Recruiting Well
This effective model will help you learn how to recruit more leaders into your ministry teams.
Last week I was having a conversation with one of the coordinating leaders of children’s ministry in my church. During our conversation I made an offhand comment about SRE in the local school to which this leader looked up and said, “Oh yes, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that.”
My heart skipped a beat. Surely, it wasn’t going to be that easy?!
But sure enough, this leader was putting her hand up to take on an SRE class next year. To be fair, I had been teasing out this prospect with her over a number of years, but that had not been my intention in this conversation. It certainly felt too good to be true.
That is because, like most SRE Coordinators and Children’s Ministers I know, I find recruitment to be a difficult part of the role. There never feels like there are enough workers for the harvest, and the leaders we have are faithful, but tired servants; especially as we approach the end of the year.
If you find yourself with too few leaders, stretched across too many responsibilities, you’re not alone. What you and I both need is a simple and workable system that will help with the recruitment process. We need a system thatOne which will make the need clear in our minds, allow us to communicate our vision for Children’s Ministry as well as the need for more partners in that mission, and one that will provide for us the right number of leaders and teachers for our needs.
Enter Mark deVries and Annette Safstrom.
A number of the Youthworks ministry advisors have been reading Mark and Annette’s book, Sustainable Children’s Ministry, alongside Children’s Ministers in and around Sydney. The key strength of the book are the systems of ministry that the authors provide that do exactly what is promised on the cover; create sustainable structures and processes for children’s ministry that result in flourishing, not floundering, ministry.
There have been a number of suggestions in the book which I am already incorporating into my advising as well as my own church’s ministry planning. Below are the author’s seven steps for recruiting well, with my own reflections on how this can be utilised well in your ministry context.
1. Pray
Many of us are used to Advent Calendars, counting down the days until Christmas discovering the surprise. Of course we pray first. Not just because we are Christians and this is the right Sunday School answer, but because we are thoroughly convinced that Jesus cares far more about the discipleship of young children, even more than we do on our best days. Oh, and because he commanded us too as well (Luke 10:2).
2. Start early
We all know the frantic rush of trying to find an extra leader or teacher for next week’s lesson. And we all know that we could and should have started earlier. While recruitment is something that ought always to be on our mind, a lot of the hard work should be happening no later than November for our ministries that kick off in February. This includes having the difficult conversations of finding out which leaders are not returning to our ministry teams in the new year so that you are well prepared for the next step.
3. Identify the need
Write out, very specifically, how many teachers, leaders, helpers and junior leaders you want to cover all the possible roles in your ministry. For SRE Coordinators, start with the presumption that each teacher will fill just one class. For church based children’s ministry, you will need to know your rotation system. Is it the same teaching team every week, or do you have rotating teams that do alternate weeks?
4. Make the prospective list
Book an appointment with your senior minister to go through the church role and identify any and every member who would be capable of filling the roles that you have written down. The author’s general rule is that you will need 3 times the number of contacts than you had positions for in Step 3, which certainly matches my past recruitment experience. For SRE Coordinators, it will be worth your while to book a meeting with other partner churches in your area and repeat this process to grow your list of potential recruits.
5. Merge the lists
Place the contact names against the specific roles that you would like them to take on. This means that when you contact them in Step 7, you will be able to make a very clear invite to a particular ministry responsibility. You will have your “dream team”; the first names against every ministry position. But you should still have 2/3’s of the names of your list who are second and third in line for every position. Assign each contact to potential roles now so that the strategic work is done.
6. Make contact with everyone on the list
1. Yes, everyone. You might end up with too many teachers or leaders. But if everyone was on the list because they would be of value to your ministry team, then this is a problem I’ll willingly face!
The authors suggest sending an email as your first point of contact. There has been animated discussion in my reading groups about this process, whether it devalues the ministry by not initiating with a more personal contact, or whether it’s a nice soft entry point. I think that the email can be used well as a first point of contact IF it does a couple of things.
a. It is personal and not a group email.
b. It communicates your confidence in the vision, mission, and values of SRE ministry.
c. It makes a clear description of the role that you are asking them to consider.
d. It explains why you believe that they will be suitable to fulfil the ministry role that you are asking of them.
e. It let’s them know that you will be following them up by phone or at church in the next 2 weeks.
Don’t use an email as an excuse not to have an awkward conversation. Do use an email if you feel that in doing so you can communicate clearly your passion for ministry, and always follow up in person or by phone in the time frame that you’ve expressed.
7. Keep contacting
If you have initiated the conversation with an email, ensure that you do follow up in the time frame that you provided. This provides you with the opportunity to continue communicating your passion for the ministry and answer any questions that they have. Keep pursuing each contact until you have a definite response, following up by phone, text or email each week as necessary.
It’s not an easy list, but it is a simple one in the sense that it has clear, manageable steps to follow. While it may at first appear to add to the sense of overwhelmed-ness, I pray that it might start new conversations with your church members, increase the church’s knowledge of your ministry, help the whole church to value and own ministries including children’s, youth and SRE ministry, and of course, richly bless you with the right number of workers in your particular harvest field.
