A few weeks ago we met with all of our KidMin staff and brainstormed for 30 minutes on free or nearly free ways we can appreciate our volunteers. Our goal was to come up with 100 ideas!

After I took out the duplicate ideas or ideas that did not meet our “nearly free” criteria we didn’t quite reach 100. But I’m thinking with your help we will reach it easily.

Leave your idea in the comments below!

100 Ways to Appreciate Volunteers:

1.    Volunteer Picnic

2.    Andy Stanley does your voicemail greeting “This is ___’s voicemail and he’s an awesome volunteer.”

3.    CG in the Main Service recognizing this volunteer

4.    Flash Mob

5.    Button to wear

6.    Backstage Pass for Main Service

7.    ”The Kelsey” award (Our Waumba Host is Kelsey & she would recognize in large group.)

8.    Decorate classroom or doorway for birthdays

9.    Lake Potluck Cookout

10.  Sunday Morning Starbucks run for a volunteer

11.  Facebook updates

12.  Wall of fame - post pics

13.  Walk of fame - they walk through a tunnel of high fives and cheers

14.  Free T-Shirt

15.  Wow Trophy - you make a great crazy trophy award and present on Sunday

16.  Phone Call Appreciation

17.  Personal Shuttle Service to and from car

18.  Acknowledge Anniversaries (both volunteer anniversaries & personal)

19.  Volunteer crown of honor

20.  Volunteer Team Picture

21.  Personal Delivery (of something they love)

22.  Furniture on a Sunday for small group (Our small groups sit on the floor. Furniture for a group or group leader would stand out.)

23.  Serenade from worship

24.  iTunes gift card

25.  Text Messages (Pics from Sunday)

26.  Bulletin Board

27.  Write a song about them

28.  Homemade goodies

29.  Public recognition

30.  Sunday off

31.  Free car wash during service

32.  Impromptu Treats

33.  Their own segway (we must know someone to borrow this from?)

34.  Personal visit (bring coffee to their house our office)

35.  Connections gift card (Our bookstore)

36.  Surprise Mariachi Band (sombreros required)

37.  One-on-one meetings/time

38.  Invite them out to spend time away from church

39.  Meet volunteers and kids at a park

40.  Play and cookout

41.  Birthday hat

42.  Reed Porter “awesome volunteer” report (Reed Porter is a KidStuf character. We shoot video of him almost every month so we would shoot a quick shout out to a volunteer while doing that.)

43.  Team thank you note

44.  Redbox code

45.  Favorite drink

46.  Tweets

47.  Somehow serve them

48.  Homemade cookies

49.  Social at your house

50.  Reed Porter “voicemails”

51.  Pray for volunteer

52.  Valentines with pictures of kids from their small group

53.  Game night

54.  Record rest of the team praising them & email them that week.

55.  Lunch with Lead Pastor

56.  Personalize monogram notebook (hand drawn)

57.  Celebrating people in Sunday’s meetings

58.  High 5

59.  Flair (buttons they wear on their lanyards)

60.  Prayer requests

61.  Jibjab Volunteer appreciation using staff

62.  Written words of affirmation

63.  Hugs

64.  Balloons on Sunday

65.  Letter magnets on fridge in Volunteer Central celebrating a volunteer

66.  Highlight on chalkboard in Volunteer Central

67.  ”Secret Service” escort throughout a Sunday morning

68.  Singing telegram

69.  Intentional help with a move or something like that

70.  Favorite Candy

71.  Email Bible verse

72.  Hallmark E-Card

73.  Recorded iPhone Video

74.  Individual breakfast

75.  Candy Gram

76.  Picture (of them serving their small group or in their roll)

77.  Double ply Charmin in dressing room (apparently this is a problem in the KidStuf greenroom)

78.  Conversation

79.  $5 Starbucks card

80.  Evite Cards

81.  Flowers

82.  Visit from Andy/Lead Pastor

83.  Trivia posted about that person

84.  Waumba Wish (Grant a wish)

85.  Favorite things (Gather a list of their favorite things and bring one of them in)

86.  Birthday cupcakes

87.  Give them colorful shoe laces.

88.  Take a picture of them with their kids and post on Facebook.

89.  Tell parents what a GREAT volunteer they are as parents arrive to pick up their child.

90.   Ask parents to write notes to this volunteer & present them in a gift bag.

91.  Call their spouse and thank them for supporting this volunteer as they serve. Tell them about all of the great volunteer qualitites you see in their spouse.

