Trust Your Volunteers

In a few weeks, I'm going to do one of the scariest things I've ever done with volunteers.  I'm going to give them the opportunity to quit.

In many ministries, we recruit volunteers or volunteer ourselves with no end in sight.  We very infrequently recruit for a specific time.  After studying the recruiting strategies of several different large churches that have hundreds of volunteers and lots of prayer, I decided that I needed to trust my volunteers.

So every six months the volunteers in all of Kidtricity will be given the opportunity to quit.  Of course I don't frame it this way.  I ask our volunteers to re-enroll in their ministries.  This gives them the opportunity to change their Sunday, their service, or even their department.

After all of this moving around is done, I may have some vacancies, but I think it is worth it. My hope is that new people will take this opportunity to step into a new adventure in children's ministry.  Think about it.  Which would you rather do, volunteer for the rest of your life in an area that you're not even sure if you like it, or volunteer for six months as a trial?  Personally, I would like the choice.

I am choosing to trust my volunteers to listen to God and follow his leading, no matter where that leads them.

So will you trust your volunteers?