how to involve more people in

Transcription

1 volunteer Module #3 how to involve more people in volunteer ministry

2 You need a volunteer ministry, not just more volunteers. In the last module, we introduced you to the ABCDE system. In this module, we re going to dive deep into the first part of the system: How to attract more volunteers. I m going to teach you four principles and show you five models. The bottom line of this module is: Ask according to plan not under pressure. What we ve seen most churches do is ask for volunteers when they need volunteers. We want show you a system by which you can attract volunteers into a system according to a plan, not just when there s a catastrophe, or an emergency, or when people aren t showing up in the nursery. You don t just need more volunteers you need a volunteer ministry.. It s easy to think you just need more people, but if you design the system, and do the work of creating a healthy volunteer ministry, then you ll find that you ll have more volunteers. The other side of this is that you need a volunteer system not just a sermon. We have become very dependent on sermons and announcements to fill the gap when a volunteer is needed. This may solve the problem in the short term but it doesn t provide a long-term solution. Sermons aren t going to solve your volunteer problem. They will probably be a part of the solution. What you need is a system. principles of asking There s a big difference in asking all the time out of crisis and asking frequently on purpose. To attract volunteers you ve got to ask. Often we ask out of desperation or under pressure. Asking this way can put a strain on your people. We want to show you four principles you can use to ask consistently in a healthy way. PRINCIPLE 1: ASK OFTEN. You need frequent on-ramps, where people can constantly jump into serving at your church. You need to build a rhythm and put it on the calendar. There s a big difference in asking all the time out of crisis and asking frequently on purpose. The churches we have served in and studied all have different ways of asking, but they have a plan for asking. They have it on the calendar and everyone knows when it s going to happen. Here are some different ways you can ask. Interest Cards An interest card is a great on-ramp for people. You can make them available all year at a welcome or information table. You can also have them at an orientation or new member class. An interest card allows people to raise their hand with a low level of commitment, to step into serving slowly. Freedom Church in Atlanta, GA has multiple on-ramps for people, but they always in corporate an interest card. The card allows you to collect contact information and the area of serving in which they are interested. Don t expect people to come to you when they are 2

3 People may look around and not see a place or a need for them to plug in. the foundations of a healthy volunteer ministry ready to serve; they might think you have enough volunteers. Make it easy for them to express interest. Don t assume everyone knows you need more help. People may look around and not see a place or a need for them to plug in. It typically takes ten interest cards to get one new leader. A lot of people may fill out a card, but moving people through the process is more challenging. Another way you can use the interest card is with a Wall of Opportunities. You can designate a place to display opportunities for people to serve and have interest cards there for them to take. Put information on the card specific to the volunteer opportunity. You can also have a page on your website with ways people can serve and an interest form they can submit through the website. Sermon Sermons or a message series on volunteering is a great way to ask. Strategically planning a sermon or message series two to three times a year is a great way to ask not out of a crisis but with a plan. Think of the times of year when you need more volunteers and strategically plan a sermon or message series six to eight weeks ahead of time. Give yourself a long enough on-ramp to have people on board when you need them. Typical times of year might be, Easter, the fall, and Christmas. Northpoint Community Church in Alpharetta, GA does a great job executing this system. One to two times a year they have Strategic Sunday where Andy Stanley will preach a sermon on volunteering and call people to action. This sermon begins the process of on-boarding volunteers for the next season of ministry. You may want think of your volunteer ministry in seasons and plan how you will ask for each season of ministry. Backstage Tours A backstage tour is a great way to help people see what serving looks like before they make a commitment. Schedule a consistent time, the first or last Sunday of each month or once a quarter during church where people interested in serving can see what it looks like. Granger Community Church does a volunteer expo, so people can see before they sign up. These ideas are the tools to help you create the system and begin to schedule when you are going to ask, so that you can begin to ask according to a plan not under pressure. Creating a plan to ask often and provide regular on-ramps for people will relieve the pressure of always feeling like you need more people. Principle 2: Ask everyone. This principle might seem a little obvious, but I want to approach it from a different angle. This might be a little controversial, because I want to talk about lowering the bar for people. Lowering the bar means providing simple entry points for people to serve. Think of it like this: are there places in your church where somebody who is not yet a Christ follower can serve? I think the answer to that should be yes. I wouldn t let them teach a Sunday School class or 3

