This is the second installment of the series on getting the most out of your volunteers (If you haven’t already done so, please read Part One: Understanding and Recruiting). In Part One, we discussed what to expect out of your volunteers and their individual personalities, and how to respond to some situations. Today, we will dive into some efficient ways to train and equip your volunteers for success. As before, we will be approaching this from the point of view of a production manager, director or other leader, and not as a volunteer ourselves, so please keep that in mind while you’re reading. If you are a volunteer reading this, what is discussed here today may help you better understand how and why leaders and leadership make the decisions and respond to situations the way they do, so that you can become a better volunteer. Volunteers understanding leadership is just as important as leadership understanding volunteers.
DISCLAIMER: There is no singular right or correct way to handle volunteers. The scenarios and methods we discuss today may not be suitable for your environment and volunteers, and it is important to keep in mind that not all volunteers will react positively to changes you may make for your teams. What we will discuss today has had success in a multitude of churches with a multitude of volunteer personalities and demographics. It’s not a “cure-all” for a struggling part of your ministry, but it can boost your team’s professionalism and spiritual health.
TRAINING AND EQUIPPING
Getting the most out of volunteers is a process. If we understand that each volunteer is different, we must also understand that the experience level and learning curve will be different for each volunteer. Some people may be able to pick up what’s going on quickly, and be a solid performer right out of the gate. Others may have a hard time conceptualizing what’s happening, or may be slow to react to certain events. Be prepared for this! It’s unavoidable, and you should not just assume that if they signed up to serve in your area of ministry that they know what they are doing. Not every tech volunteer is savvy enough behind a computer to troubleshoot and fix your ProPresenter issue, not every musician knows the optimal signal flow for their pedalboard, not every usher knows where to put things when they’re done. After a lot of trial and error with training methods for volunteers, I’ve have had great success with this four-tier approach.
Tier 1: Basic Training
This is where all volunteers for your ministry start out. They learn the basics of what’s going on in terms of service flow, the equipment they’re using, what is expected of them, and what to expect from others. It’s enough information to get through a service, and as little as possible to not overwhelm or scare a volunteer away. As an example, this may be where FOH volunteers are taught where ins/outs are located, that clipping is bad, what levels things should be set at and the flow of the service itself. This may be where your musicians learn about rehearsals, the difference between call time and downbeat time. It may be where your lighting tech learns how to operate the software/hardware controlling the lights. It may be where your media person learns how to operate Spotify/iTunes, and how to click through a ProPresenter presentation.
Tier 2: Shadowing
Watching someone else work is an under-appreciated and seldom-used tool. Often times, this is by necessity (“Volunteer X is a no-show. We need someone to run lights! NOW!”), and not by choice. Sometimes, regrettably, it’s an oversight. Once your volunteers have a basic grasp of things that they can expect from a service, they should really watch someone in action. Watching the actions and nuances of someone else during a service can show a volunteer what they can actually expect to see during a service. It’s even more effective if something actually goes wrong- your new volunteer will be able to watch and learn from the current volunteer to see how they overcame the challenge and moved forward. Don’t underestimate the importance allowing others to see how something is done. Encourage your volunteers to ask questions. Giving your volunteers as much information as possible before cutting them loose to be on their own is critical.
Tier 3: Next Level
Every couple of months, have a workshop night. Here, your volunteers can get some in-depth, mission-specific training that can help take their service to the next level. Be careful not to throw too much information at them at one time, though. The purpose is not to overwhelm your volunteers. When you do have a workshop night, keep it intentional and focus on one aspect of the ministry to train your teams. Continuing on the examples above, this may be where you teach your FOH volunteers what a patch bay is and how to manipulate it. It may be where your guitar players dive deep into tone, or where your lighting techs talk about colors and color matching, where your media volunteers learn about editing slides and staying ahead of what’s happening on the platform.
Tier 4: Cross-Training
If possible, you really should cross-train your volunteers. Believe it or not, this applies to technical as well as musical volunteers. The ability for a guitarist to pick up a bass, or a vocalist to sit behind a keyboard to get through a situation where a bassist or pianist is unavailable is paramount. On the tech side, your FOH engineer being able to get through a service with the keyboard controlling ProPresenter sitting on the FOH console is stellar. Your media volunteer being able to adjust lights, if the lighting tech had to step away for one reason or another, etc. Diving deeper, your musicians being able to tell your FOH engineer exactly what’s happening onstage if something is feeling off to them, or to know how to patch something into the console if needed- it’s the difference between, “I’m not getting keys in the monitors, let me see if they’re patched correctly” versus “Keys are broken, please fix.” The scenarios in which cross-training volunteers are endless, and I highly recommend it.
