How to Train and Develop Your Team Throughout the Year

Every major sport league has an offseason. It is a chance for teams to regroup, train and develop your team away from the stresses of a season. While it is great for those sports teams to focus on the offseason where they can regroup for another year, your ministry doesn’t have an offseason. It is always non-stop. There are no breaks.

So how can you train and develop your team throughout the year? There are a variety of ways.

On the Job Training

You learn a lot by doing. While you can have regular team meetings and designated training times (see below) to help train and develop your team, on the job training is valuable. It gives them real work experience so that they just don’t know what to do, but they can put that knowledge into action.

Another form of on the job training is to provide opportunities for them to try new roles and positions. While they may serve in one role, as time passes, they may want to try other roles. Take time throughout the year to ask them if they would like to try new something new and then give them the opportunity to try it. For instance, your Live Stream Camera Person may be interested in learning how to do the Switcher. Or maybe a Small Group leader fro your Children’s or Youth Ministry may be interested in learning how to share up front as part of the main teaching. Poll your team members, alway asking them if they may be interested in trying a new role. That way, you can give them training while they are doing ministry. But, you are also providing them new opportunities; opportunities that may keep them more engaged in you ministry longer.

Have Regular Team Meetings

Having regular communication with your team is really important. You can do this in a variety of ways. One of the most common ways to do this is through email or text messages, updating everyone with what is happening. While this can be good for getting info out to everyone, it is not good for team building and growing together.

To grow together as a team you should have regular, in person, team meetings. These could be once month, every other month or once a quarter. The point is to be together, sharing encouraging stories, have some fun together, challenging each other to grow as a leader and to pray together. The more you can do this, the better. While it is ideal to have in person gatherings together, having some Zoom meet ups would be good, as well.

Have Designated Training Times

In order to improve the effectiveness of your team while they are doing ministry, you need to find ways to train and equip them. You can do some training during your regular team meetings, but it would be ideal if you had a designated training time set aside to focus on training. This can happen in a variety of ways to do this, that is why it might be best to try different options and see what works best for your ministry. For example, some options are:

• In person half day training times that would usually happen on a Saturday morning or mid-week night time. If you are going to have people together for 3-4 hours at a time, provide food. Food goes a long way to keeping people happy.
• Weekend training times are usually best during the summer time where your team can get away for a weekend to prepare for the upcoming year. Summer time or the month of January are probably the best times to do these weekend trips.
• Online training can be great as well. You can do these in a few different ways. You can do a Zoom meet up where you teach and train. You can do a training video or even a podcast version of the teaching material. While online is a great way to get the information out there to people, if you want to do practices where your leaders get to try out the learning, doing an in person time would be the most ideal.

Conclusion

Ministry is year round. There are no extended pauses or an offseason where you can take a break to regroup, recharge and be equipped to minister. That is why you have to be creative to make sure you team is growing, being trained and developing into the best ministry team around. Consistently give your team on the job training, have regular team meetings and find times to train and equip each other. The more you can train and develop your team, the strong your team will be to minister to your community.

What will you start incorporating today? Before you finish reading this post, write down a quick action plan that you can start implementing today so that you can avoid social media mistakes. Share them below or on social media. 

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