Lessons from Fellowship: Volunteer Training

Training at Fellowship Church has been an on-again, off-again process throughout the years – which is a lot like every other church. In the last two and a half years, I’d been asked to train the vast majority of volunteer camera operators and directors. It’s a role I thoroughly enjoyed.

Fellowship uses the weekly Wednesday night “Mix” (Senior High worship service) to train operators. But I took the approach that since these kids were more media-savvy than adults, we didn’t need training that would negatively affect their service. Instead, I told our volunteer teams “We’re going to shoot this like MTV. I’ll help you with the mechanics of the job, but I want you to create dynamic, engaging imagery for these kids.”

In essence, I didn’t allow training to be watered down “just because it’s youth”. Conversely, I often told volunteer directors, they’ll have to direct better and faster here than they will in the big auditorium. This is harder.

Within the past year, Fellowship also started a Tuesday night hands-on training session during the band rehearsal in the main auditorium. I’d work with camera operators on how to maximize the top-of-the-line controls on the HD cameras so they’d have every chance to be successful and creative when the service happened on the weekend. I’d then pop upstairs and work with them on memorizing director commands and work with them on learning to follow their two “money shots” (two that they most often need to get quickly) and how to anticipate needs by setting the director up for new shots.

Other training happens on a volunteer-to-volunteer basis, where people “shadow” a regular volunteer to learn the ropes. This is true in the Children’s auditoriums, youth auditoriums and main auditorium. It’s helpful and low-stress to observe others perform a job while you see how it all comes together.

A final important part of training is that each venue has very similar technology. The same audio board, lighting console and video switcher (or at least the same manufacturer) fill each room. This allows the volunteers to “train once; use many” and makes it easy to move volunteers around when necessary.

Training volunteers is something that I thoroughly enjoy doing and it’s been pretty well done at Fellowship – especially in the last year or so.

By Anthony D. Coppedge, CTS (http://www.anthonycoppedge.com/)

Anthony Coppedge provides consulting to churches for developing and growing a Media Ministry, building teams, casting vision and even choosing the right equipment. He lives in Bedford, Texas with his wife and two daughters and can be reached at [email protected].