Volunteers are evaporating: here are 4 fixes
Churches everywhere are in a drought when it comes to volunteers.
The post-COVID mentality of church involvement has altered just about everything when it comes to serving.
Here’s what it’s done. The quarantine gave church members (and seeking souls outside the church) easy online access to church services and teaching. Though not a bad thing in and of itself, it has brought 3 not so good things that have made our volunteer teams dry up:
➊ Some people who served regularly got out of the habit of coming to church altogether—and are not coming back.
➋ Many people who attended and served almost weekly have become “dual citizens” of your online and physical campuses, enjoying the freedom of going back and forth between them and their old volunteer rotations would prohibit this freedom from continuing.
➌ Those left to serve are burning out at an accelerated rate, as more is demanded of them in the wake of this volunteer drought.
As we face all of this with you as a community of Sherpa Leaders, I believe it is important to approach the issue from three vantage points:
1) the quick fixes and relief needed now,
2) a fresh vision in the mid-term of what people’s lives look like when they are at the best and using their gifts, and
3) a long term plan that takes into account that serving is a key component of everyone’s discipleship journey.
And last of all, the primary driver of volunteer recruitment that never runs dry.
Here are four best practices to address lacking volunteerism at your church: one to get through it now, one to help in the near future and another two to get over it long term.
➊ FOR NOW:
Consolidate similarly SHAPED teams and cross-train them.
We have many teams in our guest services ministry: Parking Lot, Greeters, First Time Guest Hosts, Auditorium Hosts (like ushers), Info Counter and Guest Central.
That is a lot of teams to keep staffed in the post-COVID reality.
So one of my Guest Services Directors, Amy, came up with something that has inspired our Directors at other campuses. She noted 3 of these teams were made up of people with similar SHAPEs (extroverts with a heart for people and the gift of hospitality).
These were the First Time Guest Hosts, Greeters, and Guest Central teams. She decided to consolidate them into one new “Welcome Team” and cross-train them so they could do each other’s jobs.
Now, instead of staffing three teams of 6 people each per service (18 total), she can just schedule as few as 6 per service who can now serve both before and after service in these roles as needed!
A move like this can bring quick relief to everybody when you’re experiencing evaporation in your volunteer pool. But it is a quick fix, not a long term one.
You also need to anticipate the needs coming in the near future in ways like this next one…
➋ FOR THE NEAR FUTURE:
Cast vision for what a reclaimed life of service can look like in a post COVID world.
Many people slowed down during COVID. I have found myself at a less accelerated rate of speed that is more sane and less frantic. I learned this during the quarantine. This is good.
But people have also found themselves with an unexpected emptiness and a lack of real community that is starting to take its toll.
One answer for us was a new August sermon series called “The GOAT”. GOAT stands for Greatest Of All Time and keys off of Jesus’ teaching that the greatest among us will always be the servants. That is the lifestyle he is leading his followers into and that we were born to live in.
We are at our best when we are experiencing community from this place of serving one another. So, we adjusted the time and rotation commitments of our volunteer positions to allow greater life balance.
During that series, we invited everyone after each message to sign up for teams at kiosks in the lobby, manned by staff and leaders who know how to help people find their best fit and sign up to take their first step.
You can check out the sermons here for inspiration!
While it was good to fortify our volunteer teams mid term in this way, we all also need a long term, ongoing plan…
➌ FOR LATER (but begin working on it now):
Create a Volunteer Engagement Cycle to develop and care for your team members.
The Primary Driver of Volunteer Recruitment: The Assimilation System
Even with all three of those fixes implemented, there’s still a brass tacks question to wrestle with: where are these new volunteer going to come from?
The usual suspects are going to keep falling short…
🚫 shoulder-tapping is about
🚫 stage announcements are few and far-between — and shockingly ineffective
🚫 “we put the teams on the website” is like burying treasure and burning the map
We like to think about assimilation as the circulatory system -it’s constantly working to bring life-giving blood to the essential organs of the body.
So as the circulatory system of the body of Christ, your assimilation system should be bringing new life (people!!) to the essential organs (ministries!!).
And when the assimilation system is your primary volunteer recruitment driver, you also…
⚔️ cut down on ministry competition
✅ pitch volunteering as an essential part of discipleship
👀 hold teams accountable to best practices
As a reminder, that assimilation system we’re talking about consists of…
1️⃣ Place to Identify Guests
1️⃣ Program to Connect Them
2️⃣ Processes that land them in…
2️⃣ Placements: Small Groups and ✨Ministry Teams✨
It always comes back to this… and for good reason! Assimilation isn’t a ministry in your church: it’s the path TO your ministries!
If you’re ready to go all-in on developing your assimilation system and connecting up to 1 out of 4 guests by your next big weekend… the CTA Video Course is the most popular option we’ve got for you.
It’s intensely focused on the nuts and bolts of putting all of the pieces together as quickly and effectively as possible. That’s why it has discussion questions for you and your team, a 63-point exhaustive checklist and 20+ downloadable templates and resources for you to steal.
If you’re still trying to figure out what role assimilation is going to play in your plans, check out this video on the Top 4 Reasons Your Church Needs a Church-Wide Assimilation Strategy ↗️
May your volunteer challenges become opportunities in the months ahead. I hope these “fixes” move you toward something life releasing for your teams, ministry and church.
Use the questions below to talk through this post with your staff or volunteer teams to help “grease the process” and move forward.
➊ Which of these “fixes” for your volunteer drought do you think would make the most impact on your current situation? What is stopping you from calendarizing your first step or conversation to pull the trigger on it?
➋ Which teams in your ministry would you be most apt to begin combining into one new crossed-trained team? Why? For how long?
➌ Is your volunteer drought a church wide issue, or just an issue in your ministry area? How “church wide” should your next move be? Are there any ministry areas you can partner with outside your own for recruitment or consolidation?
➍ Does your church have an ongoing way for developing, envisioning and caring for volunteers? What is it? Is it working? If not, what if you prayed to become a catalyst for helping create something dynamic and vital for the volunteer culture and community of your church? What would yours look like?
