I went for a coffee earlier in the week with a children’s, youth and families worker (this doesn’t leave much for the vicar?) from one of our parishes. It was notable for one thing that has never happened before and one thing that happens a lot.
First the thing that had never happened before: they didn’t serve us. We sat there for 45 minutes and then left having finished our conversation without the waitress ever noticing us.
Initially it was annoying, then quite funny before we then reached a phase when we didn’t want to be noticed and feel obliged to buy a coffee when we’d run out of time to drink it! Effectively we had a free use of a table and chairs; which has helped the children’s ministry budget go a little further this year.
However when at the non-coffee serving café a few familiar themes emerged: the sense of isolation that church work can bring, the potential for church politics to make a job less rewarding than it should be and the difficulty they were facing trying to find good volunteers. Recruiting people to help in our groups does seem to be one of the great ongoing struggles being faced all across the Diocese.
There are some reasons for this that are beyond our control. Here are just two:
- London always comes bottom whenever you see volunteering numbers
- People in work in London tend to work the longest hours anywhere in the country.
There are however things that are within our control that we aren’t always good at doing.
Too often we are reactive in the way we recruit and don’t do anything about it until the rota suddenly looks incredibly sparse and you find yourself getting cross with the helper who ‘insisted’ on having a honeymoon for two weeks and leaving you alarmingly short. The crisis then leads to the desperate notice that basically says that if we don’t get some more volunteers we’re closing the Sunday school. This seems to assume that the threat of having the children in for more of the service than is absolutely necessary will motivate people in a way that nothing else will! However the results of this approach are normally pretty poor.
To me we need to think about recruiting volunteers when we have enough and not when we have a crisis. You should always be recruiting; this way people can be sold the vision of what is being achieved and given the opportunity to be part of an amazing team. You can also phase people in slowly; starting as an occasional helper and then increasing their commitment as they grow in confidence and ‘get the bug’.
As the leader you should aim to be recruiting a new helper regularly so that your team is well stocked and as people leave you can be ‘promoting’ from within rather than having to find someone who is ready to step up role immediately having not worked much with children before.
My other tip is never sit down in a café without making sure the staff notice you walk in.