3 Strategies for Getting More Out of Your Church Volunteers

Earlier this week I was sitting around a table with a group of pastors and we were talking about ministry. The conversation turned to volunteers.

The question was asked,

How do you get more out of your volunteers?

My answer to this question is typically something like,

Ask them for more and ask them for less.

If you’re wondering, I learned this statement from Yoda.

Ok. Not really.

But seriously, I think there is something powerful in this statement.

Asking for more while asking for less might just be what you, your people and your church need.

Let me explain.

1. Ask More and Less of Yourself

Have you ever said to yourself,

If only there were six days in a work week!

I’ve been there.

Whenever I have this thought, it’s a cue that I need to ask for more and ask for less.

In other words, it’s time to redefine what I’m supposed to be about.

What are the tasks that only I can or should be doing in my role? And, what are the tasks that other people should be doing?

There are a couple of ways to define this.

The first is through your job description.

What are the two or three tasks that you are graded on?

Why in the world aren’t you spending 90% of your time on those tasks?!?

If your time is being siphoned to other areas, it’s time to reorder your priorities!

A second way to determine what you should be doing more of and less of is to think about your calling and gifting.

For example, I am gifted in the area of communication. Writing and teaching. Secondarily, I am gifted in leadership.

These are the areas where I should be spending 90% of my time.

Here’s what I believe: If you and I focus our time and energy around what we should be doing, we will benefit our churches and organizations dramatically.

If too much of my time is going toward administration or discipleship, my team will not be as effective as when I spend most of my time focusing on writing, teaching and leading.

This is what I mean when I say,

Ask more and ask less of yourself.

If you and I desire to be more effective and make a greater impact, we have to give ourselves the freedom to ask less of ourselves in the areas in which we are not gifted and more of ourselves in the areas we are gifted and called.

So, what can you do less of and what can you do more of?

Are there tasks that you can hand off to people who should be doing more of what you should be doing less of?

2. Ask More and Less of Your People

Let’s return to the round table conversation I found myself in earlier this week in which a pastor asked,

How do you get more out of your volunteers?

The reason he asked this question was that in our ministry we only recruit small group leaders who commit to 90% attendance over the course of a ministry season and who commit to walk with a group of students from 9th grade all the way through 12th grade.

How do you recruit people to actually do this?

Well, part of the answer is that you ask them to do less.

In our student ministry, we only ask for one night a week and we only ask for two weekends a year.

Years ago we came to the realization that we could ask for a lot more (90% attendance for 4 years) if we asked for less (we don’t do events, additional small group nights, etc.).

In my opinion, volunteers will invest far beyond your expectation if what you are asking for is big, meaningful and own-able.

But, you can only ask for more if you ask for less.

So, if you’re struggling to get enough volunteers or if your volunteers aren’t investing at the level that you desire, could it be that you need to ask for less?

A few ideas:

• What if volunteers could only volunteer in one ministry at a time?
• What if in your recruiting conversations you painted a picture of deep impact at a higher level of engagement?
• What if you structured your church calendar in a way that only ever required families to drive to the church twice a week?
• What if you attached your student ministry small groups to the end of your program so that volunteers weren’t required to invest two nights a week?

I believe you can ask for more of your people if you ask for less.

3. Ask More and Less Of Your Church

Recently, I learned that over 70% of our adult congregation is actively involved in a small group.

This number seems outlandish to me.

And, this doesn’t include our student ministry which has 100% participation in small groups because students are automatically placed in a small group that meets during the final 20-30 minutes of our program.

Now, understand, this 70% participation number is not a “brag” for me.

I literally have nothing to do with our adult small groups ministry.

But, I’ve been thinking, how did our church achieve this?

I think that one of the answers is that we ask for more and less of our church attendees. We really only make a few asks of our people:

• Attend church regularly
• Join a small group
• Be generous with your time and money (serve and give)

That’s kind of it.

What we’ve learned is that if you ask for less engagement, you’re very likely to get more engagement in the few areas that you ask for.

It seems to me that you can’t achieve 70% small group participation if you’re also asking for people to join a Sunday school class or a mid-week Bible study.

Now, this isn’t for every church, so feel free to disregard this next idea, but here’s what I suggest:

Decide on the most important two or three discipleship environments in your church.

Next, strip away everything else so that you can focus your resources on the environments that lead to the greatest impact.

I think the two or three environments are probably different in every church.

It’s not important that you adopt our two or three but rather that you identify and focus on your two or three. The point is that when you do this you can ask for more.

And again, you do this by asking for more while asking for less.

Wrap Up

So there you go.

Ask for more by asking for less.

I believe this simple principle can lead to greater effectiveness and impact in our lives, people and churches.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. Feel free to leave a comment below.