Here’s a post, courtesy of Karl, from Josh Linman, on mistakes worship leaders make with their volunteers. It’s a good basic list for any ministry setting. Tonight I’m hosting a volunteer Bible study, something we do regularly through the year, for my church school teachers and regular ministry volunteers, so it was great to read this before that event!
Many leaders make the same mistake when dealing with volunteers: they follow Ron Popeil’s “set it and forget it” teaching. Now I’m sure most of you are thinking, “What does Ron Popeil, with his awesome cooking gadgets and famous infomercial phrases have to do with leading volunteers?” Think about it this way:
A worship leader needs volunteers for the media ministry so they invest time into the initial recruiting and training of volunteers, but after that’s done, they think, “It’s over! I got the volunteers, they know what they need to do, now I can deal with another project.”
Unfortunately, 6 months later, that same leader is faced with the task of finding new volunteers because all the old ones burned out and quit.
