@Will Stoker love it!

@Megan Williams thank you for introducing yourself. You are carrying a lot of hats, and that can be challenging but the correct systems to help manage time, recruitment, and everything else in between will help give you the confidence to lead! 1. I am praying for you! 2. We will be launching our first course this week. This course will help you put the 5 most important systems in place.

@Dwayne Riner sometimes I feel like the needle for this is constantly shifting as technology evolves and new methods are emerging every year. Sometimes you feel like you’re in a groove and then next you find yourself evaluating again. Which can be a good thing because it forces us to stay fresh in our methods so we ourselves don’t become stagnant.

@Megan Williams Jim Wideman taught a philosophy called “managing by walking around,” or what he often referred to as earning your MWA degree. The idea is simple but powerful: some of your best ministry opportunities happen when you are present, visible, and intentional. When you walk around, you get the chance to interact with parents, guests, members, and regular attenders. Those relationships often become your greatest pool of potential volunteers. As you get to know people, you begin to learn what they do for a living, what they are passionate about, what gifts they carry, and how those gifts could be used to help build the Kingdom. One of the biggest shifts in leadership is realizing that as the ministry grows, your role changes. You may spend less time inside the classroom and more time pastoring, equipping, and developing the volunteers who are in the classroom. You still provide big-picture oversight for the ministry, but your primary focus becomes building people, not just filling positions.

@Megan Williams Another idea that helped us was doing something we called Volunteer Madness. We basically gamified volunteer recruitment and made it feel like a church-wide push instead of one ministry begging for help. The idea was simple: we created a bracket-style competition between ministry areas, like Nursery, Kids Jr, Elementary, Youth, etc., and each team competed to see who could get the most new volunteer interest forms completed. We promoted it from stage, on social media, through leaders, and through personal invites. The key was making the ask clear and specific. We weren’t just saying, “We need help.” We were saying, “Would you consider serving one Sunday a month in one of these areas?” That made it feel less overwhelming. A few things that made it work: 1. We gave each area a clear goal. 2. We made it visual with a bracket/scoreboard. 3. We gave people an easy next step with a QR code or interest form. 4. We encouraged current leaders to personally invite people they already knew. 5. We followed up quickly with everyone who showed interest. 6. We celebrated wins publicly and made it fun. The biggest thing is that it created energy around serving. People saw that Next Gen ministry was growing, exciting, and worth being part of. It also helped us identify people who may not have responded to a general announcement but would respond to a personal invite. For your multisite situation, I would even consider doing it by campus and ministry area. Each campus could have a Next Gen volunteer goal, and then you could celebrate which campus recruited the most new team members. That way, you are rebuilding the volunteer pipeline at each location instead of trying to pull from the same core group over and over.