How We Got 94% of our Student Ministry Volunteers to Attend our Weekend Retreat

Last weekend was our student ministry winter retreat.

We piled just under 900 students and volunteers into sixteen charter buses and experienced an epic weekend of ministry. It was a fantastic three days.

In my opinion, what was most impressive about our winter retreat was that 94% of our regular small group leaders came to lead their students through the weekend. We have amazingly dedicated leaders who, for the most part, love their role in our student ministry.

Over the course of the weekend, I realized that our winter retreat is a microcosm of how we’re able to achieve such a high level of buy-in and ownership with our volunteers. And so, here are a few observations.

My hope is that one or two of these ideas would resonate with you and your ministry.

Focus

It’s no secret that buy-in requires vision.

When vision is clear and compelling, volunteers usually engage.

We all have vision for our ministries. If we didn’t, we wouldn’t be in this line of work. That’s not the issue.

The issue, in my opinion is that we often have too much vision. We have too many events and we try to sell the importance of every one of them.

The worship night is a huge opportunity. We need you there.

This outreach event is an incredible opportunity. We need you there.

This service project is so important for our students. We need you there.

This retreat is a game changer. We need you there.

So many events. The vision becomes diluted.

Our winter retreat is our “one thing.”

During the course of the entire school year, there is only one major student event and it’s our winter retreat.

When we recruit new volunteers, it’s a simple ask:

“We need you to show up to 90% of our program nights and also our winter retreat. That’s it.”

Simple. This is why we get over 90% of our leaders to attend. We tell our volunteers:

“These three days are worth three months of small group.”

So, here’s a question for the ministry you lead: What’s your “one thing?”

What’s the most important event of the year? Where do you see the most engagement and impact? Is there a way to focus everything on that “one thing?”

Of course, in order to do this, you’ll most likely have to de-emphasize other events or programs in your church but in my experience, it is absolutely worth it.

Know How to Win

As I watched our volunteers lead and serve through the weekend I was struck that the vast majority of them were absolutely crushing their role. I mean, just killing it.

The question is why?

I’m guessing it is not because our volunteers happen to be vastly more mature than church “X.”

It’s probably not because they are more talented either.

I believe it’s because they simply knew how to win. They knew what to do because they were strategically prepared by our team.

Here’s a secret sauce for creating a powerful volunteer culture: People like to win. I can’t think of a single person I know who enjoys being terrible at something.

“I just love losing at sports!”

No. It’s not a thing. People love to win! They love to be successful.

Knowing this, we put on a leader training a month before our retreat called, “How to Win at Snow Camp.” We made it vividly clear. And, because people generally love to win, our people got after it and it was beautiful to watch.

So here’s a question for you and your ministry: What does it look like to win as a volunteer in your ministry?

Secondly, do your people know?

My advice would be to talk about this all the time. Talk about it too much. Over-communicate this. Clarity is a good thing. When you people get annoyed and tell you that they get it, you know you’re good.

Information Is Power

It feels good to know what’s up. People love to be in the know.

On the flipside, uncertainty creates anxiety.

Over the years, we’ve learned that it’s critically important that volunteers know what they need to know, when they need to know it.

That last part is the trick.

Not every volunteer needs to know at the same time. Some of our volunteers won’t read anything we send them. Yes, this drives us insane but at the same time, many of these volunteers are phenomenal leaders. They just live in the moment. When they need to know, they will ask.

Other volunteers need to know everything a month before the event. Personally, I don’t understand these people but I’ve learned that if we don’t get them the information they need when they need it, it affects their experience. However, by getting them what they need when they need it, we built trust with them and empower them to lead effectively.

For example, one of the things we asked our volunteers to do on this retreat was to share with their students one verse that has deeply impacted their lives.

Most of our leaders would have been ok finding this out at the retreat and figuring it out on the fly but others would have hated being put on the spot.

By communicating this plan a month before the retreat, we enabled these leaders to be able to share something meaningful with their students.

So, something to think about in your ministry: Does your flow of information empower only those volunteers who are comfortable with improvising and quick reactions?

If so, you are not only stressing out a segment of your volunteer core but also accidentally stifling their effectiveness.

5 Star Experiences

One of the mantras we repeat on our staff team is that we want our ministry to be “the best place to serve.”

I want the experience of serving in our ministry to be so magnetic that people actually hate to leave — the kind of place that when a person looks back on their time with us, they would say:

“Those years were simply the best.”

The path to actually achieving this lies in providing volunteers with a 5-Star experience. You have to constantly ask, “What’s it like to be a volunteer?” and what would make it more fulfilling, positive and fun?

This kind of thinking has led us to a few different strategies for our winter retreat. Here are some of the things we’ve implemented:

• Swag: We always give our leaders something special at our winter retreat. Sometimes it’s a hoodie, or a hat. This year is was a sweet travel mug.
• Oasis: We create a space that is only for our leaders. It’s a room full of caffeine, snacks and other goodies that are only for leaders
• Connections: Whenever we do a retreat our trip, we assign staff to care for volunteers. This involves checking in on those volunteers, troubleshooting for them and basically doing whatever to make the experience better. On this retreat, we also brought along 24 of our coaches. These are volunteers whose job it is to care for, develop and empower our small group leaders.
• Little Things: Often, it’s a bunch of thoughtful little things that make the experience feel great. This year, it was ridiculously cold at our retreat so we brought hand warmers for all our leaders. One of the mornings we also ran to McDonalds and bought them all breakfast sandwiches. At our summer camp, we often do the same thing with ice cream. Small, thoughtful gestures keep volunteers going when they are exhausted.

So, if you want to create an incredibly magnetic volunteer culture, what are you doing to provide a 5-Star experience for your volunteers?

Wrap Up

Well, there you go, four strategies for creating a magnetic volunteer culture from last weekend’s winter retreat.

Hopefully something in there inspired or encouraged you. We’d love to hear your ideas for building a fantastic volunteer culture. Feel free to leave us a comment below.