Teaching kids -- Inspiring teachers
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Teaching kids -- Inspiring teachers |
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The Monthly 3-D Jigsaw Puzzle
What happens to your heart rate … your facial expression … and your pulse when I mention the words: monthly schedule? Here is how I feel: I think it is like a 3-D Jigsaw Puzzle. What a great invention … the 3-D Jigsaw Puzzle. (sarcasm) As if regular jigsaw puzzles with 4 million blue pieces for the sky and water weren’t challenging enough! And what about those crazy puzzles of nothing but marbles piled up all over? An attempt at making us insane? I’ll bet you are like me and have memories of living for weeks (or months) with an unfinished puzzle on a card table somewhere in the house? We began with great intentions … then the pressure and frustration closed in. Have you ever felt that the puzzle creators were evil? Then it went 3-D. Why? I ask you … WHY? Perhaps it was simply to make us go crazy. I really think so. For years I felt that same set of emotions when attempting to produce my monthly children’s department schedules. If everything worked out well, then it wass cool. But if one thing is out of place, the whole apparatus goes haywire, sometimes tumbling down more like a house of cards. Or a 3-D Puzzle. Now, while I say working out the monthly schedules reminded me of trying to work a 3-D puzzle, there are some big … I mean BIG … differences between the two. With the puzzle you always feel like you have too many pieces. Am I right? Conversely, children’s ministry leaders feel like they are far short of enough “pieces” in their monthly puzzle. Like they were cheated out of puzzle pieces. Secondly, with a real puzzle, when you are done, you are done. You spray on some glue, put it on display, and threaten bodily harm to anyone who touches it. However, with the children’s ministry schedule, when you are done … you only begin. During the month there are the reschedules, the no-shows, “I forgots” and so on. Sometimes by the end of the month the puzzle doesn’t look anything like how it began. I asked the groups at the recent conferences what their biggest frustration was and it was overwhelmingly “NOT ENOUGH WORKERS” with “the workers coming on time” running a close second. Those were the two biggies. Creating the schedule and making it work every month was the biggest nightmare in their children’s ministry leadership position.
How about you? Does it rank among your top ten biggest pains? Do you often feel like the puzzle is winning? Do you honestly believe that someone is hiding very necessary pieces from you? Or sabotaging your work when you step away from the table?
How many times have you felt like putting your “puzzle” back in the box and stuffing it in the basement? You are not alone. Many children’s leaders have decided it is just easier to handle everything themselves than to deal with recruiting or working out a schedule. BUT … doing everything yourself never allows other people to grow, it never enlarges your team, or promotes vibrancy and vitality. It never allows the greatest variety and enthusiasm and scope of influence before the children. And while doing things yourself may ease one area of pain for a while … it never brings the joy that a fully-staffed, enthusiastic, motivated team can bring. It also never improves your leadership skills. Some of my best memories over the past few years involve times working with my amazing team of volunteers. You need to ask for help … doing it all yourself will cause you to burn out … or burn up. One or the other. So … what can you do. I want to tell you what I did every month, and when I tell you I want you to totally believe me 100%. Because when I say it people think I am giving a trite “Christian-eze” answer … but I’m not. I looked at my schedule as my personal faith project each month. I really did. If I was having trouble, I would lay out the sheets of paper, one for each classroom, out on my desk and begin to pray. I would pray over the individual names, I would pray for insight, I would pray for wisdom and I would ask for specific help. And every single month the help came. Sometimes it came through a revelation of how to switch a few things around and make everything work. Sometimes it would come by a creative programming solution. Sometimes it would come by God bringing a name to my mind and then a phone call or two. But every month it came. Once I truly, in my heart and with 100% commitment, accepted it as my personal faith challenge, I never put out a schedule with holes in it or had a nightmare keeping it filled each month. That doesn’t mean I never faced the challenge again … I did, but it got easier and easier to believe for the answers and my skills grew with my faith. “Lo, I am with you always” includes when you are putting the schedule together. “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” includes this monthly task. “The greater one is in you” is absolutely true in all the areas of our life. Now … I want to be clear. No one article can cover the entire scope of developing a dynamic volunteer team. This doesn’t replace good recruiting skills, training to grow your team, etc. This is only one little tiny part of the “Developing a Dynamic Volunteer Team” message. This is not the only ‘key’ that fixes everything. Keep it in perspective so you don’t get discouraged. If you don’t have close to enough workers, you need to work on building your program and your team first. But, if you have been working on that and still get discouraged when it is schedule time … well, do a mind shift. Renew your mind with this thought – it can be your faith challenge. It can be the catalyst to help you grow in your faith and deepen your confidence in God’s love and help offered to you where you need it. Here is what I have enjoyed for the last ten years: The kids LOVE children’s church ... The parents are incredibly happy and serving and supportive … The workers are fulfilled and enthusiastic and motivated and prepared and THERE when scheduled! Additionally, we worked together to improve our department constantly. We held outreach events, field trip events, special days … you name it. Why? Because of the vibrancy of the team.
Why am I saying all of this right now … because it is a result of my mind shift. And I want you to enjoy all of that, too. Here are two ways you can let me help: 1. I am going to add a Q&A section to this e-mail newsletter. So, feel free to e-mail me your questions and I’ll pick a couple to answer each month. You never know who else you will help by asking the question. Perhaps someone is hurting so badly they cannot even get the question out … so ask away. I’m not saying I’m the answer-all person, but I can try to help. Sometimes an objective viewpoint is all we need to shed a little light on the subject. 2. I have put the simple strategies God shown me in an easy-to-use, practical manual: “Developing A Dynamic Volunteer Team.” In the manual I will go through some simple steps to recruiting, scheduling, motivating, training, and appreciating your workers … and much more. I have had so many comments from children’s leaders about how delightful it was to get a manual that was truly “usable“. Lisa from Belleville told me that when she first met me she had just returned from a big children’s ministry conference. She came back discouraged because it seemed like everything they presented was so far above where she was and she would never get there, except for the volunteer class. She picked up a copy of my manual and called me the next day. She said she had decided NOT to quit children’s minister (I was glad to hear that) and that for the first time in a long time she felt like she really could “DO IT!” She sounded excited. My heart was thrilled. Carolyn sent me a note about how this has changed her ministry totally. Melinda told me that she put the strategies to work and had completely staffed a brand new program in just 2 weeks! She was thrilled ... and so was I. It really is doable … whether you are in a big church or a little church … one service or five … you can do it. God has placed the desire to serve the children in your heart and He wants every part of that ministry to be blessed ... Every single part. Even the monthly schedule. You can have a sense of delight at the difference a few simple strategies will make. You will feel the difference when your heart is excited again … when faith runs freely again … when you look at the calendar and say “Oh yeah, I need to whip the schedules out today.” I want you to experience that. |
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