92.  Take volunteer’s picture with your mascot and post it. (Grizzle Dizzle from KidStuf.)

93.  Write a cheer for this volunteer. Send it home with kids to learn. Let kids perform it on the stage for their volunteer leader.

94.  Write a “You Rock” song (simple and silly with motions), record it simply in house and send it out to all of the kids. Let them perform it on the stage for their volunteer leader.

Last week we gathered all of the KidMin staff from each campus together for a two-day retreat. We learned, listened, planned, created, laughed, and played. It was a great couple of days!

The purpose of this retreat was to help our teams across campuses build relationships and share ideas. We know that collectively we have the potential to accomplish a lot more. We also know that if there are not strong relationships across campuses, there will be friction and frustration.

We can’t eliminate all frustration, but we can build healthy teams that are capable of working through the differences to get the best end result.

Ultimately…we are better together!

Here’s what it looked like:

DAY 1

Session 1: Welcome & Quiet Time

During this session we talked about the power of working together. We introduced the 5-1 concept, and we discussed how our own spiritual health will influence the health of our team.

We gave out the book Enemies of the Heart, and wrote a personal quiet time for everyone to get alone, and do some “heart” work.

Session 2: Strength Finders

Every director met with their team and played a game to learn more about their teammate’s strengths. We give this test to everyone who works on our teams.

Lunch and Learn

We placed our staff in groups of two or three people from other campuses that they might not normally get to talk to. We gave them three questions to discuss, and sent them around town to have lunch together.

Session 3: Fall Kick Off Breakouts

Every fall we “kick off” the new school year with a big event. We mixed up all of our teams and broke into several smaller groups to talk about specific topics related to this event. We discussed things like: break outs for small group leaders, how we should train new worship leaders, what we should give the new volunteers, and what production elements to include.

Session 4: Grief and Kids

We invited a counselor who works primarily with children to talk to our staff about helping kids who are grieving. Grief happens when there is any loss. It could be a move to new city, a new school, a death, a divorce, or the loss of a pet. Great practical advice!

Drive to Gwinnett Church

At 4:30pm we all jumped in our cars and drove 30 miles to our newest campus. This is a building we are sharing with another church. Many of our staff hadn’t seen it yet. It was a great field trip. We ate dinner and toured around the building together.

UpStreet Large Group @ Gwinnett Church

Fun Surprise!

The team that plays together stays together! We had everyone bring workout clothes, and we surprised them with a fun night at Sky Zone. The pictures say it all.

DAY 2

Session 5: Difficult Conversations

One of our staff walked our teams through the importance of having difficult conversations. He gave us a great step-by-step guide for handling these kinds of discussions with integrity and hope for growth. He gave great examples and really challenged our team to lead through difficult conversations well. (I’ll post more on that later!)

Session 6: 100 Ways to Appreciate Volunteers

During this session, we had every table brainstorm as many free or almost free ways to appreciate volunteers. We did this quickly and placed them all on a creative board. It was great and got our brains rolling for the next session. (I’ll post these ideas later this week.)

Session 7: Breakouts

During this session, we broke our team up into small groups and began planning together for the following: Volunteer Appreciation Plan 2012-2013, Volunteer Training Plan 2012-2013, Look & Feel for Summer in Waumba Land & UpStreet, and KidStuf Fall Changes.

Session 8: Family Ministry Covenant & Volunteer Website

We wrapped up the retreat talking about two things:

Family Ministry Covenant: This is the covenant we give to new volunteers who want to serve with us. We did some coaching on how to communicate this during orientations, and took questions concerning how to handle any conversations that might arise from this.

Volunteer Website: We are launching a new website for all of our volunteers this month. We showed everyone the site, answered questions, and heard feedback.

