Excellent post. I’ve been volunteering in “Tech Arts Ministry” for about 20 years. Things have certainly changed from the days of simply “running sound”. Volunteers are vital and ensuring they feel valued is equally important. Our church is a smaller church so everyone, including me, has a “pay the bills” job outside of our ministry. Ensuring positions are filled each week, scheduling regular maintenance and equipment work, scheduling special events are all a concern.

I try to encourage all of our volunteers on a regular basis – especially our younger Youth volunteers. Also, while I’m responsible for everything, I make sure that specific volunteers are recognized for the special work/donations of time they do.

Thanks again for blogging about something so near and dear to my heart.

You are right about it boiling down to relationships and that is challenging. Trying to find time to serve at the church AND form relationships with each other is turning out to be harder than I anticipated.

Priro to divesting myself of all leadership responsibilities I was chief usher at our church for 10yrs and let me tell you – ushering gets less notice than tech does so I feel your concern.

My approach to appreciating my team was to gather tham all and feed them occasionally. Other things I did would include free breath mints (including trying to remember that one was a diabetic so suger free would be better), books to help their individual walks – and this is where knowing them helps – along with the usual thanks.

However, I made sure I went out of my way to thank all my volunteers each time they served and if they went above and beyond I’d letthe pastor know and get him to appreciate them as well.

During my tenure our senior pastor changed (all I’ll say is that it was messy) but thankfully the new guy is someone who spots and appreciates service in all its forms and in particular those that tend to ‘get lost’ in the busyness of church.