I received an email from a pastor who read my post titled You’ll Never Have Enough Staff last week. His church has around 700 in attendance and he was getting ready to hire a children’s pastor that he described would have been a “dumb, knee-jerk decision.” He read my post and said, “I’m now going to spend my time motivating our congregation to do the work instead of spending time worrying about how to fund another pastor.”
I wrote back the following…
If it is any comfort, we were a church of 1,000 in attendance before we hired our first children’s ministry staff. And yet—people would have said our children’s ministry was rockin! I believe it was because there was a real culture from the beginning that we are going to do ministry through volunteers. You might think of the next 6 months as a full-press campaign on changing the culture. Might include…
- A weekend series surrounding making a difference with your life and finding significance.
- A volunteer expo that goes along with the series.
- Training for current volunteers that THEY are the ones best-suited to invite people into ministry.
- Make sure your systems allow volunteers to bring people with them to certain situations.
- Show videos that highlight some of the under-exposed ministry areas.
I’ll dive into each of these ideas in more detail at the Simply Strategic Volunteers workshop in Orlando next month–but what do you think about my advice to this pastor? What would you add?
16 Comments
Tim… I think your general message was spot on, however, there are many things that factor into a staffing decision. While you say your church was at 1000 before you hired any paid children's workers, Who were your full and part time staff, including admin and support at that level? Who was responsible, from a staffing stand point for the Children's area at that point? Who decided such things as curriculum, maintained records, did back ground checks, scheduled volunteers, did training, etc.? Also, what did your youth ministry look like at this time? Did it have pd staff? If so, why was chosen over the Children's ministry? I look forward to your continued thoughts and insight on this.
Everything related to children's ministry was handled by volunteers. None of it happened from paid staff. For the first 10 years of the church, we were portable so this included set-up and take-down of all the children's rooms at the theater and school.
I'm not suggesting that a church shouldn't hire any children's staff before they hit 1000 — I'm just saying we often hire too soon rather than focusing on utilizing quality volunteers.
I agree we often hire too soon… I'm still curious what the rest of your staff looked like at the stage and whether you had any pd staff for youth ministry at that point.
We had a paid youth pastor in the early days.
I know that you said you were going to go into more detail in a workshop that you are going to be doing soon but I was wondering if you could go into a little bit more detail about what you mean by the 4th point…
"Make sure your systems allow volunteers to bring people with them to certain situations"
What would be an example of a "situation" that in typical or opposite setting than what you are talking about where a volunteer could not bring people?
Chris – Four keys:
1) Every volunteer should be empowered to "shoulder-tap" — that is, they can tap the shoulders of the people they know and invite them into ministry.
2) Every ministry area should have easy-access positions (roles that any person can fulfill regardless of how long they've been attending or whether they are a member or not). That means no hoops to jump.
3) Your system needs to be flexible enough to allow a volunteer to invite a friend to join him/her into these no-hoops positions.
4) Some positions do (and should) have hoops (i.e. teaching a class, singing a song, working with kids).
Tim love your thoughts and could not agree more, its the overall stating point with all major recruitment and staff decisions. The fondation for building any community of faith, a "servant volunteer" culture w/ all the DNA associated MUST be the core driving values leads senior staffing decisions. The role of the ministry leader / director / pastor like a Children Minstry Director should be an "equipping role" rather than a doing role. More work does not mean hire. it mean build the leaders and euip the servants to keep doing the work. Then its time to hire.We try to hire leaders who lead leaders rarther than to hire leaders to do the ministry or even organize the minstry. The time to hire is when the leadership develpment aspects of the team are suffering. Most servant can lead, organize and exicute a team vision/mission. a full timer can devote the time and energy /gifting to build leaders and take the team to the next level. Never hire a staff person that will take any aspect of the minstry out of the hand of the servant volunteer.
I agree with you. We don't always need to be so quick to hire paid staff. I would still remind him that while we want to give ministry away and empower volunteers to do the work of the ministry, he or his team will need to invest time in developing the volunteer leader. Whether a ministry is directed by a volunteer or paid staff, it still needs a leader…champion…or "mother"- whatever you want to call it.
Tim, your blog came at a perfect time for us. Recently, I have been researching volunteerism and I have enjoyed reading your book, Simply Strategic Volunteers, as well as, your blog. My passion for volunteering is growing and I am so excited about what God is showing me through this research. Since reading your book, all the things I thought I valued about volunteering has shifted, and I’m passionate to get this culture of volunteerism you speak of running rampant through our church. That being said, I have a few questions… Do you schedule an overall training for your volunteers? Does the Pastor over a particular ministry meet with the lead volunteers, and if so, how often? We have some GREAT volunteers, but how do you bring them up to that level where they are passionate, strong and faithful leaders? I feel like we are missing a major component with our volunteers and I can’t quite put my finger on it.
Patricia – well the first thing I should suggest is…Come to Orlando! My workshop is only 2 hours away from you and I'd love to meet you and your team! Now to your specific questions…
Training – we don't do centralized training. Each ministry area handles it–and in most cases, this happens as "on the job training." That is, they get the training while they are serving. Then occasionally they come together for additional training / vision nights.
Meetings — we have found that it is very difficult to get people to come out for additional meetings or events. Why? It's not because they don't love Jesus or the church. It's just that they are very busy. So we do everything we can to handle the meetings, vision, huddle time, and training WHILE they are serving. It's easier to get teams to come 30 minutes early each week than to come out for a separate meeting.
Culture — it takes a long time to change the culture of a church to be one where volunteering is esteemed and desired. Sometimes years. It takes a lot of intentional small interventions. Sounds like you are doing some great stuff–just keep it up.
And join me in Florida!
Thanks Tim for your quick relpy! I am working on my Pastor to attend the event in Orlando…I hope to see you there!
Patricia
Not having a children's minister until 1000 is pretty amazing. Our church has pretty strong volunteerism, with 95 volunteers serving 150 kids in children's ministry but I am paid staff as that children's minister, and about 60% of my time goes to that plus our 3 environment directors (preschool, elementary, kidstuf) probably give an average of 15 hours/week as volunteers, and their are a bunch more that give 4-5 hours/week.
It could totally run without my hours put into it, so I can see where that would work, but we're only 750 in size now so it is hard to imagine.
On the other hand, I grew up in a church with a Sunday School and I bet that could have easily run on volunteers only, up to 1000. But, I don't think that model is nearly as effective or requires as much work as what most new churches are doing now.
woops, typo, I meant "I am paid staff as *the children's minister"
I can't make it to Exponential in Orlando, but your workshop sounds just like what I need to hear. Will there be a recording available?
I'm not sure Richard. I kind of doubt it…but I'll be doing this workshop again in Granger on May 21st. Check http://www.wiredchurches.com/simply-strategic-vol...
Thanks for taking time to reply. The line up of the one day workshops look great. I hope you cycle through these enough times that I can get to 2 or 3 of them. I'm sure you've thought about it, but if you did a two day event, I could attend two workshops with one airfare.