4 we need to lower the bar for volunteers and raise the bar for leaders. Bible Study or be a small group leader, but I think they can serve in the Cafe or be a greeter. I think they can serve on the parking team or do administrative work. Lowering the bar and providing simple entry points for a non-christian to serve might be the catalyst for salvation. What about a new Christian? Is the step for them to start volunteering so big that it might be preventing people from getting involved? New Christians are going to be rough around the edges, they are new to the faith. Don t make the qualifications for serving so strict that it discourages them. Yes, there are areas of ministry where extensive applications and background checks should be required. There are areas of ministry where people should demonstrate a life of faith, but there also ought to be opportunities for people who are young in the faith to serve so they can grow. For a new Christian serving is also a discipleship step. We need to lower the bar for volunteers but then raise the bar for leaders. Lowering the bar in some areas of volunteerism may help engage someone who isn t quite sure about church. Serving will give them an opportunity to connect and journey with Everybody who attends your church is a candidate for volunteering in your church. Create opportunities for people to wade into volunteering. Fellowship Church out in Texas, talks about coming into shallow end of the pool. Some people like to just jump into the deep end, some people like to put a toe in the shallow end and go in slowly. Creating simple on-ramps allows you to ask everyone to serve. Asking everyone doesn t just mean asking the crowd of people who attend your service, it means asking everyone represented there. Asking the leaders, the thinkers, the doers, the creative people, the administrative people. Do you have opportunities for everyone to serve? You ve got to create places for leaders, thinkers and doers to serve. We are really good at asking people to serve with their hands but we don t ask people to serve with their minds. There are a significant number of people in your church who are gifted by God with mental abilities, creative thinking abilities, processing abilities. You have people who can serve with their intellect, their mind, or with a talent that s not quite so tangible. Instead of asking people to just show up and hold this, or do that, what about engaging this whole other group of people in your church that are often sitting on the sideline? We haven t engaged them with their bright minds. What about your website? Maybe it s currently being outsourced to an outside company while you have people in your church who are gifted in the area of technology who could work on your website. What about social media? That might be a great volunteer role to create in your church. What about editing and proofreading? You know you have teachers, people who have college degrees who know how to write, and how to edit, and how to proofread documents and they d be glad for you to send the bulletin or other communications that are going out to the church. What about prayer? Could they pray during the week? Could they administrate something? Could 4

5 If our focus is on finding doers to fill a slot we are going to miss a whole section of the church that God has gifted to build up the body. they get prayer requests to different people? What about administrative work? Could people come up to the church on Tuesday at 2:00 in the afternoon and help do some administrative work? Just think through about how you are engaging everyone. You could engage some volunteers who have the gift of understanding God s word in the sermon prep process. Instead of pushing away these people, why not create a place for them to serve with their mind. We often overlook finding leaders in our zeal for finding volunteers. There are people who are gifted in management, at organizing groups and leading people. If our focus is on finding doers to fill a slot, we are going to miss a whole section of the church that God has gifted to build up the body. When we say to ask everyone, I m talking about asking men and women. Ask doers and thinkers. Create opportunities for all kinds of different people to use their gifts and serve in the church. Principle 3: Ask personally. In the Gospels you see Jesus preaching to massive groups of people and calling them to action generally. But you also read about Jesus going to specific people and calling them personally. In Mark 1:17 He looked at somebody specifically and said, You come and follow me. Jesus asked and preached generally, but He also went to certain people and asked them specifically. He would speak to the crowds of people, but He would also speak to people individually and personally. I think that s a great model for us, for asking people to step into volunteering. We need to talk about volunteering and serving generally from the platform but we also need to ask people personally to serve. Invite volunteers from the platform, but invite leaders personally. You can invite volunteers from the platform. I think it s actually very effective for a pastor to preach a sermon on volunteering and ask people to do something. But you need to invite leaders personally. One of the worst things you can do is to just ask for leaders because leaders don t typically respond to that. Volunteers will respond to that. Doers will respond to that, but leaders often need that personal invitation, whether it s the pastor, whether it s another staff member or a ministry team leader. Leaders sometimes need to be engaged personally. As a side note, we don t think you should use the word recruit. No one wants to be recruited to fill a slot. We don t think you should recruit leaders, we think you should invite them. We don t think you should recruit volunteers, we think you should invite them. When we talk about inviting people personally... You are really going to them and saying, Here s an opportunity, we think you would be great for... I think you would be a great person to lead this, or to do this or to help us in this area and I would like to personally ask you to consider doing this. I think as you ask people personally, you are going to see different results. Principle 4: Ask specifically. One of the most effective things you can do is to ask people specifically to do things. Generic requests get generic results, but specific opportunities often get specific people engaged. Let me give you an example 5

