Training Volunteers in the 21st Century

People are busier than ever. I used to train my volunteers at monthly meetings on Sunday night, but it’s hard to get people to show up for extra meetings.

I had to figure out how to train my volunteers in small doses.

Now, I do all of my training in three bite-size nuggets.

1. The Ten-Minute Huddle

We have a ten-minute huddle every Sunday, thirty minutes before the service starts. The Head Coach does the training because I want my leaders looking to their head coach.

She will cover the object lesson for that day, remind everyone about any announcements and policies, and pray with all her leaders. Sometimes we will provide donuts and coffee during this time.

2. VIT (Very Important Training) E-mail

This is five minutes of training in an e-mail format that is sent out weekly.

It usually is three paragraphs or less. I have found that if my teaching doesn’t fit on the screen, then most people will not scroll down to read it.

If you don’t have a lot of time to create your own training e-mails, you can find plenty of examples in my blog posts, and then you can forward those posts to your volunteers.

3. Monthly Meetings

I meet with my small-group leaders for thirty minutes every month.

We do this during the large-group time. I pull my small-group leaders out of the large group for training in a separate room.

Participation in my training went from less than 50 percent to 98 percent because I did it when they were already at church.