Then we all said “Good Bye”!

We had fun together, got to know each other better, got some planning done, and learned a whole bunch in the process!

I wish you could know this team like I do! They are the best!

We host an event called Family Birthday Celebration where kids share their faith story and get baptized.

It can be challenging to help our kids create a great video. We’ve done this for many years and have learned a few things along the way. Here are the top tips in no particular order from our directors who work with kids and baptism videos.

Top Baptism Video Tips:

From Sara:

I come stocked with kid jokes from a joke book to get them to laugh during cutaway shots…
“How do you cut the sea in half? - With a SEA-saw!”

From Mandee:

1. Set them up for success, and tell them what to talk through and practice at home with mom and/or dad beforehand! We give them a card with questions to think through and be ready to answer! Examples: Name, age, when they asked Jesus in their heart, and whom they were with? Why they want to get baptized? Is there anyone they want to thank?

2. When the arrive get them loosened up and comfortable with you first! Chit chat and talk to them about anything fun other than what they are about to do first! How was school today? Is your teacher nice? What’s your favorite thing at school? Or can you not wait to get out until summer? Etc.

3. Tell them they can mess up and start over as many times as they want until they say it like they want to! No pressure situation is key!

4. Keep parents out! Kids always seem to be more comfortable in telling their story when they don’t feel like everyone is watching in on them, and they have to remember it EXACTLY like they practiced. Also, in the end, it’s more fun for it to be a surprise for mom and dad on the special day!

From Chad:

Send home cards, and have kids practice at home before they come. After kids check in, have them go in a separate room with a staff member who is good with kids, and have them practice and get comfortable with you.
We let them say it about two times. When they get in front of the camera, they nail it for the most part. We had 10 great videos. It was a lot less work on Steve, the kids were not as nervous, and we had heard their story a couple times so we could help them even better.

From Emily:

Make sure you have steps in place - like a way to present the gospel, an interview to make sure children have made a decision to trust Christ, and that they can articulate that decision in a video.

PREPARE kids beforehand by giving them guidelines to follow as they put together what they want to say. Ask them to write out what they want to say and actually practice saying it so that when they come in, they’re confident in what they want to communicate.

As the kids enter the room, introduce the children to the person behind the camera and any other staff that are in the room. Make jokes about the size of the microphone or let them check out the camera and monitor (keeping time in mind) - and anything else you can do to put the kids at ease and make them feel comfortable in front of the camera.

Ask kids to bring in pictures of their family and small group to hold up as they tell their story and thank the people who’ve led them to Jesus.

Film B-Roll of the kids laughing, holding up pictures, walking in and out of the shot, etc so that you have lots of options when you edit the video. This will not only make the final product more fun to watch, it will also help with transitions and allow kids to say each part of their testimony one section at a time, rather than having to memorize something from beginning to end.

Make sure a staff member is in the room to listen as the kids are being filmed. Sometimes kids will get their words mixed up and say things that are incorrect or confusing. For instance, instead of saying “I want to be baptized to show everyone that I have Jesus in my heart”, they might get tripped up and say, “I want to be baptized because I want to accept Jesus in my heart.” If there is a trip up in their testimony, ask questions of the child to make sure they understand what they’ve communicated and how to clean it up to make it clear. Always remember that on the day of the service, you will have family and friends in the audience that do not have a relationship with Jesus, and you want the message of the gospel to be as clear as possible.

From Gina:

1. Take a few minutes to allow the kids to feel comfortable with YOU. Ask them fun personal questions about school, sports, etc.

2. Take some time to make them laugh - tell a good joke

3. Tell them there’s not a right or wrong thing to say - you just want to hear THEIR story.

4. Remind them they can do it as many times as they like to say everything they want to say

5. Allow them to say their story in segments - this way they don’t have to repeat everything

6. Praise them for doing such a GREAT job! Remind them EVERYONE is going to love to hear what they have to say.

What tips do you have for shooting video with kids?

Last Easter we created this video to share the powerful Easter story with our elementary kids in UpStreet. You could have heard a pin drop as our kids watched. We followed this video with great discussion and learning activities in small group.

