Invest in your Bench

One day, it will happen. People will get sick. Others will move away. And you’ll be left covering way too many services by running the soundboard, changing worship lyric slides, or checking in children. Be prepared and invest in your bench before this happens - here’s how:

1. Recruit volunteers that may be less than qualified but have a heart to serve
2. Invest in these recruits by pairing them up with more experienced volunteers, using the “I do, you watch. You do, I watch. You do. You do, someone else watches” training approach
3. Identify a method of having your bench “on call” - take signups for weekends that they are made available to fill in due to an emergency (and make sure you know how to reach them via home and mobile phones)
4. Rotate your volunteers in and out of the bench to vary their workload and give them a rest
5. Be sure to keep your bench engaged by having them train new recruits that will replace those that move on or need some time off for vacation
6. Bonus: Do not treat your bench differently than your frontline, or you will build resentment

This is often a difficult step to implement, as our first thought is to simply find the best and brightest and exclude the rest - this happens quite often in technology-related areas. Don’t fall into this trap! Be willing to simplify your process, make things repeatable, and invest in others that are outside your “inner circle”. The time will come when one or more of these people that were never prepared are able to step up and inject something into your ministry that you never even considered! It has happened to me, and it was a great blessing!

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