6 Leaders need to be engaged personally. of what I mean by that. When you are creating volunteer opportunities, the more specific you can make that request, the better. For example: Generic: We need some people to work with the kid s ministry. When people hear that, they think, Well I m not qualified to work in kid s ministry. There s a bunch of other people that can work in kid s ministry. Specific: Hey, we need three people who really have a heart for special needs children because at 11:00 we are creating a new environment. Every time you add a level of specificity to that, it triggers something in people s mind. They go, Oh, special needs children. I have a passion for that. 11 o clock. Okay, the time is now narrowed. I understand what s being asked of me. Create new, specific opportunities for people to serve. You ll be amazed as you communicate specifically, and ask specifically who s ready to jump in and serve in those things because specific opportunities engage a different type of person. Another way to ask specifically and engage a large number of volunteers is through a big, specific service project. We work with Liquid Church in New Jersey. Rich Birch is their Operations Pastor and he told me recently, We ve actually found great success engaging volunteers, through massive service projects. When we have this new thing that we are trying to do in our community, we ll go to our church and people who are not serving on a regular basis. This one-time project really engages them and they jump in to serve in this one-time project. A lot of times the one-time project becomes a gateway to them serving on a consistent basis. If they had a great serving experience and they find fulfillment with that short-term project, they are in a great position to stick around. A practical example of this is: if you are doing a large-scale project invite some people to help with parking. Now they are great candidates to follow up with and invite to serve with the parking team on a consistent basis. Not only can you ask people specifically with specific ongoing opportunities, you can actually create big projects or one-time projects and ask people to sign up to serve just at that event. In the last part of this module we are going to look at five models for asking. We studied seven different churches and found five common systems used for asking. I want to give you practical ways you can implement these systems. Let s look at the first model. FIVE MODELS FOR ASKING Model #1: The Preaching Model The preaching module uses strategically planned sermons or a message series to motivate people to jump into serving. These sermons aren t a desperate plea to fill a spot, but an intentional strategy to help people engage in building up the Body of Christ. Northpoint Community Church does this very well. One to two times per year they have a Strategic Service Sunday. Andy Stanley preaches a message on volunteering that is designed to motivate people who ve just been regular attendees, to jump in to an area of service. Tom Shefchunas, Coach Chef, who 6

7 These sermons aren t a desperate plea to fill a spot, but an intentional strategy to help people engage in building up the Body of Christ. works with the middle schoolers at Northpoint, writes, Every year we do what we call Strategic Service Sunday. Andy uses a whole message to cast vision for what we are as a church and encourages people to get involved. Here are a few things we have learned from Northpoint about their system: 1. They are inviting leaders to serve BEFORE they are needed. They engage volunteers in March who won t start serving in the student ministry until August. Because they have a plan and a strategic system, they have a long runway to bring people on. They have time to train people well so they are fully equipped to begin serving. 2. They look at the CALENDAR. Not only are they inviting people to get involved in strategic places of service, but they are strategic about when they ask. They are looking at the calendar and asking when do we want people to start serving?, what times of year do we typically experience growth and need more volunteers? 3. There is a good follow-up SYSTEM. The sermon is not the end all, it kicks off the process. The sermon drives people to take action by filling out an interest card. Then you engage them in the onboarding process. Some of Andy s strategic service messages available at NorthPoint Resources: fully-engaged.html He does a great job of motivating people to action without using guilt. The bottom line is to ask according to plan, not pressure. If the Preaching model works for you, look at the calendar and get some dates scheduled. Model #2: The Class Model The class model is a systematic on-ramp that provides new volunteers consistently. There are various ways you could structure your class system, but the benefit is consistency. People know when the class is and the next steps to take if they are interested in serving. The class model allows you to lengthen the runway for engaging people in the life of the church. It also allows you to relationally invest in people before they jump into serving. Church of the Highlands in Birmingham, Alabama does this really well. They have a series of four classes called the Growth Track. The Growth Track is designed to take someone who is interested in learning about the church through a four-step process. The fourth class, 401 is focused on finding your place to serve. 401 is always on the last Sunday of the month every month. The class model provides a consistent flow of new volunteers. They know that every month new people will be going through the classes and there will be the opportunity to engage them in volunteering. They ask often according to their plan not under pressure. Church of the Highlands also focuses on gifts based ministry not just needs based. During the four-class series they spend time helping people identify their gifts so they can connect to a ministry area where they will use their God-given gifts. The class model is dependable. It will provide a consistent flow of new volunteers. If this model fits your 7

