Part 2: I'm In Charge Of A Quiz Team! What Do I Do Now?

By Ryan Holman

Congratulations! You are in charge of a quiz team. This is part 2 of a two-part series designed to help you get your program off the ground. If you haven't checked out the first post in this series, you can find it here.

As you read your job description you will see one reoccurring word: MOTIVATOR.  Without a doubt, your most important task is to always be a motivator.  You need to be a motivator in three areas:

1. Teens
   
2. Coaches/Volunteers
   
3. Your Church
   

In the last post, we focused on how you can motivate your teens. In this post, we will focus on motivating your Coaches/Volunteers and your church.

Motivating Your Coaches/Volunteers

There is strength in numbers.  In order to have motivated quizzers, you need motivated adults. The more adults you have passionately encouraging quizzers, the more motivated the quizzers will be. Your job is not only to motivate quizzers but also to motivate the coaches/volunteers to motivate the quizzers.  Did I mention a huge part of your job is to motivate? A large part of getting volunteers/coaches on board is sharing your passion with them and making sure they understand why quizzing is so important.  

The second part of maintaining motivated volunteers is ensuring that they are empowered and prepared.  The worst thing you can do for a quiz program is have leaders who are not prepared.  Over time they will become unmotivated and the teens will follow their lead.  In order to keep this from happening, have regularly scheduled coaches meetings.  

The worst thing you can do for a quiz program is have leaders who are not prepared.

Develop practice schedules for your coaches/volunteers with room for a little flexibility (this ensures they know what is going on but also allows them to be creative in how they run practice.)  Seek feedback from your volunteers and ask them "What can I do to help you be successful?" Make sure you take time to thank and remind your volunteers of how much of a difference they are making in the lives of the teens.  

Motivating Your Church

Every quiz program has something big either working for it or, unfortunately sometimes, against it: the church body.  It can be one of the greatest assets to a quiz program if properly equipped.  Your job is to properly equip them. 

How do I do that? The answer goes back to passion.  You have to motivate the church to be passionate about quizzing so that they will motivate the teens.  This isn't nearly as hard or intimidating as it may sound.  Churches by nature understand the importance of writing God's Word on their hearts.  All you have to do is make the church aware of the quiz program in their midst.  Ensure the church knows what quizzing is (some people think they just go and take a test, yikes!) and why it's important.  Here are some ideas you can try:

• Put on a quizzing demo.  You can either use just your own quizzers or you can do quizzers vs. adults (trust me, quizzers verse adults is MUCH more entertaining.) You can either do the demonstration as part of a service or you can make it a separate event combined with a fundraiser.

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• Put your quizzers in front of the church and let them give their testimonies about the benefits of quizzing. 
  
• Give reports to the church after each quiz meet.  
• Bring in adults who normally don't work with the teens or who don't have time to be there every week to help with a quizzing lock-in or lead a lesson on a chapter.  

Another group of advocates in your church can be parents. Always invite parents to the quiz meet to support their kids.  Maintain regular contact with parents (even those who do not attend church regularly) and encourage them to motivate their kids to study.  You only see quizzers for less than 3% of the time in a week.  Parents see them for much more than that.  Most of the time your best quizzers are the ones who have parents who encourage them to study and who come to the meets.   After all, who doesn't want to watch their son or daughter do well?  

Whatever you do, be PASSIONATE and share your excitement.  At the point that you feel like you talk about quizzing too much with teens, volunteers and the Church, and you worry that you might be overwhelming them, you can be sure that they know you have a PASSION for writing God's Word on the hearts of teenagers.