This past Sunday, we hosted our annual Children’s Ministry volunteer training. It was the second year that we’ve themed this event. Last year, our theme was a tailgate. This year, we chose to do a Hawaiian Luau. It was so much fun and very well-received by our volunteers.
This year, we wanted to include not only new and returning volunteers but those considering serving in our ministry as well. We had a packed room full of adults and students who responded to God’s call to join us in ministry this year. This was also the first year that we held our training on a Sunday after our morning services rather than a weeknight. We have found that having folks stay around when they’re already at church (and giving them lunch!) yields a much better turnout.
Guests arrived to a large room at our church that was decorated with Hawaiian flowers, leis, tiki bar backdrop and tropical colors (orange, yellow, lime green, hot pink and purple). Once inside the room, guests were welcomed, encouraged to pick up necessary paperwork, given a ticket for the chance to win fun prizes and allowed to choose a lei to wear.
Ministry area handbooks, adult applications (white) and student applications (purple)
Guests were then invited to help themselves to a delicious lunch buffet, which consisted of:
Footlong sub sandwiches (turkey, ham and veggie)
Potato chips
Edible beach balls (cheese balls)
Fresh fruit cups
Cookies
Hawaiian Punch and bottled water
Our tables were set with a simple centerpiece (a glass bowl filled with play sand, seashells and votive candles that we had on hand). Under each bowl was a sheet of chalkboard paper and pieces of chalk. At each set, we placed a “Say Yes to the Next Generation” notepad and a personalized pen.
After a little while of fellowship around the tables, we started with the business of the day. You can download our event outline here.
Here are a few of Pinterest-inspired ideas we used:
If you lead a kidmin, then you know that volunteers are the backbone and heartbeat of your ministry. While we prepare behind the scenes, these faithful servants are on the front lines helping children know and love Jesus week in and week out. Treasuring and appreciating these folks should always be a priority of ours. My friends at What’s in the Bible? can help you do just that.
Thank your team courtesy of What’s in the Bible? by entering to win a free breakfast for your team. Find out more details here. Hurry – the deadline to enter is Sunday, April 12th!
In the meantime, if you’re looking for fun and inexpensive ideas to appreciate your volunteers, check these out:
Wise kidmin leaders know that volunteers are the heartbeat of our ministries. We simply cannot do ministry without them. Celebrating these faithful servants should happen regularly throughout the year but Valentine’s Day is a great time to shower them with love.
This year, our team selected this flip book from Christian Tools of Affirmation (CTA) to show our volunteers how much we appreciate them. We’ll have them available each week throughout the month of February (some of our volunteers only serve once a month, so we didn’t want to overlook anyone.)
In addition, we will do other special appreciation gestures such as special sweet treats and a hot chocolate bar throughout the month of February.
If you’re undecided on how to honor your ministry volunteers this Valentine’s Day, you still have time to pull together a small token of appreciation. Pinterest is a great place to find ideas. To help you out, here are a few of my favorite ideas from the popular website. Most are relatively inexpensive and easy to assemble.
Who doesn’t love chocolate from Valentine’s Day? Collect small fabric bags with ribbon drawstrings. Let your students fill each bag with chocolate Hershey Hearts and pull the drawstring (or tie the bag with a ribbon). Have the children make small cards that say, “Hugs to you, our wonderful volunteer.” Punch a hole in the corner of each card. Help the child tie the card to the ribbon. Present the candy bags to your volunteers with a word of thanks.
This keepsake book for volunteers and teachers weaves encouragement, uplifting Scripture, real stories, and more into a gift that’ll warm their souls—and help keep their enthusiasm for introducing kids to Jesus going strong.
Training and equipping our kidmin leaders is of utmost importance if we want them to lead well in their ministry area and to have longevity in serving with us.
There are many challenges when it comes to volunteer training, however.
How can we make it beneficial to rookies and veterans alike?
How can we make it appealing so that they’ll actually come out for the event?
Are there some creative elements we can incorporate to make it fun and memorable?
What can we call it other than ‘training’?
How do we make it both informative and engaging?
