Here’s an idea: Don’t ask volunteers to help you.

“But I need help!” you might say. No, you don’t.  You want help, but what you need is something entirely different.

Almost every church or ministry leader feels like they need more volunteers, but what if one of our biggest hurdles to achieving this is simply what we believe about volunteers?

What does the word “help” say about what we believe about those who serve in ministry? If you ask someone to help you in any other realm of life, what does it mean? If I ask you to help me build a fence, I am referring to a project that is mine; I am the “owner” of the work that needs to be done and it is my responsibility to see that it gets completed.  If the fence doesn’t get built, that’s not on you, that’s my fault. The labour, the cost, the design – that’s all on me.

This is a perfectly fine system in the fence-building world, but is this the message we want to convey when it comes to the work of the Church?  Are paid staff the “owners” of the mission? Are they solely responsible for the work? To ask volunteers to help paints a picture of the church in which the “professionals” are the ones who actually do ministry and everyone else is there to simply assist them in their work. But this is a very inaccurate picture.

A New Testament Picture

The picture that we see portrayed in the New Testament is a Church filled with people of various gifts and abilities, all working together to see the mission of Jesus fulfilled in their cities and neighbourhoods.  Those within the church that have the ability to lead are to use that gift to equip others to do the work of the ministry.

Go ahead and take a moment to click on that link. The Church that Paul is describing isn’t a place where leaders use volunteers to help them complete tasks. This is a Church where leaders are equipping and developing others to take ownership of the mission that God has given them. Who is helping who in this picture?

The ministry belongs to the Church and we have simply been called to equip this community of faith to do it well.

From using volunteers to developing volunteer leaders

What we need is not more help. What we need are leaders who show up because this is their ministry, to which God has called them.  We need leaders who will multiply themselves into others. As Duckworth and Miller have stated, we need owners, not renters.

In some settings (perhaps yours), this is a pretty big shift in how people think about ministry and how they think about pastors and church leaders. Leading through a change like this will be a big job and a long process. Where do we begin?

Here are a few thoughts that will be helpful as you move towards developing volunteer leaders:

This is a personal shift.

Your own attitudes and values may be the first hurdles to overcome. Do you have control issues and need to be involved in everything? Is there a long list of things in your church that only a pastor or paid staff member can do? If you’re honest, do you have a touch of “Hero-complex” and believe that every situation and every ministry needs you and couldn’t possibly be as effective without you? We’re not as irreplaceable as we think we are.

This is a cultural shift.

This is not a matter of simply changing surface-level behaviour, this is about changing the underlying values that are shaping your volunteer culture.  Development, growth, and leadership are values that need to be embraced by everyone involved. Without casting the vision for this, some volunteers may actually resist your development efforts. You might believe that setting up regular coaching meetings with your key leaders is important but to them, all they might hear is “more meetings.” If these values aren’t embedded in your culture, you can’t just throw a coach at them and expect them to be excited.

Here are 3 quick tips to keep in mind when attempting to change culture:

Change what you say. New language has a way of waking people up and causing them to think about things that they haven’t in a while.

Change what you celebrate. This is the behaviour that will get repeated.

Change what you evaluate. People only track what they value.  Find new metrics and listen for new stories to share.

This is a structural shift.

Developing leaders takes significantly more investment than simply using volunteers. Unless you have a very small volunteer base, it will just not be feasible for you to give each person the level of attention that they deserve.  You will need to create some form of Leadership Pipeline.  Very simply, a pipeline is a layered structure for developing volunteer leaders that ensures every person is receiving the coaching they need for their particular role. In our context, we have 3 levels in our volunteer pipeline:

Those who lead themselves

Those who lead others

Those who lead leaders

Each level has its own unique set of expectations, job descriptions, and coaching goals.

Watch for future articles where I outline our Pipeline in more detail.

The Why

As you begin to lead this change and communicate the vision to others, you will need to be able to articulate the “why” behind the shift. Here are just a few reasons that I regularly come back to:

It’s Biblical.  That’s a good place to start, right? From Moses and Jethro to Jesus and his disciples, the model has always been to multiply leaders.

It’s sustainable. The ministry doesn’t fall apart as soon as a key staff member resigns.  It’s owned by a host of skilled and passionate leaders.

It’s scalable and efficient. The mission is too big for us as church staff and continuing to ask for more money so that we can increase our Human Resources budget lines isn’t how we’ll meet the growing need. We need to develop leaders who will develop leaders who will develop leaders. Multiplication, not addition.

It’s richer. We need to tap into all the resources of the Church and identify and utilize all the gifts of the Spirit, not simply the ones that those on staff have.  Every single person in the Church has a role to play in the mission of the Church.

What’s Your Take?

How have you seen the difference between simply using volunteers vs. developing leaders play out in your context? What’s your next step in creating a culture of leadership and multiplication in your church or organization? Enter the conversation by leaving a comment or sharing online.

Resources to take you further

If you’re interested in going further, here a few fantastic resources to check out:

Ministry Boost – Coaching, consulting, and training events for Family Ministry and NextGen teams. Click the Training tab to learn how to build a Leadership Pipeline or implement a coaching structure in your context.

LifeWay Leadership – Both free and paid-for resources to help you with leadership succession and Pipeline building

Malphurs Group – Coaching, consulting, and training for churches.  Check out their blog for loads of free wisdom.

Leading Not Normal Volunteers – Fantastic book for leading teams within Kids and Student ministries.  Also check out the companion book for volunteers to read, “Not Normal”.

The Volunteer Project: Stop Recruiting and Start Retaining. – A research-based book that outlines 4 key elements to creating a volunteer culture which people actually want to be a part of. Got another resource you can share with us?  Let us know!

We’ve only begun to scratch the surface on this topic.  If you’re interested in more, be sure to subscribe to the email list below and get notified when we dig deeper (check the sidebar, you desktop users).

Thanks for being here,

-Dan