Volunteer 101

So i've found that i can never hear enough about how to take care of or empower volunteers.  It seems as though every couple months i need a lesson on how to do this effectively, and a couple just hopped my way this week.  Our "Spring Crash" is coming up this weekend, its an overnight small group event that will include packing some lifepacks to send out to kids in Iraq.  Pushing our volunteers to see this as a launching pad into our small group ministry, i've challenged them with individual goals for how many students outside of their normal crowd i want to see involved.  This wasn't genius, it was just a way to motivate them to think outside the box and really recruit some new students.  Two volunteers stood out this week, both relatively new in our small group ministry (less than 3 months).  First volunteer works with middle school girls comes into the office first thing Monday morning and asks to include a personalized letter from the 3 ladies that lead the small group to their small group students!  Not only that, she had printed maps and given cell phone numbers for the parents to contact with any question before the event then hand wrote all the invitation envelopes!!!  Second volunteer, middle school guys, calls me today and says he was inviting a lady to church while he was at work.  Happens to be she goes to our campus and is involved in our adult small group ministry.  Amazingly she has a middle school guy that has been wanting to get involved but due to work schedules of his mother cant get a ride.  Gets the information, signs him up for our event this weekend and was calling to see what kind of arrangements we could make to give him a ride every week!  These are pretty standard practices to people who do ministry as a job, but for the new volunteers they had gone above and beyond taking the challenge of recruiting some new students to another level!  Oh sure theres more, like the volunteer that handed me almost 50 sign-ups she had personally recruited over our wednesday night program, the guys leader that hosted a barbeque at his house this weekend so the guys could see where they were staying, or the group that went on a mission project this weekend.  There's two guys that are starting small groups in lieu of the event, the groups that want to be a part of the process, including leading worship....sometimes it feels like maybe they are getting it!!!