Lead Volunteers: Do We Bring Execution or Mere Activity?
Years ago, there was a humongous machine at the World’s Fair. This machine had smoke, levers, and gears, in addition to making noise. It drew a lot of attention as the people stood in amazement to see this huge contraption belching smoke, churning gears, and making noise. Somebody leaned over to the main engineer, who…
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Learning God’s Unfolding Story
This little girl lives in Oklahoma. Her church, Evergreen Baptist Church in South Tulsa, uses God’s Unfolding Story for Older Preschoolers. Kristina Linson is the Director of Family Life-Preschool at the church. She sent me this message from a “new teacher who was trying to memorize the God’s Unfolding Story Cube…” I hate to bother…
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Lead Volunteers: People Stay Where They Have Say
As a leader it is important to understand that gaining input from those you lead helps them feel as if they are part of the vision. By giving their input they feel as though they are taking part in shaping the future of the ministry. As a result, giving people a say will give them…
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Lead Volunteers: Eat That Frog!
A number of years ago, while sitting in an airport, I saw an interesting book by a name that I vaguely recalled. The author was Brian Tracey and it turns out that Brian Tracey is a productivity guru. The book is entitled Eat That Frog. Let’s imagine that you sit down to dinner with your…
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Lead Volunteers: Quietly Allow Results to Speak for Themselves
The Endeavor Allow results to speak for themselves. Years ago, our team decided to undertake a massive endeavor and recreate and redesign all our brochures. Now, you may think in your mind that this was a simple task. But it was not a simple task. We started from scratch and it took us a little…
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Lead Volunteers: Don’t Oversell the Sacrifice
When recruiting, don’t oversell the sacrifice. Share the opportunity to make an impact on the Kingdom of God! So many leaders walk into the recruiting conversations apologetic and sheepish. They come to the conversation feeling like they are a bad person that is taking something away from this potential volunteer. As they present their ideas,…
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The Seven Interactive Book Corner
Sunday School Zone is owned and operated by Seven Interactive, a Christian publishing company that provides discipleship and publishing resources for the local church and those who lead it. One of the things we do is publish books. Now Seven Interactive is teaming up with other publishing brands to offer our users living in the…
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Lead Volunteers: Creating Relationship Between Volunteers
Sadly Surprised Years ago I was sadly surprised when I found out that some of our key volunteers who had been serving as small group leaders next to other small group leaders for 40 weeks of a school year didn’t know the name of the person sitting right next to them. I was abhorrently disappointed…
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Lead Volunteers: Don’t Recruit Disunifying People
I made a significant mistake early on in my ministry career. I made several decisions that were unpopular — but that was not my mistake. We are going to make decisions that don’t please everyone. That is a good case of the “normals.” An Honest Mistake My mistake was in recruiting some of the individuals…
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