Multi-Site Kids

The Right Time

Does the first weekend in June seem like the ideal time to recruit children's ministry volunteers?  Probably not.  But that's exactly what we did at the campus I direct here at Community.  We focused our ask on "summer subs."  Here is the text I gave our campus pastor to use in the service:

The weather finally turned warm and if your family is like mine you’re probably starting to think about having some summer fun.  In addition to Six Flags, the pool, and a trip to Wrigley Field, there is another fun place you should check out this summer.  It’s Kids’ City!  If you’ve never had the opportunity to serve in this ministry or if it has been a while since you’ve had fun with our kids, the summer is a great time to serve on the Kids’ City team.

We have over a hundred dedicated contributors who lead our children every week and most of them are making some summer plans of their own.  You can appreciate and serve these leaders by filling in as a sub for them a few times this summer.  Whether you are a parent whose kids benefit from the ministry every week, a college student who is just around for a couple months, or someone who would like to get a taste of serving in Kids’ City; serving as a sub is a great way to make a difference this summer.

Fill out the card that is on your chair and either give it to one of our exit greeters or bring it to the Kids’ City table in the lobby where our Kids’ City Director, Tammy Melchien, can give you more information.  Kids’ City will also be offering tours during a couple of services next weekend for those of you who would like to learn more about opportunities to contribute in the ministry.  Don’t miss out on this opportunity to have some summer fun!

And here is the flyer we had on every chair in the adult service:

The result?  37 people responded to the ask.  Most signed up to sub (the primary ask we made), 6 said they would like to become a regular contributor, and 8 want to take a tour of Kids' City next weekend to learn more.  The thing I love best about this is every time we make these asks it means new people will get the opportunity to serve God and make an eternal difference in the lives of kids.  37 people who weren't doing that last week will get to do that in the weeks ahead.  So don't discount the summer as a great time to recruit for your ministry.  Any time is the right time to recruit!

Tim's Story

This may be my favorite recruiting video showing a leader's testimony that we've ever made...

The Privilege of Being Equipped

We tried something new today.  And I'm feeling pretty good about it.  As we continue to address the need to get our Leadership Pipeline flowing strongly (see previous post), we decided to start something we're calling the "VIP Leadership Development Track."  The idea behind this is to invite select high-capacity and/or high-potential leaders to a Sunday afternoon lunch to receive leadership development training.  OK, really what we were doing was inviting people to a 2 hour lunch and workshop on "recruiting."  You might think that people would make excuses to get out of this, but we saw the exact opposite response.

We invited about 15 people to this event.  The invitation was personal.  1-on-1.  Face-to-face.  We let them know we had identified them as a high-capacity leader who had the potential to increase their influence in Kids' City.  We briefly explained that we'd be providing lunch after services and then would be walking them through a training on "Making the Ask."  11 of them came.  The others had scheduling conflicts but asked if they could be invited to the next one.

We had a great Italian meal (no, not pizza) waiting for them.  Red table clothes.  Sparkling grape juice bottles on every table.  These are VIPs, of course.

And then I spent 1 1/2 hours training them to be more effective recruiters.  Everyone was so engaged.  My sense was people felt privileged to be there.

And the best part is, I think people left with with a bigger vision of how God could use them to make a greater impact.  I think people left recharged to go after the mission and willing to consider that God might call them to take on greater leadership responsibility.

We're planning to try 3 or 4 of these VIP gatherings this year.  I'm hoping they can contribute to the development of our pipeline.

UPDATE: Because Rob begged so nicely, here are my notes from the training meeting: Download recruiting_skill.doc

The Recruiting Journey

Eric Metcalf and I had the privilege of spending Tuesday morning with the staff of Westbrook Christian Church in Bolingbrook, IL.  We'll be making a couple visits to their staff meetings to share some things we've learned about reproducing leaders and artists.  During this first visit, I did a skill on recruiting that I thought I'd share some thoughts from.

I think recruiting is normally a process...a relational journey.  Often people need some time to catch the vision and overcome any fears they have about making a commitment.  Here are 5 stages that can help you navigate that process:

1)  Practice "Drive-By" Comments:  Once you identify someone you'd like to recruit, start planting seeds with quick, genuine statements.  Why are they "drive-by" statements?  Because you need to say them and then walk away.  Try saying, "I'd love to have you on our team."  And then walk away.  Or "I could imagine you making a huge difference in this ministry."  Again, walk away.  Give people the room to begin entertaining thoughts of joining your team without feeling any pressure to give an answer in the moment.

2) Go Out to Lunch...or Breakfast...or Dinner: Take some time to get to know the person.  Use this initial meeting to learn their story.  Where have they lived?  What major events outline their life?  What has their spiritual journey been like?  Pray for discernment during this meeting.  If it seems like this person might be a good fit for your team, ask if they would consider learning more about opportunities to serve.

3) Create Opportunities to Taste Leadership: If the person is willing to consider the opportunity, have a "next step" ready that will give them the chance to taste what it would be like to join the team.  Take them on a tour of your Children's Ministry during a service.  Invite them to a Leadership Meeting.  Give them a role in helping you plan an event.  As they experience this "taste," ask them to pay attention to how God might be prompting their heart to serve.

