How can staff leaders set volunteers up for success? by Tony Morgan
How can staff leaders set volunteers up for success?
In this second installment in my series on volunteers in the church, I decided to do a little undercover investigation. I found an individual giving considerable amounts of time to a church in a volunteer leadership role. To get this top secret interview, I promised not to divulge his/her identity or the name of the church.
TONY: Why do you volunteer at your church?
UNNAMED VOLUNTEER: My volunteering begins with my basic belief in Christ. If what I believe is true, it changes everything. My purpose is to seek to understand the gifts I’ve been given and how to best apply that to my day-to-day living to help people take steps toward Christ. By volunteering, I have the opportunity to do this. Whether it be in media productions, leading a small group, or leading a team of people to push a new initiative, my drive to volunteer is a sense of fulfilling the purpose God has for me. Without the foundation of faith, volunteering would probably be more selfish in nature.
TONY: How did you land in your current volunteer role?
UNNAMED VOLUNTEER: My latest volunteer role really stemmed from pursuing my strengths over time and working to be a reliable volunteer. As a volunteer director, I was specifically asked and recommended for the role because of my work experience, my years of previous volunteering, and working hard to respect and be in alignment with our leaders at our church.
TONY: You have a full-time job. You’re a spouse and parent. How many hours a week do you serve and how do you make time for that?
UNNAMED VOLUNTEER: Depending on the week, volunteering can encompass 5-20 hours per week, typically averaging 12-15 currently. Whenever possible, I look to find ways to include my family in what I volunteer for and create overlaps. There was a point in time I asked a question to myself, “What are the least productive five hours in my week? Could I exchange those for something of greater purpose and value?” My [spouse] and I talk about our commitments first. We work together to find balance and manage the give and take of volunteering.
TONY: What are some things staff leaders can do to set volunteers up for success?
UNNAMED VOLUNTEER:
* Value their time. Don’t create opportunities to serve that are mismanaged with people standing around with nothing to do, or simply giving people busy work. Have a clear plan with real initiatives and tasks to get done.
* Communicate the vision. Over time, volunteers can become numb to what they do and miss the impact of what they’re doing. Remind them, “Because of what you’re doing, more people are going to be able to _______.”
* Give them guardrails they can operate within. Are there budget limitations? Places we can’t go? Things we shouldn’t say? When people are volunteering their time, allowing them to screw something up because they weren’t given some guardrails can deflate them and render them powerless.
* Really be a study of your volunteers. Work hard to make sure they are serving in an area of passion and giftedness. Many of us are blind to some of the things we naturally do well. If you can help us find those things and redirect us to other areas where we can serve, it will create huge divendends. The opposite is true too. Pushing people into positions because you’re more worried about getting the task done instead of whether or not it’s a good fit can suck the life out of your volunteers.TONY: And, more specifically, what can staff leaders do to better empower volunteer leaders?
UNNAMED VOLUNTEER:
* Leaders can lead when they know they have your support and room to experiment. They need room to fail versus being micro-managed and having to be overly cautious. Our nature is to want to have control over everything, especially in ministry. What are ways you can give freedom to great leaders who may do things differently but could surprise you with greater results than you imagined?
* Pick a few big, hairy, audacious goals and appoint a volunteer leader to climb the mountain. Allow a volunteer to have that opportunity rather than hiring a staff person. Creating a culture to first choose volunteers instead of adding staff empowers people to have a direct hand in the ministry being accomplished. The greater your ability to effectively give away ministry to volunteers, the greater the engagement of the people in your church.
* Tell them the non-negotiables, the guardrails, up front. Cast the vision of where you want to go, and then get out of the way.
* Be available as needed to give input, assess and brainstorm with your volunteer leader. There are times when I simply need to review a bulleted list of questions and thoughts with a staff member so I can confidently keep leading and pushing the vision.Are there any unpaid servants in the crowd? If so, what’s your reaction to this interview? Where do Unnamed Volunteer’s thoughts resonate with you? Do you take exception to anything that was shared?
Life: Spiritual vs. Physical
I read through 1 Chronicles 2 this morning. The thing about 1 Chronicles is that the first 10 chapters is a bunch of begats…for you non-King James folks there is a bunch of lineages. Occasionally you come across a bit of an interruption where a little more detail is given, although it is not quite clear why – at least from the context. Today there were a couple, but one of them struck me more intensely than the others. “3 The sons of Judah:
Er, Onan and Shelah. These three were born to him by a Canaanite woman, the daughter of Shua. Er, Judah’s firstborn, was wicked in the Lord’s sight; so the Lord put him to death.“
As I’m taking this class from Hope International on the Holy Spirit I’m thinking about how in non-Western culture since the time of Christ there is no separation between the physical and the spiritual. There is a continuum whereby all things are understood within the context that there is a balance and sometimes a struggle between the physical and spiritual. I see this everywhere in Africa. In the West we have what my professor Dr. Timms calls the “excluded middle.” It’s an empty space really, a chasm of sorts in our mind that keeps our spiritual life spiritual and our physical life, well, physical.
It’s why we, who lead the Church, have such an issue with people segmenting their lives so that Jesus comes first on Sunday and maybe on Wednesday evenings or when we are desperate, but there is no continuation of that life in any other part of their day, our day. We even segment the spiritual life and have come up with terms like: “prayer life” which is different than our “quiet time” which is different than our “volunteer time.” We fail to see the connection that is intrinsically there between what we buy and who we are…whose we are. We fail to see the connection between what we eat, what we throw away, what we watch on TV, listen to on our iPods, or pay to see at the movies with who we really are and the impact that those things have on our lives…our spiritual lives.
So, what does 1 Chronicles 2:3 have to do with this? Good question, and I’m glad you asked.
I answer with a question…How did they know that the Lord killed Er? There is no mention of the supernatural events that took place that snuffed out his life. I think if Er would have lived in Western culture an autopsy would have been done to determine the cause of death and whether they found an enlarged heart, a burst appendices, or arsenic in his blood-stream, or nothing at all the last thing they would attribute his death to would be God. It’s dangerous, really, how little we understand or give credit for the ability to breathe to God.
However, the further I go down this road with Jesus the more I am beginning to understand that I need to begin to bridge the chasm between my lives so that I see the spiritual reason for why I am experiencing physical difficulties, and I need to see it clearly in the lives of others in order to give them the truth that they desperately need, that Jesus came to give you eternal life to live NOW in every moment of every day! And while I still am not there, nor am I sure John Wesley is right in that we can get there in this life, I do know that there is the opportunity to live my life more in that reality.