If you are looking for something special to use for Easter Sunday, this could be the perfect fit. Feel free to grab the link to the video and download the curriculum.

Praying you have a WONDERFUL Easter Sunday as you share the most important message ever told.

Happy Easter!

Video:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Video Link: http://vimeo.com/25671466

Curriculum Files:

easter-week-4-sg-2-5

easter-week-4-sg-k-1

easter-lgroup

Activity Pages:

graffitti

jellybeanpoem

Here’s what happened:

• Launched the Big Idea of Honor
• Watched KidStuf Live
• Hosted visiting churches for Sunday’s at North Point
• Observed the crowded hallways between services
• Listened in as a large group team debriefed
• Talked through a tough situation
• Cleaned up when a child threw up in the hallway (or our amazing facilities crew did!)
• Photographed our team dressing up for the Disney event
• Welcomed our amazing volunteers to a Disney training event

Here’s a few pictures!

We all know strong healthy relationships are important when building high functioning, compassionate and committed volunteer teams. I think our team excels in their friendships and true compassion for the people who serve with them. So I asked them to share their Top Tips!

Here are the Top Tips from our team on building relationships with volunteers:

• Pay attention! Pay attention to what is going on with them. Ask questions. Write things down so you can remember to ask about them later. Volunteers want you to know what’s going on in their life - it’s the quickest way to feel connected to them.

• Come up with a system so you don’t forget. Lindsay on my team will write a note next to the person’s contact information on her phone. So if she runs into “Leighanne” and finds out she has a big job interview this week, she writes a note on her phone next to Leighanne’s contact info. Lindsay will then shoot an email the day of to let her know she’s prayed for her, or she’ll remember to follow up on the next Sunday.

• Don’t assume you’ll remember! Write things down, and then take time during the week and especially on Sunday to catch up with them. This becomes more complicated when multiplied by 100’s of volunteers but you can do it!

• Nothing is more important than spending time with volunteers. I could rush around on a Sunday and get more “stuff” done, but sometimes the best thing to do is to talk with them while they finish their coffee or doughnut.

• Take the time to text the little things. This builds personal friendships and brings you closer in the long run. Ex - “I just ordered a sweet tea and thought of you because you love it so much.”

• Don’t be so much about the task that you can’t stop to really listen on Sunday.

• Be willing to put yourself out there. Tell them about you so they feel like they know you and want to work with you. Listen to them. Value them. Learn from them. Build respect.

• Invest in the friendship. Stop and take the moment to talk to them, and hear how they are doing. By stopping and having an actual conversation you’re showing them how important they are in the midst of the hustle and bustle.

• Take time to have lunch with them during the week.

• Every volunteer needs to be heard every week. Make sure they are heard! Ask questions about: personal events, volunteer role, suggestions and observations. A person who is heard will come back even when things don’t go as planned. A person who has a challenging personality can be communicated with the right way because there is relational capital to communicate truth that is not critical of character.

• Show interest in their personal lives outside of Sunday. Ask questions about them personally, and follow up another time.

• Encourage them in their volunteer role. “I saw you greet that child by name, thanks so much”, or “I appreciate you encouraging that student volunteer. That goes a long way. Thanks so much”

• I try to write down something that a volunteer tells me about on Sunday, and follow up during the week (surgery, special date, birthday, sick family member, etc.)

• Get personal. Volunteers have family and work stresses like all the rest of us. Investing time to find out how life is beyond their volunteer environment promotes relationships that last longer than just a volunteer season.

• Be intentional; take the extra time to ask a volunteer about them (how they are, how their week was, ask about kids, school … let them know you remember details of their lives). Over time this builds into a trust relationship, because people want to be known, and you took the time to show them they’re seen even in the craziness of Sundays.

• Have a plan! If I’m not intentional often times my day-to-day and week-to-week gets too busy! It always helps to put it on the calendar and in my weekly/monthly to-dos like anything else.

