Growing Your Ministry Through…Volunteers

I’ve seen some recent posts from church staff bloggers that talk about how managing volunteers can be difficult and often will slow down your ministry. I want to address this issue in this blog post by first saying: You are correct! It is hard to manage volunteers, and often is the case that the staff will discount the help of volunteers. Rather, they will take the route of doing it themself, even if it takes time away from their family or another calling. I have 3 diagrams to illustrate some principles for growing your ministry through volunteers. The first, below, shows the gap between the skilled leaders and staff and the volunteer base within the church:

As you can see, the diagram shows a few moderately skilled volunteers that may show up from time-to-time. I refer to these skilled volunteers as “heros”, as the staff and lay leaders often start to get “hero worship” when they depend on these “servant powerhouses”. While this is a great blessing, it isn’t the norm, as most volunteers fall into the lower category where they have little skills and effectiveness but a desire to serve. Keep this picture in your head, as it will help you truly meet volunteers where they are, not where you wish they were. The next diagram shows the real opportunity that exists when we realize where our volunteers actually are:

Here is where executing what the Bible says gets a little harder. You see, Eph 4:12 says, “…train Christians in skilled servant work, working within Christ’s body, the church…” We, as lay leaders and volunteers, are called to train our brothers and sisters in serving the Lord. When we opt out of training volunteers because it takes too much time, we are cheating ourselves and those that would serve with us. As I mentioned in a recent post on The Volunteer-Centered Leader, we need to invest in people, not tasks. This is where true ministry is, but often we can forget this when we are leaders of a service-focused ministry such as IT, media, worship, greeting, ushering, and others. The final diagram shows what your ministry may look like after investing in your volunteers:

As you invest in them, you bridge the gap that exists between you and them. You are beginning to train them in the skills they need, but more importantly, you are increasing their effectiveness. When this happens, you will find opportunities to fine-tune your ministry to accommodate their skills while ensuring that they are effective. I’ve posted about this before when I simplified the technology choices for creating the church website. This enables you to take on more strategic steps to leading your ministry, as well as giving you more freedom to take on new opportunities as you are called.

So, whenever you feel like you are getting bogged down by working with volunteers, take heart - Paul assures us that it is the right thing to do so that “we’re all moving rhythmically and easily with each other, efficient and graceful in response to God’s Son, fully mature adults, fully developed within and without, fully alive like Christ. ” (Eph 4:13-14, The Message). Now, go grow your ministry through volunteers!

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