Practically Speaking: Volunteers
In the last 2 G-140 Podcasts, we’ve been discussing working with volunteers.
In this weeks show, I talked about the importance of helping volunteers understand their commitment and getting their signoff on those very things.
The majority of youth workers don’t have a formal process of this and it causes tons of problems down the road:
- The volunteer doesn’t know what the vision is.
- The volunteer knows what you’ve said the vision is, but they’re not 100% committed to it though they are committed in some form to ministry.
- The volunteer doesn’t know what your expectations are of them.
- You have no way, as a leader, to be able to discuss shortcomings because you haven’t laid out the expecations.
- The volunteer doesn’t know what a win is and what the youth ministry values most.
And here’s a BIGGIE:
If you don’t have these things ironed out, there WILL be conflict. What the volunteer sees as being important and what you see as important may be entirely different things.
And conflict should be expected if the volunteer cares about what your doing. If a volunteer doesn’t know what’s expected and doesn’t quite get the vision but they just come in week in and week out then I’d have to question their overall heart commitment to what’s being done.
As promised on the Podcast, I’m including a simple “Commitments of a Youth Leader” document that we actually used with our leadership. Please keep in mind that I thoroughly gave a talk on vision, values, and philosophy of ministry so they knew what they were getting into, and THEN I went over specific expectations before asking them to sign on the dotted line.
A number of things are bulleted so feel free to comment or ask me any questions to bring clarity.
COMMITMENTS OF A YOUTH LEADER > [PDF]