4) Make the Ask: Be specific.  What are you asking the person to do?  Have a role description so they know what will be expected of them.  And make the ask BIG.  Start by asking for the ideal commitment (which in our case is to contribute every week during one service).  I can't tell you the number of times someone has said to me, "When you asked for every week, I was nervous because I didn't know if I'd have the time to commit to every week.  But I did and now I realize I had the time.  In fact, it's a highlight of my week."  Of course if a person can't/won't commit to the big ask, you can always follow up with a smaller ask.  But ask BIG to begin with!

5) Close the Deal: Unless the person gives and immediate "yes" when you make the ask, give them a specific time period to prayerfully consider the opportunity and then follow up with them when you said you would.  Usually 1-2 weeks is enough time.  Making the ask is the hard part.  Don't let that go to waste by not following up for an answer!

Measurable Goals

Socrates said, "An unexamined life is not worth living."  I would add, "An unexamined ministry is not worth leading."  So many times we get caught up in the day-to-day functions and crisis moments of children's ministry that we forget to step back and examine the bigger picture. 

• Where are we really headed?  Where do we want to go?
• Are our current programs and strategies going to lead us to where we want to go?
• What are our "next steps" as a ministry?

In Kids' City, our mission is to help FAMILIES raise GROWING 3C CHRIST-FOLLOWERS...kids that regularly CELEBRATE God, CONNECT with others, and CONTRIBUTE to the dream of God.  Last month we spent time working through a strategic planning process with the ultimate goal of setting key objectives for this next ministry year.  We celebrated the past year's successes, analyzed our current challenges, and set measurable goals that will focus and guide our efforts over this next year.

The key to setting goals...they need to be measurable!  We need the accountability of clearly defined targets.  We need to be able to tell if we are progressing.  We need to know how to "win."

We came out of the strategic planning process with 9 clearly defined, measurable goals.  Let me share a couple of them with you.

Key Objective:  150 Families using the Big Idea Discussion Guide to Carry Out the Big Idea at Home. The Big Idea is what we call the main teaching point of a weekend's lesson.  We realize that parents have the greatest influence on the spiritual formation of their children.  We want to "set parents up" for teachable moments at home.  We'll present the Big Idea in a relevant, creative way in Kids' City, but then we want to equip parents to continue that Big Idea at home.  In a couple months we'll begin including Family Resource material in an adult Big Idea Discussion Guide that we are already producing for our adult small groups.  This "bonus" Family Resource section will give parents discussion questions and activity ideas for reinforcing the Big Idea throughout the week.  But creating this resource isn't the goal.  Getting families to use this new resource to further the spiritual development of their children is the goal.  That's why we set a measurable goal of 150 families.  How are we going to track the number of families using the resource?  We're going to include a coupon in the resource that families can fill out to let us know they used the guide for the current series.  Kids can bring the coupon to Kids' City where they will be able to pick a prize out of our prize vault for turning in the coupon.  When the series ends, we'll have a pretty good idea of how many families took advantage of the resource.  And if the number is under 150?  We'll know we need to step up our efforts to promote the resource more.

Key Objective: Recruit 142 new Kids' City Contributors.  Each campus set a 2006-07 recruiting goal and when you add them all up it comes to 142.  Having such a challenging, measurable goal focuses our energy.  We know we need to have a clear strategy to hit this target.  Among other things, we mapped out 3 church-wide recruitment campaigns we're going to work on this year.  We're trying to align them with particular series or strategic recruiting time.  We'll work together to come up with a theme and marketing for these campaigns.  We'll combine our influence to try to get stage asks and flyers during the campaigns.  How will we know if we are winning?  I put together a spreadsheet that has a blank for every person we hope to recruit.  142 blanks broken out by the specific campus goals.  Every time our Campus Director team meets (twice a month), we'll pass the sheet around and people can fill in the names of those who have joined the team since our last meeting.  We'll all see how each campus is doing.  We can celebrate our successes.  And pray about our challenges. 

So how about your ministry?  Do you have clearly defined, measurable goals that will help move your team to where you want to go?  Don't get caught in the trap of the day-to-day.  Use measurable goals to move your team to the next step of God's design for your ministry.

How much does it cost?

"What would you do differently with your volunteers if you charged an admission fee for people to volunteer?"

I thought this was a great question that Jeff Henderson, Campus Pastor of Buckhead Church, posed at last week's Grow Up Conference at Northpoint Community Church.  Think about it for a minute.  If people were paying to serve in your children's ministry what would you do for them to ensure they got their money's worth?

Jeff shared some information he learned about the Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta.  The aquarium opened last November and boasts that it is the world's largest.  It is so popular that there is now a waiting list for season passes.  And hundreds of people serve as volunteers at the aquarium taking tickets, directing visitors, and doing the behind-the-scenes tasks that make a museum run.

But now for the eye-opening part.  Each of the aquarium's volunteers pays a $70 fee for the opportunity to serve.  They pay to donate their time!  I'm guessing they might get passes, special perks, or at least a free t-shirt for volunteering, but I don't know for sure.  But evidently there isn't a shortage of people who are willing to shell out the bucks to serve.

