Care for KidMin Volunteers at Your Church

Care for kidmin volunteers goes a long way. We all know that eager (and reliable) volunteers can be hard to find. So when an A+ volunteer walks through your doors, you want to ensure they stick around.

But all the hustle and bustle of children’s ministry often leaves us heaping too much on these dependable helpers, while forgetting to encourage, support, and grow our volunteers.

To fix this issue and to keep the members of your all-star team happy, use these five ways to care for kidmin volunteers.

5 Ways to Care for KidMin Volunteers

1. Strong as Samson-ite

If your volunteers arrive with armloads of supplies, give them this back-saving tip. Use a portable luggage cart wheel rack to transport curriculum, craft supplies, puppets, and whatever else they’re carrying. This also saves on the number of trips volunteers have to make from their car to the classroom.

2. Meeting Maker

Before your next teacher-training meeting, cut a large piece of foam core into several puzzle pieces. Give each teacher a puzzle piece to take home and decorate to represent him- or herself. Teachers can color the piece, write a poem on it, or glue on pictures.

At your next meeting, have volunteers bring back their puzzle piece. Give teachers time to each explain their piece. Then put the puzzle together. This is a visual display of how all the pieces of your team fit together effectively.

3. Creative Training Ideas

A concerned mother took her adolescent daughter to the doctor for a hearing check. After the test, the doctor said, “Your daughter has perfect hearing; she just has mother deafness.”

If you think your volunteers have developed a deaf ear to your training, try these ideas:

• Bring in new blood. Capitalize on the strengths among your staff. Someone else may say the same things you’ve been saying, but hearing them from a new source may be the difference your teachers need.
• Trade with another church. Offer to trade training time with another children’s pastor in town. Your strength may be setting up learning centers, while the children’s pastor across town is a whiz at leading Bible lessons.
• Send people to different training classes. When your staff attends a training conference, assign teachers to different breakouts. Then have volunteers reteach their class to other volunteers. People who take classes together can team-teach.
• Hire an educational consultant. Invite someone from a nearby college, denominational office, or publishing company to speak to your church in a three-hour seminar. To help defray expenses, invite other local churches.