunteers, looked at the resume and experience and have to turn them down. It is unfortunate, but if you get to a place where you can say no and still have your head above water, you are doing good by the ministry and yourself. There are so many different places that person can be utilized and even invite them to several training seminars that you may have in the future, but at the present time, know that they will be a bigger distraction than help. We want to serve well and that means turning down willing people who are not at all qualified.
What other parts of getting the right people would you add to this list?
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