Pastor First.

Critiquing your service with your volunteers is very important. You always want to improve. But if all they hear is critique, that’s a hard environment to find joy serving in. 

Make encouragement a major part of your routine. 

Be consistent in calling out the good things your volunteers are doing. 

Encourage both in one-on-one settings and in group settings. People love to be praised.

This is very important, especially with new volunteers. Calling them by name when you see them goes a long way. Introduce them to as many veteran volunteers as you can. 

I reserved every Tuesday and Thursday from 11am-1pm to have lunch with a volunteer. I reserved two hours to make sure I wasn’t “rushed to get back to a meeting”. or something that would rush my time to listen to them. I also tried to schedule meetings later in the afternoon to not interfere with this time. 

I advertised on our Production Facebook page, in my emails to the team, and in person that I was free for lunch every Tuesday and Thursday for whomever would like to schedule one. 

If people of the opposite gender are on your team, consider creating a system that both protects male / female relationships and doesn’t isolate the opposite gender on your team. Perhaps always have group lunches or schedule coffee meetings at your church. 

I’ve been a part of a production environment at a church and several in secular situations where when a mistake happens, people get yelled at. It’s sad, but very true. Nobody likes to be yelled at, especially when you’re volunteering your time. 

Now, there are times when big mistakes happen that are very visible and you have to deal with those. In my experience, most of the time, they know the mistake and will beat themselves up much more than you should. You yelling at them even more doesn’t help. The best thing you can do in those moments is offer grace. You need to protect your team. 

If a staff leader comes to you about a problem, talk with that staff person in private and assure that leader that you are addressing the issue – don’t have the conversation in front of your team. Protect them from hearing some of the messy part of ministry. 

Now, if there is a pattern of big mistakes from the same person, for the good of the experience, you may need to graciously move them to another position on your team or if its a big enough issue, they may need to be moved to another ministry. Don’t be afraid of these decisions. Mistakes will happen – its live! But in every mess up, small or large, offer grace. Your team how you react. Be gracious.

Imagine if on the first day of a new job you were thrown into a position with no training or practice, could you succeed at a high level? Why is it different in church world? You can’t expect people from all walks of life to walk in on a Sunday (gamely) with no prior knowledge or practice on your gear and expect them to know what they are doing. Plus, you’re living with the content and the gear all week, they are not. 

When I was on staff at Newspring Church, we implemented a pretty extensive training process for new volunteers. We did that for two main reasons:

I am very passionate when I direct a service. I have a lot of fun, but I wanted the team to know that if I get passionate in a moment it’s because of the intensity of the moment and not about them personally. 

Let me give you some examples of what I mean here:

When your team gets really large in number, you can’t minister to everyone by yourself. I struggled with this. You must raise up leaders to help pastor your people. It’s important for you and members of the team to share in life victories and struggles.