I spent the last couple of weeks covering the topic of volunteer management. I captured most of the patterns related to the lifecycle of volunteers: recruiting, selecting, managing, and dismissal. If you have any other …

I spent a little time working with ServiceMix this weekend. Overall, I have good things to say about it. I wanted to quickly hack together a poller to read an Atom feed and convert it …

I must say, the second half of the new season started off with a bang! Battlestar Galactica was the most intense, with both SG-1 and Atlantis delivering better episodes than I expected. I won’t give …

After a (what felt like a long) hiatus, Sci-Fri Friday is back! In celebration, my wife and I have been watching the Battlestar Galactica Season 2.0 DVDs to remind ourselves of the July-Sept episode run. …

Inevitably, the time will come when a volunteer decides to move on. This may be because of a job relocation, an interest in another ministry, or moving to another church. Handling this situation is important, …

Day-in, day-out. Week-in, week-out. Month-in, month-out. What is keeping your volunteers going? What makes your volunteers stay when, unlike their day job, they have every right to leave at any time? There may be one …

Now that you are actively recruiting, you will begin to locate new volunteers that match your ministry. The next step is to integrate them into your team. Here are some suggestions:

Introduce them to the team …

Now that you are starting to recruit, you’ll begin to get some interested people to sign up. The next step is to conduct an interview to determine if the recruit is a good fit for …

If you are building your team early on, you need volunteers that have a strong walk with the Lord, a heart to serve, and some basic understanding of your ministry. I’ve seen too many ministries …

One of the patterns I’ve seen constantly in ministry is the use of the same list of people when a new volunteer is needed. You know what I mean. It usually starts off with a …