Do you consistently evaluate your environment?
Sunday is game day! It’s what we’ve been working on all week long. And we want to be strategic and intentional about learning. About improving. We want to remove any obstacles that would keep our kids and families from growing in their relationship with Jesus Christ.
So every Monday and Tuesday, we spend time in our different meetings evaluating what happened the previous Sunday. It’s not personal or critical. The evaluation is driven by a desire to improve…a desire to learn and grow.
Good questions to guide the evaluation process:
1. Who are we serving?
As you start this process, it’s always good to remember who your customer is. For us it’s kids, parents, and volunteers. Knowing this helps us prioritize what feedback is most important and worth fixing.
Example: If a key leader complains about where they have to park on Sunday, we kick ‘em in the butt and say get over it. If a new parent is frustrated about parking and trying to get in the door with small children, we work on a solution!
2. What are you looking at?
Everything! You should be experiencing and looking at everything you do. From how it feels to wait in line and get checked in as a guest…to how your worship leader transitions kids from the Bible Story…to how your small group leaders are connecting relationally.
The key to this is participation! Staff and key leaders should be participating in environments, not just overseeing. If you want to gain a fresh perspective on your environments, then schedule yourself into key volunteer roles, or escort a new family through the check-in process.
3. What actually happened?
Spend time talking about what you experienced on Sunday. What wasn’t as good as it should be? Was anything frustrating to a parent? To volunteers? How well did children engage to the Bible story? Where were their questions? What seemed unclear?
What was amazing? Where did you see kids connecting with an activity in small group? When did you see parents engage with a program? What communicator nailed it when teaching our kids this week?
4. How can it be improved?
This is the most important step in the process. You have to decide what needs work and then be disciplined to work on it. Sometimes it means setting another meeting with a different team to work on a solution. Sometimes it means communicating to a particular team of volunteers. Or it could mean we plan a training time to help leaders improve skills.
We can be overly critical of ourselves and spend too much time trying to fix something that really doesn’t have that much impact on our overall morning. Don’t waste time chasing perfection!
Identify a true problem that needs to be solved. Then create a plan and fix it!
5. What do we need to celebrate?
As we evaluate we often share stories of life change or sing the praises of an incredible volunteer. Don’t forget to take that one step further and celebrate the amazing things that you see with your volunteers. It might be a thank you note. It might be a mass email sharing a story. Or it might be a video extravaganza!
Help your staff and volunteers become comfortable with this process by making it a regular part of your routine. When your team knows they can trust the way that you handle evaluation, they will actually begin to look forward to it.
Everyone wants to be a part of a team that is known for their excellence. Paying attention to the small things that need to be tweaked is one of the keys to creating an excellent environment for kids.
What is a recent improvement you’ve made?
Post written by: Kendra Fleming - Multi-Campus Children’s Ministry Director
November 11th, 2009 at 10:46 am
I am the director of the elementary environment at my church. I am volunteer staff and lead a team of about 25 volunteers. I have the opportunity to attend paid staff meetings and see that they do evaluate everything… every week. I love that and am thankful that they do. I would love to replicate this with my own team but wonder how to put it into place being that my team consists of all volunteers who work throughout the week and do not have a regularly scheduled time to gather during the week as paid staff do? I’ve thought about an evaluation form of sorts, but am concerned that it might become tedious each week, particularly since they would be filling it out alone and not have the benefit of the team coming together to share and discuss. If anyone has any thoughts or ideas on how to evaluate with a team of volunteers vs. staff… they would be greatly appreciated! Thanks.
November 11th, 2009 at 8:51 pm
Hi Lisa,
Here are a couple of things we do to gather feedback from volunteers. We have a sheet of paper that is on all of the clipboards that they use on Sunday morning. They are mostly open categories — and they can jot things down that they see as they go.
We have created a more specific form for evaluating production environments and only use those when someone is specifically evaluating large group.
The other thing that we do on Sunday morning, is once we get the morning rolling and settled down, we meet with all of our coaches for a few minutes and we get feedback during that time.
When I worked in the past with volunteer leaders only and didn’t have a staff, we would get together every Wednesday night for about 30 minutes.
It’s hard to carve out the time — but you won’t regret it. And your volunteer leaders will love to have a voice and be a part of making things better and better!
Kendra
January 21st, 2010 at 1:15 am
Hey!
It’s always hard to get feedback on a service that is fresh and applicable… but doesn’t drain the last bit of energy from a team that’s just served their hearts out for the past 3 hours.
So we use a ‘PIP’ - Positive, Improvement, Positive. Anyone can contribute one positive from the day to start. Then someone suggests one improvement and we all think of a solution. Then finish on a positive note again - might be something that was good or something the team leader noticed that was great about someone else etc.
It stops the team from suddenly ‘disappearing’ after the service - closure is important - and allows the team leader to say thank you. Also it only takes 5 minutes and is an easy way to get people to start evaluating what they do every morning. The ‘average volunteer’ (if there is one!) doesn’t really think about it - or if they do they won’t say it
Found the article really helpful, thank you.
January 21st, 2010 at 10:58 pm
Hi Clair,
Love this idea! “PIP” - I’m going to share it with my team on Monday. You’re right - it’s important to close out the morning with our volunteers. Love how you approach this.
Thank you!
K