Church Chat---Volunteers

I'll be doing these church related posts pretty regularly. As much to process my own thoughts and ideas on issues as anything, so if it doesn't make sense, ignore and move on. If you have some additional experiences, advice, insight to add I'd love to hear it!

Today I'm thinking about Volunteers.

They are an important part of any ministry and for many they are the primary (even ONLY) people involved in the functioning of the church. I talk with about a dozen churches every week and see volunteer importance and focus all over the map.

On the one extreme you have the church that has zero to few volunteers because they rely on paid staff to do everything and on the other side you have the church with no paid staff where without volunteers there wouldn't be chairs on Sunday. Obviously, most churches lie somewhere in between but the importance of a good volunteer base for the healthy and growing church is pretty high on the pyramid of must haves...

It's important to have a good group of dedicated volunteers for a number of reasons...

First, volunteers are the best way to increase the bandwidth (I'll be talking about bandwidth in a post very soon.), the church's ability to do more, be it on Sundays or in their community. It's one thing for the church staff to write a check to Habitat for Humanity, it's an entirely different (better) experience for that same church to follow up the check with a volunteer build day.

Second, volunteers can provide fresh insight and new perspectives on what's important in children's ministry, at the front door, even on the stage. Of course, to gain this perspective you must create a venue for volunteers to share and capture this insight.

Third, volunteering is a natural step in the maturation and leadership development process. If your church has a goal of simply seeing as many people as possible come through the doors, you may develop a user mentality about volunteers and see them merely as a means to an end, but once you realize that the volunteer network is a natural part of the discipleship and maturation process this can change and both the experience and the volunteers will benefit.

We could go on for hours about all the important reasons to have volunteers, but to me, some of the most important are above. The best volunteers and volunteer systems provide for two way communication, growth, and improved experiences for all involved.

Imagine having only paid musicians, greeters, child care workers, speakers, bookkeepers, an entire "company" of people paid to stick around, not because of their passion for the ministry, but because its their job.

Next time we talk volunteers we'll go into some steps you can take to set up a good volunteer system and how to manage, run, and grow it.