Recreating Yourself

Is it worth teaching volunteers every aspect of your staff position? Or is it acceptable to just do it yourself?

Perhaps the biggest deterrent to bringing on and training new volunteers is because it is easier in the moment, to do it myself.

This could mean one of two things, either I don’t have the right volunteer or I need their help even more than I thought I did! If you find yourself too busy to teach others – you are too busy!

To hand something off is very difficult for me. Not in a one time situation like an event, that’s easy. But, in my everyday work.

I have no specific, bullet point, time specific work day. I could never produce creative concepts if I worked under this kind of schedule. I of course have several non-changing weekly meetings which give me deadlines for projects and programming of our services, but beyond that I set my schedule.

This makes it very difficult to use volunteers. And it makes the thought of duplicating EVERYTHING I do more overwhelming than doing it myself! I do however completely buy into the fact that duplicating myself MUST happen. But, to find someone so available that they could follow me through my workday in order to learn what I do…seems impossible.

Although I have people that know how to do all the important individual parts of what I do, I have not identified one individual that could sit at my desk and do the little jobs, planning, recruiting, creating that I do right now.

The obvious goal for the good of our ministry is that we MUST duplicate ourselves, not optional. But, HOW?

I have wrestled with this over and over and have decided the first step for me has to take place in a class setting. Our class system is called Crossroads University, so we constantly develop new class offerings for the maturing of our congregation. Here is my plan.

1. Teach the programming process (two meetings to cover)
2. Assign topic for them to take home and create a service
3. Allow them to physically direct their own live service
4. Recruit the ones I see potential in and spend more specific in depth time with a couple individuals.
5. Keep repeating the process!

This sounds so simple when I put it on paper, but I would love to know, do all of you have a volunteer in whom you are investing a lot of time?

I would welcome your suggestions as I begin to create a mini me!

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Related posts:

1. Culture of Crucial: Recruiting People, Not Musicians or Singers
2. Dealing With Tech Arts Burnout, Part 2
3. Letters to Leaders, Vol. 3
4. Perspective
5. Creating Worship: The Art of Simmering