Do you need more volunteers?
Yes. Of course you do. I know I do. I have a solid volunteer team, but I always need more people. Especially if you want to grow. Adding new volunteers prepares you for growth.
Volunteers are an essential part of children's ministry. Without them there is no children's ministry.
So how can you increase your volunteer team? Here's the good news. I have a proven strategy that will help you grow your team.
It is a proven strategy that even Jesus used to grow His disciple's team.
Ready for this ground breaking strategy? Okay, here it is.
Personally invite people to join your team...one at a time.
Look at this example of how Jesus built His team one person at a time. It is found in Matthew 9.
"As Jesus went on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector’s booth. 'Follow me,' he told him, and Matthew got up and followed him."
And another example found in John 1.
"The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee. He found Philip and said to him, “Follow me.”
The proven strategy is personal, one-on-one asks. How many volunteers do you need? The way to enlist people is to personally ask them to join your team.
Don't complain about not having enough volunteers if you are not personally asking people to serve.
At one of the churches where I lead the children's ministry, we grew our volunteer team from 300 to over 2,000. It took us nine years to do this. How did it happen? One new volunteer at at time. Every single week, we started asking people to join our team...one person at a time. We did this week in and week out for over 9 years. After 9 years of doing this, we looked up and saw that we had over 2,000 volunteers.
How many volunteers do you need? 5? 50? 500? You will get them one person at a time.
That sounds like a lot of hard work. Yes...it is. But it's a price you have to pay if you want to grow your team. Don't complain about not having enough volunteers if you are not personally asking people to join your team.
One little (big) hint. Before you ask people, ask God to give you divine appointments. You see, there are people in your church that God has been speaking to about serving. Ask God to lead you to those people.
I'll never forget when Dan joined our team. We had an opening on our volunteer security team. We begin to pray and ask God to bring us the right person for this important role. One day, we saw a man named Dan who was dropping off his kids at children's ministry. We felt God telling us that he was the person. We approached him about serving on the security team. His eyes immediately filled with tears and he said, "that is where I have been feeling God wanted me to serve, but I didn't know if you needed anyone. Of course, I would love to serve in that role."
Divine appointments. Ask for them and watch in amazement as God leads you to the people He wants on your volunteer team.
I'm not sure what proven strategy you were looking for...but you have found one. Try it and watch what God does.
p.s. For more great tips about building and leading a volunteer team, get my book "The Formula for Building Great Volunteer Teams."
