Why In-Person, Face-to-Face Training is 100% Worth It
This is the next installment in our ongoing “Large Church” series, which looks at guest services through the lens of the larger congregation: those with an average attendance of 800 or more. While any church can deal with these issues, they seem to especially be true of larger churches.
See the entire series here.
I’ve long been an advocate for a streamlined, systematic volunteer onboarding process: a reguarly-scheduled opportunity for potential volunteers to hear more about the ministry and determine their best next step.
The ideal training is in-person and face-to-face. It’s not simply “shadowing someone on a Sunday.” It’s definitely not “jump in and figure it out.” It never should be “here’s our manual…read it and let me know if you have questions.”
But I’ve found that there is a bell curve when it comes to this type of in-person, face-to-face training. The smaller the church, the more likely there is a “learn by absorption” approach: just join in and we’ll teach you along the way. At some point, churches move to a more formal, curriculum-based training option. But then it seems the larger the church, the more pressure there is to move to a highly-automated, highly-depersonalized process: watch this video series. Fill out this online form. Complete this survey to find your best fit. Dance, robot, dance.
To be clear, I have nothing against shadowing on a Sunday, learning-as-you’re-serving, standard operations manuals, video trainings, online forms, or surveys. We have utilized all of those at one time or another, and will continue to explore how to use those things in the future. But they’re used as an accent to our training, not as a replacement for it.
So yes, I advocate for a streamlined, systematic process. But I also advocate that your initial volunteer onboarding be in-person.
Here are four reasons why:
1. In-person demonstrates care.
Hosting a regular onboarding opportunities tells potential volunteers that you really care how they’re equipped to serve. Facetime with their potential leader is important, yes. But so are the small touches that you drip in along the way: putting the “event” back in your training event, having a polished onboarding guide, and enthusiastically casting your personal vision and excitement for the ministry … all of those things tell people this is important, and you are important.
2. In-person builds accountability.
Every volunteer team has protocols: how often a volunteer serves, how they get supplies, how they find answers, and how they resolve conflicts. Sure, you can have a volunteer check off a series of boxes on an online form to say they’ve read and understand what they’re agreeing to, but we all know that a Christian’s favorite way to break the ninth commandment it to promise they’ve read the terms and conditions when they absolutely haven’t read the terms and conditions.
An in-person training allows you to read the room, to know when a volunteer is getting it … and when they’re not. It allows for questions and clarification. And it gives you a leg to stand on when correction might be needed later.
3. In-person drives real-time feedback.
Similar to #2, in-person orientation gives a potential volunteer the opportunity to raise a hand and ask a question. It lets them draw understanding out of a statement that might otherwise be left confusing on a video.
But as leader with literal hundreds of orientation sessions under my belt, saying real words out loud to live people often gives me a gut check: these things that I’m telling them we do, do we actually do those things? As a leader, leading regular orientations makes me keep it real, as the kids say.
4. In-person builds a relationship.
It’s far too easy to watch a video, sign a form, and pick up your name tag on the first Sunday you serve. But it misses the crucial aspect of getting to know the people you’ll be serving alongside before you’re in the trenches with them.
Face-to-face trainings gives the leader the chance to ascertain that person’s specific gifts and potentially call them out. Onboarding someone in a classroom, over a meal, or with a couple of coffees helps the volunteer to see the leader less as a … well … a leader, and more of a friend.
Videos and forms and checkboxes? They all absolutely have their place in equipping our volunteer teams. But let’s never let automation replace the human touch.
