What’s in this Episode?

Do you find that it always feels like you have a need for more kids workers? It’s like you can never get all the slots filled for each weekend for the Wednesday night services or for whatever events you’re putting on. Well, it doesn’t have to be that way. In today’s episode, we’re going to talk about 5 tips to recruiting kids workers. So that positions are always filled, and you’re able to give the best ministry possible for your kids.

---

Read the Transcript

Jonathan Hardy 0:00
Do you find that it always feels like you have a need for more kids workers? It’s like you can never get all the slots filled for each weekend, for the Wednesday night services, or for whatever events you’re putting on. Well, it doesn’t have to be that way. In today’s episode, we’re going to talk about five tips to help in recruiting of children’s workers, so that positions are always filled, and you’re able to give the best ministry possible for your kids.

Jonathan Hardy 0:21
Here we go.

Jonathan Hardy 0:27
So, a while back, my wife was at the church, and she was helping in the kids area. And one of the things that she noticed that often happens in lots of churches, is there was a need for more children’s workers in the different kids areas.

Dick Hardy 0:39
No.

Jonathan Hardy 0:40
Yeah. Have you seen that before?

Dick Hardy 0:42
Ever seen that before? Yeah.

Jonathan Hardy 0:43
Can you believe that actually, was the case for us. And one thing led to another. And she was taking initiative and said, “Hey, well, we need to get more people.” And she was just helping out, not part of the staff or any of that, just one of the kind of, one of the leaders for that service. And so, she went over to someone who she knew was not involved, and basically just recruited them, and said, “Hey, can you start helping” And They said, “Sure.” And then she connected them with the person who’s oversees the whole process.

And I don’t know if they ended up getting involved, but she was doing her part to get involved. And the reality is that we have to be doing this all the time. We have to be recruiting people in all areas of ministry. But today, we’re specifically talking about kids ministry, because kids ministry is one of those ones feel like, I don’t know, it just feels harder to keep people engaged in…

Dick Hardy 1:34
Well, I mean people see it as labor intensive. You’re not sloughing stuff off when you’re working with kids.

Jonathan Hardy 1:39
Right. Yeah, this isn’t, that’s not the easiest position that you have. So, we want to talk to you today about five steps to recruit children’s workers that you can have to just continue to improve your children’s ministry. And when you apply the five steps we talked about this is going to help you get more people on board serving alongside you in ministry.

Dick Hardy 1:59
Exactly. You know, the first one I want to just talk about, Jonathan, is targeting the right people. I’ve watched too many times, where somebody’s just firing away at the wall and hoping something stick. Even your example you just talked about. She went to somebody she knew. And she knew they were not involved in ministry, and so she was lasering in on one particular person. That’s the right way to do this. Yeah. And certainly, this starts too often as pastors and ministry leaders, we forget this. This starts in prayer.

Jonathan Hardy 2:35
Yeah.

Dick Hardy 2:35
This starts, frankly, not at the point where Ashley saw all that happening. It starts from a leadership standpoint, way earlier than that, talking to the Lord, Lord, you know, our needs, and who are the kinds of people I should be talking to? You’re and you’re looking for gifts, talents, interest? Yeah, you know, so somebody who said to you, man, I hate kids, man, oh, that’s probably not somebody you’re gonna target.

Somebody that you see, you know, enjoys being part of Little League or soccer or those kinds of things is they may, you know, that’s the kind of person, teacher that really might like to be involved in this. So the very first thing you’re going to do if you’re going to be recruiting kids workers is target the right

Jonathan Hardy 3:18
people. I like how you articulated it. I mean, it’s more of the you need to be a sniper and not do the shotgun.

Dick Hardy 3:23
That’s right, exactly right.

Jonathan Hardy 3:24
And really laser focus on when you identify those people, you want to then, the second thing, which is to cast big vision. Paint the picture for them, of what this could look like, and what their involvement could look like. And what you want to see happen in the kids ministry, and how them participating and helping in a voluntary capacity is going to help you get further down the road toward that end result that you’re wanting to see happen.

Dick Hardy 3:49
Exactly.

Jonathan Hardy 3:50
And when you do that, it makes them want to be a part of it. And if you’re not casting that vision and painting that picture for them, they might feel like you’re just using them to fill a slot.

Dick Hardy 3:59
Well, I remember one time I chatted with the Scotty Gibbons. I think you were there when he shot the video here a couple years ago. And Scotty talked about, you know, when he was looking for, in his case, junior high workers to go to a retreat. He could say, “You know, I need some guys to fill a slot because I need some male chaperones in the dorms with the guys to supervise 13 year-olds.”

Jonathan Hardy 4:18
Yeah.

Dick Hardy 4:19
Or I can say, I’ve got some I got some young men that are developing into world changers. Would you come along the journey with me to help them get there? Yeah,

Jonathan Hardy 4:30
Yeah,. Well, that’s the way better.

Dick Hardy 4:32
Way better. This big, Oh, man, I want to be part of that.