• Stay updated with what’s going on in your volunteers’ lives, and ask for prayer requests (it allows you into their world and to know what’s on their heart). Pray boldly for them and let them know that you’ve been praying specifically for them. Follow up with them when they’ve shared what’s on their heart/going on with their family (are they struggling at work? Did they have a big exam? Do they have a sick family member? Are they looking to buy a new house? etc.). Just checking in with people and letting them know how much you care and that you’re praying for them goes a long way!

• Be genuine, and get to know them personally.

• Truly listen and remember things volunteers mention in conversations. Then, send an email or card to check on them, and let them know you’re thinking about them outside of our environment.

• Spending intentional time going deeper with conversations, getting to know them beyond their service to the environment.

• Praying together during meetings and asking volunteers to share stories.

• Send a personal note or email after a Sunday to 2-3 volunteers.

• Ask questions, and take the time to get to know them. Don’t keep it just business, but rather about their families and personal lives. Take time outside of Sunday… coffee, lunch or I even do get-togethers at my house once a month, or every other month, and invite all of my coaches. Everyone brings a snack food, and we just have a fun night catching up with one another.

• Hang out after large group to chat, check in, and ask how the production went. Basically, make the first move!

• Use the volunteers’ name when speaking to them, and stop what you’re doing to give your full attention while in conversation.

• Making sure you speak to every volunteer each time they are present, thanking them for their time and commitment to your department. Never let any of your volunteers feel invisible or unneeded.

• I stay connected with them on Facebook. It really helps generate natural conversations on Sunday when you can find common ground or similar interests.

• Ask them for their prayer requests. You can get to know a lot about someone in a short amount of time when you find out what they are specifically praying for.

What is your Top Tip for building strong relationships with your volunteers?

*Next week let’s share Top Tips for having fun with your staff. The staff that plays together works hard together!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Our goal was to get parents and kids praying together at home.

Here’s what we did to partner with parents in February:

We invited them to KidStuf LIVE!

Click here to view the embedded video.

We sent home this Parent Card.

The front had an overview of the month.

The back had our Family Night instructions.

We gave parents the inside scoop!

Click here to view the embedded video.

And made sure they had all of the right information to make their family prayer time a success.

Click here to view the embedded video.

One of my favorite things!

During KidStuf LIVE we had families write down a prayer request and pass it to another family in the room. We challenged everyone to take that card and pray for the family’s requests written on the card. We have heard such incredible stories from this simple activity. Prayer requests for fathers in Afaganastan to families struggling with additiction.

Our families are dealing with some big stuff.

How great is it that we can talk to the One who created the entire world?

I love that He tells us to, ”Call on me and I will tell you great and unsearchable things that you do not know.” Jeremiah 33:3

How did you partner with parents this month?

It was a GREAT month.

Title Package for Large Group:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Every month we send home this Parent Card which includes an overview of what we’re teaching for the month.

Here are a few videos we used through out the month as part of the storytelling segment.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

What did you teach your kids in February?

This is the artwork for the balloons.

We ordered a ton and filled our hallways.

Balloons make everything more festive and make a big impression on kids and volunteers.

All of our staff will wear this t-shirt all month long!

We created this valentine card, emailed it to parents, and made it available to them on Sunday morning. We plan to tape them all around the door frames of each volunteer’s classroom.

We sent this email to all of our parents to get them involved in the fun!

Hey Parents!

This month we are learning to love God with all our hearts. Waumba Land would not be able to share this with our kids without the help of our incredible volunteers. That’s why we want to partner with you in showing these individuals some Valentine’s Day love!

This Sunday, February 12, we are asking you to bring Valentines to your kids’ classroom leaders letting them know how grateful you are for their commitment to serving your family. Here’s how we will help make it easy:

1. Print the attached Valentine, cut it out, decorate it, and write a note.

2. Or, pick up a printed copy on Sunday at the main entrance to Waumba Land.

Feeling especially creative? Have your kids draw pictures, create their own cards, or purchase Valentines that they pick out. Whatever you decide, just drop them off at your kids’ classrooms THIS Sunday (February 12).

Thanks for showing our volunteers some love!

The Waumba Land Team

It’s Valentine’s Day!

Let your volunteers know how much you love them!