Volunteers

I've been sitting here at my desk writing a new manual for KidVenture workers. I've been working on this manual for 4 months now and still going strong. I've had several other children's pastors from other churches helping me with ideas and policies etc...
I just got off the phone with one pastor who oversees over 200 volunteers in his children's ministry. He expects a lot out of his leaders and volunteers. He doesn't joke around when it comes to people wanting to work with God's kids. I'm so inspired by his passion to not only lead the kids to Christ but mentor and grow his volunteers. I sometimes feel as if I'm too hard on my workers... all the rules, wearing name tags, signing in, finding subs, arriving 20 minutes early to work in our classroom, or an hour early to practice for LIVE!, the memorizing of skits etc. Then I sat here and listened to another church's policies and my first thought was WOW! Our volunteers have it easy. I began to ask him a lot of questions from how much complaining he gets to what happens when people are late... He actually said, it's rare things like that would happen around our kids ministry because our volunteers "get the vision". Hmmm...
I love the people God has placed in KidVenture to serve our kids. Fellowship kids are so blessed to have these people love on them the way they do every Sunday. I even have volunteers who want to serve EVERY SUNDAY so they can form a special relationship with the kids, otherwise they would miss them too much. I wish I could sit here and name every one of them and tell you what I love about them (and I would except it would take too long and I need to get back to working on the never ending manual... maybe someday).
I just felt a need to stop and thank my volunteers somehow... What you do goes beyond any thing I could express through words - THANK YOU! and Thank you God for sending them our way!!!