8 The class model provides a consistent flow of new volunteers. culture, sit down with your team and decide your structure. Model #3: The Relationship Model The relationship model connects with The Principles of Asking number three: Ask Personally. The relationship model engages the volunteer who is already serving in the invitation process. Its success is driven by giving the volunteers and leaders the responsibility of growing the team. Granger Community Church in Granger, Indiana does model this really well. They call it shoulder tapping. Shoulder tapping is simply a volunteer asking another volunteer to serve with them. At Granger they have created a culture where the expectation is that if you are a volunteer, one of your jobs is to find other people to do this with you, that you are doing life. Maybe you ve got some neighbors, and some friends, and yes you can invite them to come to church but you can also invite them to serve with you. As you meet people, whether it s out in the community or whether at church you rub shoulders. As you tap shoulders with someone, you d say, Hey, would you like to do this with me? Their sermons, and their other things really support this model. Freedom Church in Atlanta, Georgia is also another church that does this well. Each team of volunteers has a goal for how many new team members they need to invite. Attracting volunteers at Freedom Church isn t just a job of the pastor, JR Lee. The job of attracting volunteers is pushed down to each team, and each team is responsible for attracting people. This is a great way to grow a volunteer team in your church: creating a culture where teams are on the lookout for relationships that they can develop and push forward, in order to bring more people into that volunteer team, into that volunteer role. The relationship model is an ongoing system that you wouldn t necessarily need to calendar. You might want to schedule a few dates to make some big pushes, around Easter or before school starts back, when there is a big focus on growing teams. You may also want to put some dates on the calendar for casting vision to your volunteers about this system. Model #4. The Campaign Model The campaign model might be a little surprising. You may have expected to hear campaign when talking about finances but not serving. The campaign model is a holistic approach to stewardship, serving and discipleship. It engages people in a process to take steps in their finances, volunteering and discipleship. The church that does this is Frazer United Methodist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. When we started doing our research, we thought that this was a unique idea. It may not work for every church but we thought it was worth sharing what we learned because it was a really, really good idea. A lot of churches do a campaign when it comes to finances. Every fall, for example, a church might gear up. During the campaign they might talk about the vision of the church, the goals for the next year, and the budget. They would challenge people to look at 8

9 The simple step model is a great way to ask people often with low pressure to commit. their generosity and make a commitment. What Frazer did was take a stewardship campaign and expand it to include volunteering and discipleship. They took their campaign that they do every fall and they created a name for it. They launch it with a dinner where they talk about the vision. They preach a message series during the campaign and it culminates with a commitment Sunday, where everyone in the church makes their commitment. They do the campaign each fall and have a training Saturday in early January for volunteers so that everyone is ready to jump into serving at the beginning of the year. Their plan for bringing in volunteers is through a big campaign in the fall to where they look at the entire next year - not just for generosity, but for involvement and for serving. If this model might work for your church, start looking at the calendar and get some dates scheduled for the fall. Fall is a great time to engage people and get them ready to start serving in January. Model #5: The Simple Step Model The simple step model provides a low commitment environment for people to learn what serving looks like. This model provides an overview of all the ministry areas in your church and how people can be involved. A simple step model might be an orientation or volun-tour. You may want to do it the first or last Sunday of every month or once a quarter. The key is consistency. Keep the date the same so people know when to come. Typically this is something you would provide during church so people can see volunteering at work. Doing it during church is also helpful for them because childcare is already provided. You aren t asking them to come back. The simple step model is a great way to ask people often with low pressure to commit. When we ask under pressure, some people respond out of the weight instead of a sincere desire to serve. A lot of the time, seeing it is better than just hearing about it. With a simple step model you can take people around. It s also a great way to cast vision for each area. Someone may not connect with we need people to volunteer in the nursery, but they might want to hold babies when they hear our nursery volunteers are providing a safe and nurturing environment for children while parents worship. Don t wait until you need volunteers to ask, choose one or two of these models and put some dates on the calendar. Ask according to plan, not under pressure. Churches who have healthy volunteer ministries may use two or three of these models. The secret is in having a strategic plan of when and how you are going to bring in new volunteers. FINAL THOUGHTS In this module we have looked at how to attract new volunteers. We looked at four principles of asking and five models. These tools are designed to be a starting point for you. Begin to create a system that works within your culture. We want to ask according to a plan, not under pressure. 9

10 Ask according to a plan, not under pressure. ACTION STEPS: 1. DECIDE what your system is. We ve given you a calendar, and we want you to go through and we want you to talk about your teams. Decide which of these models works best for you. involve other people in the ministry. In the next module we will look at how we can Build our teams. We have some ways you can effectively train people without wasting their time. 2. Put dates on the CALENDAR. Look at the calendar and actually put your on ramps on the calendar. You are executing a system so you need to look at it comprehensively and see how people will engage in your volunteer ministry. Doing these two things will keep you from running around like crazy from week-to-week-to-week. You are not going to be dealing with people saying we need this, pastor say this, announce this, preach on this - but you are going to have a plan. When you have a good plan, you are going to be able to trust that plan. You ll be able to tweak the plan, and improve it, make it a little better. But the power comes in the planning. When you create a plan for attracting volunteers into ministry, you ve got a regular system for our people who are coming on board and then you do that plan year, after year, after year. You make it a little better the next time, and a little bit better the next time, and a little better the next time, but you ve had a good plan. You ve got buy in. You ve involved your team in the plan, and then you are able to execute the plan. Attracting volunteers in the ministry is so important, not because you ve got things to do. But remember, because there are priests, because your job as pastor to equip people to do the work of the ministry. You can t do all the ministry. You ve got to go attract and 10