Jonathan Hardy 4:36
So, yeah, same thing for kids. Exactly. Same thing. And then after that, the next step is to define what you want. So, you’ve painted this big picture for them. They see it, hopefully they’re on board and they say, “Okay, yeah, tell me more.” Well, then you have to be clear, and define what it is that you actually want them to accomplish. And so, we have to make sure that it’s clear. It’s concise.

It’s not complicated. And they have the full expectations, of what you want. And so, you know, that might be even typed up might even be on piece of paper, maybe one sheet of paper.

Jonathan Hardy 5:10
Say, Okay, here’s kind of the role. It’s a job description.

Dick Hardy 5:13
Yes, exactly.

Jonathan Hardy 5:14
It’s for all volunteers, right? We would encourage you, you need to do this for all volunteer roles, not just kids ministry, but in this case, for kids, whatever the kids role it is. You know, haven’t typed up and say, Hey, this is what I’m thinking. This is what you would do. This is, you come in and you know, the time commitment, everything. And that way, they just know,

Dick Hardy 5:31
Yeah, that is so good. You know, and then, you know, after you do these things, there will be, there’ll be pastors that will have done the kind of thing I mentioned, a couple things you’ve mentioned. And then they get paralyzed. You know, the fourth point in this list of things of steps to do is you have to make the ask. You cannot be immobilized by the sense of what if they turned me down? Oh, what if I get rejection again?

Dick Hardy 5:51
Yeah. Or I know, they’re so busy. I know.

Dick Hardy 6:05
You’ve got to make the ask.

Dick Hardy 6:06
Yeah,

Dick Hardy 6:06
You’ve got to step out, make the ask. And if they say no, they say no.

Jonathan Hardy 6:11
Yeah, and that’s on them.

Dick Hardy 6:15
Exactly. Exactly. So make the ask.

Jonathan Hardy 6:17
Yeah, That’s good. And then the final thing is to be organized. You know.

Dick Hardy 6:20
Coming from Mr. Organized, here, guys.

Jonathan Hardy 6:23
This is very important, because you want to honor people’s time. And one of the ways to do that is to make sure that you remain organized, not just in the recruitment components of this and make it clear and easy for them, as I mentioned a moment ago, But then ongoing, because if they’re going to be committing to give you their time, you want to honor that time, and you don’t want it to be sloppy.

Jonathan Hardy 6:43
And so, that means you need to make sure that you’ve got the replacements. If you happen to have two services, and you’ve got, you know, so you’re not constantly saying every week “Oh man, can you stay some more?” Can you extend your time? And you know, people will give you a little bit of grace. And they’ll do that for a little bit. But if they see this disorganization or un-organization,

Dick Hardy 7:01
Whatever the word is.

Jonathan Hardy 7:02
Yeah, if they see that regularly, then at some point, they’re like, “Man, I’m not in.”

Dick Hardy 7:09
Yeah,

Jonathan Hardy 7:09
I don’t want to keep doing this. So, that is something that’s very, very important.

Dick Hardy 7:12
It really is. You know, we want to mention too, we’ve got a few episodes. I want to mention, one of the very early ones we did here with Church Tips was Episode Two, where we talked about the six tips to increase your churches volunteer core. I was talking volunteers in general, but this is for this purpose, we’re talking specifically children’s workers. And then in episodes 12 and 13, the eight step process to recruit church volunteers. We systematically walked through that for you in that two part episode.

Dick Hardy 7:39
Let me give you a summary here of what we’ve just talked about here. And if you’ll follow these five steps, you’re gonna be well on your way to having all the kids workers you need. Number one, target the right people. Number two, cast big vision. Three, define what you want. Number four, make the ask, and number five, be organized. If you’ll do these five things, you’ll see yourself set up for great success and having all the kids ministry workers that you want.

Dick Hardy 8:07
You know, I do want to encourage you too, we have a number of resources available for you at leaders.church, and one of them is the Four Secrets Masterclass. I really would encourage you, particularly in your leadership role with children, that you go through the masterclass. It’s just shy of an hour in length. It’s free to you. Just go to leaders.church/secrets.

Dick Hardy 8:29
And you can jump into the webinar, the masterclass and it will help you in your leadership of children and children’s workers. So, also follow us on social media. And we’d certainly love to have you subscribe on whatever podcast platform you listen. And rate and review us. We’d be we’d be happy to receive that from you. So, anything else on this Jonathan?

Jonathan Hardy 8:50
That’s it?

Dick Hardy 8:50
I think we’re good to go. Thanks so much for hanging out with us today. Make it a great one be blessed.

Subscribe & Follow:

• Subscribe on Apple Podcasts
• Follow on Spotify
• Subscribe to YouTube Channel
• Subscribe on Google Podcasts
• Like us on Facebook
• Follow us on Instagram
• Follow us on Twitter

Other Resources:

• Leaders.Church
• Leaders.Church Blog
• Church University
• Take the Free 5 Day Leadership Challenge for Pastors
• Get Free Access to the 4 Secrets Masterclass

Share This Article

---