There are so many resources available for kidmin leaders to take advantage of to train and equip volunteers. One of the best resources, in my opinion, are workshops that I attend. Many times when I travel to national workshops I am unable to take staffers or volunteers with me, so I try to find ways to share what I’ve learned in various contexts. Usually, I purchase audio recordings from the places I attend and pass them along to others. However, I felt compelled recently to try something different.
I attended Group’s KidMin Conference back in September and one of the workshops I took there was called “50 Ways to Bring the Bible to Life”. (You can pick up my notes here). I loved the premise and content provided, so I thought that it would be cool to teach my version to our elementary and preteen leaders. I absolutely THRIVE on preparing for events like this, so I was very excited about how it would come together.
When I began thinking about a catchy name for this event, I knew that it wouldn’t be called “training”. I mean, that screams excitement, right? NOT!! So after some careful thought, I landed upon Leader Lunch & Learn. This past Sunday, I hosted our very first Leader Lunch & Learn and it was great! Here are some details about the event:
I wanted this event to be (1) a time of fellowship (over a delicious lunch that we provided, of course!), for the leaders to get to know each other better in an informal, casual setting; (2) informative – leading a group of children requires our leaders to know what they’re doing; (3) practical – I wanted the information presented to be something that they could use right away; and (4) engaging – I wanted attendees to get share ideas (it’s always a good idea to have team members learn from each other) and practice what they’ve learned.
Keeping those four things in mind, the event began to take shape. I designed an invitation that was sent to adult and student leaders via email (I used Mail Chimp). I set up responses to go to a form I created on Google Forms – very easy to do. Then I used the workshop notes to come up with a time flow/outline for the 90 minutes that we’d have together:
Arrival
Welcome & Overview (5 minutes)
I welcomed everyone, thanked them for coming and gave them an overview of what our time together would look like.
Lunch & Fellowship (20 minutes)
Since we held this event immediately following our 2nd service hour, serving lunch was not an option. I landed on a simple, delicious lunch that was very affordable and easy to set up: I ordered a deli sandwich wrap platter and provided potato chips, fresh fruit, cookies, brownies, iced tea, lemonade and bottled water.
Introductions, Introduce the “Smarts”, Have team take “Smarts” Inventory (7 minutes)
Our elementary and preteen ministries are run separately, so many of the attendees had never met each other. We took a few minutes to introduce ourselves and then I had them quickly fill out the “Got Smarts” inventory (that was included in the workshop notes) so that they could discover their primary “smart”.
Review responses from “Got Smarts” Inventory, Talk about “Smart Chart”, and Ways to Incorporate these ideas into their large group & small group times (25 minutes)
After reviewing the responses from the “Got Smarts” inventory, we discussed what each ‘smart’ looked like and ways to incorporate each ‘smart’ into our lessons. Since each of our volunteers is very gifted and creative, I wanted them to learn from each other, too, so they tossed out additional ideas that were not included in the original notes. They had some great suggestions!
Group Assignment & Sharing
I wanted everyone to get some practice incorporating what they had learned, so I broke the group up into 3 smaller groups and assigned each group a Bible story: The Good Samaritan (Luke 10;30-37); Jonah and the Whale (Jonah 1); and Feeding of the 5000 (Matthew 14:13-21). Their task was to brainstorm ideas to bring the Bible to life by incorporating each ‘smart’ into that particular Bible story. Boy did they do an awesome job with that. When they shared their ideas, I was blown away! You can read their ideas here.
Wrap Up/Thank You’s
I closed our time together by reminding them to not be afraid to think outside of the box and infuse creativity into their lessons to help the Bible come to life for every student in their group. I affirmed them, thanked everyone for coming and reminded them to take home a special treat I had prepared for them. Since we were talking about ‘smarts’, it was only fitting to use “Smarties” in the treat bags.
Take-Home Treat (the front)
Take-Home Treat (the back)
As a result of preparing for this training event, feedback was so positive that we will offer a new topic every other month. I asked volunteers for suggestions on future topics and so we’re set for our next event, which will be held in January. I can’t wait!
Now it’s your turn – what does your volunteer training/equipping opportunities look like? Share what works for you below!