And all they are doing is helping people look at fish.  Not quite at the same level as helping people find their way back to God.

So what would you do for your volunteers if they paid to play?  Jeff challenged us to spend some time answering that question.  I think it could be a great brainstorm for your team.  If each of your children's ministry contributors paid $70 to be on your team, what would you do for them?  Make a list.  How would you appreciate them?  What would you provide for them?  What would you do to ensure they had a positive experience?

When you're done brainstorming, agree that you'll never charge people to serve but provide the things on your list anyway.  You just may find that you've created an irresistible volunteer experience.

Building Your Team-Part Two

How do you build a bunch of individual contributors into a team?  How do you build the dynamic team I talked about in part one?  As simple as it sounds, I think it starts by a sincere effort by you, the leader, to connect with your contributors. 

One of my favorite things to do is engage in what I call "The Fellowship of the Mat."  What is this practice?  It is taking time regularly (weekly if possible) with your infant and toddler leaders sitting on the mat.  At all of our sites we set up and pack everything away each weekend because the rooms are used for other purposes throughout the week.  So at most sites there isn't a lot of furniture in our kids' spaces.  Most of our kids' ministry happens on the floor.  In our infant room we usually spread out a large mat or comforter where the infants and contributors spend the hour in play. 

I believe one of the most important things I can do as a staff member is to get down on the mat with people for 5 minutes each week.  It really doesn't matter who you are, if you bear the title "staff" your attention communicates value to a volunteer.  And if you can give at least 5 minutes each week to mat time you'll be amazed at how after just a few weeks your contributors feel connected to you. 

And be intentional about your 5 minutes.  Each week ask a different contributor about their story.  Where did they grow up?  How did they start attending your church?  Learn about their family.  Not only will you get to know them better, but you'll be helping the team of contributors  in that room get to know one another too.  Ask them about their dreams.  What do they most like about serving with kids?  What do they think we could do to make our ministry more effective? 

You'll be in the room for 5 minutes.  But in those short 5 minutes a connection is made.  Value is communicated.  And the seeds of a team can begin to grow.  Every dynamic team I've ever come across has a leader people feel connected to.  A leader people want to follow.  I think this kind of leader starts on the mat.

Building Your Team-Part One

Ask any children's director what their greatest challenge is and undoubtedly the first or second answer will be "recruiting."  Going multi-site only increases the anxiety-laden question in the forefront of our minds: "How am I going to find enough volunteers to pull this off?"  This is part one in a series of posts on building your children's ministry team.

Recruiting begins with those who are already on your team. When we think about recruiting, we usually are focused on the people "out there."  The people we need.  The people we want to see contribute.  But an effective recruiting strategy doesn't start by focusing "out there."  It starts by cultivating and developing what you already have.

What if your team was so attractive...so relationally connected...so joyful and enthusiastic...so sold out to the vision that people asked to be a part of it?  Do you believe that is possible?  I do.

I remember when I joined the staff at CCC my first role was to be a Kids' City Director at our Romeoville Campus.  That campus had been without a director for quite some time and although they were surviving each weekend, it was obvious to me that morale was low and the team was way too small.  I spent the first few months on the job making the frantic Saturday night phone calls scrambling to cover all the bases.  I knew I couldn't survive that way for long.

So I did the only thing I knew to do.  I identified a couple people on the team who seemed to have a high level of ownership in the ministry and took them out for ice cream.  We talked about what our "dream team" would look like.  What kind of team did we want Kids' City to be at Romeoville Campus?  What kinds of relationships did we want to see between the volunteers?  How did we want volunteers to feel about their experience each weekend?  We realized in that conversation that we had people serving in our ministry, but we didn't have a team.  There was no connectedness, no community, no real sense of "we're in this together."  We decided that night that our first priority was to become a team.  That meant investing in one another.  That meant getting to know one another.  That meant having fun together.  That meant deciding that we were going to become each other's close friends.  It would start with the people sitting around that table.  And as people began noticing the connection we were experiencing we would invite them to be a part of it. 

I joked that our strategy was to have such a great time together that everyone else would be jealous.  Then we'd bless them by letting them be a part of it.

God really began to move through what started in that ice cream meeting.  Our Kids' City team doubled in size over the next year.  A year after that we launched our Shorewood Campus out of our Romeoville Campus and were able to send a full matrix of Kids' City volunteers to this new location.

I'll never forget when a fellow staff member walked back into Kids' City one Sunday.  As she checked her children in, she said to me, "Sometimes I wish I could serve in Kids' City because every time I walk back here I just get the sense that this is the cool place to be."  The goal isn't to be "cooler" than any other ministry in the church, but her comment meant a lot to me because it meant that when she walked into the Kids' City space she could sense something that was attractive... something she wanted to be a part of...something exciting and good.

Need to recruit some new volunteers?  Start by thinking about what you are recruiting them to.  A dynamic team sells itself. People want to be a part of something that is alive, fun, purposeful, and full of connection.  Recruiting starts with who you already have.