Volunteer Culture

Own It

When it comes to volunteers we all have people all across the serving spectrum. On one side there are the people who would serve at every opportunity and then we have those on the other side of the spectrum who serve once a month or so. But when it comes to our volunteers they should all be 100% bought into the vision and mission of your church. Simply they should be involved and understand what the purpose of their ministry is about; giving people  the opportunity to encounter Jesus and learn about him. So how do we get all of our volunteers on the same boat when it comes to owning their ministry.

In Andy Stanley’s Deep and Wide: Creating Churches Unchurched People Love to Attend he talks about the best way to reach people from the time they get onto the property. He says the experience can be separated into three basic groups. First, Engage them, Second, Involve them, then lastly you need to challenge them. This can be adopted into how we are able to make our volunteers feel involved and needed with us. If you haven’t read Deep and Wide or you haven’t read it in a while I highly recommend you read it and put it in your library.

ENGAGE

Let them know about their positions and tell them how vital they are into the framework of the service. Let the know the specifics; Tell your teleprompt operator how important he is even though what they are doing probably isn’t recognized or even known to the normal attendee. Let those whose positions are behind the scenes, not noticeable to the normal attendee, Tell them that what they do matters and how it ties into the service even though few people even know what they do even exist.

INVOLVE

Convince them that you want something for them rather than something from them. This was one of the first things that I learned when I began leading volunteers during an Internship. Now I understood the concept of that phrase but I didn’t really get it until people on my team left the team. And left the team for another one in the church. But letting them know that you want something for them will help people want to stay involved and bought into your ministry area. Give them all the possible opportunities on your team. If they are ready to learn a new position, teach them and let the learn.

CHALLENGE

Challenge your volunteers to invite others to services. Fill them in on things that are up coming up in the following weeks and ask them to be in prayer for the services. Challenging people is what will get them to be 100 percent bought in and not just 95 percent bought in. That extra 5 percent is what is going to lead to you having more volunteers than you are used to and then will lead to better services and healthier volunteers, which will lead to all your volunteers being,  All In.