Volunteer Training – Community vs. Equipping

One of the things I wrestle with is how to fill our volunteer training times. Now, I’m not saying I don’t have anything to say – I always have plenty to say. Rather, I’m talking about content management. What should our times together look like. I’m wrestling with the fact that so many of the volunteer teams I have seen in the past three months and so many of the volunteers I have talked with seem ill equipped to do what we ask them to do. Let’s be honest here. We desire a relational ministry because it’s through relationships that significant ministry can take place. So, we ask our volunteers to hang out with students in and out of our program times. We desire the students in our ministry to learn, to be discipled, to grow in their faith, and some of that happens in our large groups, but we really rely more on our small groups to accomplish this. Yet, how well trained are our volunteers to lead these kinds of small groups? Is it happening? I would say that in many cases, the answer is “no, it’s not.”

Listening to volunteers has taught me they feel ill equipped to do what we ask of them. The feel like they are failing with their small group. They are stretched thin and need some help and leadership. So, when they come to our training time, what do we give them? The tools they need to successfully lead a small group, or food for their own soul, or both? Question: What would it look like if we stopped giving our volunteers another tool for their ministry toolbox, stopped giving them answers to problem a, b, and c? Instead, what would happen if we met their needs, discipled them, helped them grow closer to Christ? Would they naturally be better at doing this with students if someone did it with them? Maybe!

What role does the rest of the church play in this process though? If the volunteers in your ministry are involved in an adult small group of their own (a healthy thing to be involved with people older than 12) and they found the encouragement they needed and the soul food they needed within that context? Would you need to fill this role? Maybe we need to spend our time trying helping them learn to translate what we have gleaned as adults to the lives of the young teens they work with. Would this accomplish the goal of helping volunteers be better at discipleing students?

Now, the bottom line is there are some volunteers who do this very well (either as a result or in spite of what we have done with them). There are others, however, who may not ever be good at it no matter what we do. There are still others who, with a little push, could become great. The question is what does that push look like? We want to move our volunteers to become better at reaching our overall goal of making disciples, but we don’t want to be trying to move them to an unattainable place.