Building a Volunteer Culture can be hard. Each person that joins your team bring a piece of their life into it and sometimes that can be a great thing while other times, it can be a negative experience. So, how do you build a culture that glorifies God and builds unity within the team? It starts with four simple questions.

WHO?

The very first thing you have to do is ask yourself who is part of the team (or who do you want to be part of the team). You may have a very talented team currently or it may be you by yourself. Before you can build or create the volunteer culture you dream about, you have to recognize who is already part of the team. Look around at your congregation and ask if there are other individuals who may be quiet but are hiding great abilities and talents to help your team. You also have to take inventory of each person and who God has uniquely created them to be. Recognize that you may have people serving now that aren’t where God has called them to be. As a good leader, you have to help them find who God has created them to be. That may mean helping them find the best place to serve in another ministry (even though you really feel like you need them on your team - trust God to provide replacements). You may even have a youth that is interested in learning and being a part of an area. Don’t ignore those because they don’t have the experience. Instead, take time to work with them and train them. Trust me, it will be a lot of work on the front side, but it will be worth it when they learn more than you and are suddenly helping you do more things than you ever imagined. What’s more, you are pouring into a young person who is looking for what God’s calling on their life may be. You may not see it at that moment (or even for the next 5-10 years), but you could be helping shape someone’s future by allowing them to be a small part of the ministry you lead.

WHY?

Why do people join the ministry you lead? What drives them to be part of it? If your team doesn’t have a vision that you have cast and is constantly being reminded and recognized, then people are simply doing a task that they will eventually get bored of, or worse, get burned out from. Vision is what sets the tone for your team and allows you to help them remember why they do what they do each week. Otherwise, you have a J-O-B and most of your volunteers already work one of those and don’t need another on Sunday. There are multiple levels of vision that need to be shared regularly (this could be in team meetings, emails, one-on-one conversations, and even right before the service). These can be the church’s overall mission (i.e. “To reach the community with the Gospel of Jesus making disciples that impact the world.”) as well as your individual ministry’s vision (i.e. “To enhance the Gospel Message through technology in order to draw people closer to God and not distract.”). Helping your team know these forward and backward allows for decisions to be made and confusion to be reduced since you are all working toward this vision together. For your individual ministry, make sure your team realizes how they impact that vision in everything they do. Being excellent in what you do helps complete that vision. That means that you can’t just show up Sunday morning unprepared and do what you need to do to help accomplish the vision. If you don’t have a vision, take time to create one and share it with the team. Get the team involved in the creation of it. Most importantly, just because the vision is obvious and clear to you, don’t assume the same for your team. Make sure you share it often.

WHEN?

One of the hardest things as a leader over volunteers is knowing when to provide help. This could be in recognizing when there are limitations to a volunteer’s skill set, when there is training to be done to improve their abilities, or even when it is time to help them find another ministry to be involved in (or to even step away for a time from volunteering). As a leader, please do not place volunteers into a position without the proper training. “Throwing them to the lions” is not an effective on-boarding process for any volunteer. Instead, work with them through a training program that helps them become accustomed to what they will be responsible for, what expectations are, and where limitations may exist. For instance, if I have a volunteer who is on the greeting team, but has the personality of a brick wall, they may not be suited for shaking hands on Sunday morning as people enter. Instead, they may be better in coordinating the different team members of the greeting team and scheduling people. When limitations are there, work within those. You want to help the volunteer find the right seat on the team and that may mean you need to shift things around. Also, pay attention to trends from your volunteers. If something seems off one Sunday, then it probably is. Personal life issues will affect all of us at different times. If there are things going on that have a negative affect on a team member, you need to have a private one-on-one conversation on how you can help them. It may be giving them time off from volunteering to work on those issues. But you have to address it as soon as possible.

WHAT?

So what happens if it doesn’t work? Do you know what to do? Do you just sweep any issues under the rug or do you address them? If you do address them, are you getting to the root of the issue or are you just scratching at surface issues? If you work in the worship and tech area, you know that putting musicians (creatives) and tech people (analytics) in the same room can lead to conflict. Are you working with that conflict to improve it or are you ignoring it and hoping it just gets better on its own? What you do to work through issues can be one of the biggest team-building things you do. Your team notices how you act and react to situations. If they see you respond with grace and dignity and serve your team, then they will be more willing to work with each other and resolve issues together. If they see you ignore issues or pretend they don’t exist, then they will lose respect for you as a leader and will create internal strife even more. You have to be willing to do what is needed to make your team successful, even if it means that conflict has to be addressed.

So How do we succeed?

There are five simple yet effective ways to work through each of these things to make your team successful:

1) Training and equipping

Volunteers need to know and be confident in what you're asking them to do. Some volunteers will take the initiative to figure it out, but most need clear, solid direction on what you want. In fact, they crave it. Do you know what the top fear of a volunteer is? Messing up the service for hundreds or thousands of people. But, if you help them with confidence, a lot of that fear disappears. And scripture is very clear that fear is not from God anyway. One of the things I recommend is using some creative training such as creating a "faux" service where volunteers are allowed to make mistakes but without the stress of people being in the audience. This allows you to work through issues as they arise without the pressure of the moment weighing down. I also recommend setting up a Training Schedule for the position. For tech teams I’ve worked with, I’ve used a general eight week plan: Two weeks of watching/shadowing, two weeks of running it with someone beside them the whole time, two weeks of running it with me beside them, and two weeks of running it on their own with me at a distance but always available. This gives them the skills and knowledge of what is expected to be successful. And, if it’s clear to your team WHAT they are doing and WHY they are doing it, they will then develop more ownership into the process. One other thing, I require team members to be at any rehearsals or practices (make sure the Worship Leader/Team knows if there is training going on prior to the start of rehearsal, if you are doing that). Finally, get feedback from your team on new gear, procedures, etc. so they have buy in and aren't caught off guard. This way, when something new is introduced, they are not surprised and have even helped shape or decide on what is new.

2) Community and relationships

We all crave a place where we belong, where everyone knows our name (do I hear the theme from Cheers in my head?). Volunteers long for relationships with people they have things in common with. Your environment is a place for them to thrive. So, this is a great place to have community-building elements within your team. For instance, when was the last time your team when to lunch after service together? When is the last time you did a fun event together like Miniature Golf or an Escape Room? Is there someone on your team (or maybe the spouse of someone on your team) who could plan monthly or quarterly outings or even create an Events Team that works on these things? Here is the deal - you have an opportunity to connect on a deeper level than just technology on Sunday morning. Don’t miss those opportunities. It may even be something where you do a potluck meal, share the vision for the new year, and do some Bible Study together. Whatever it is, BE INTENTIONAL and just do it.

3) Clear leadership

Your team wants to know who to report to and who to get direction from. If your leadership structure is loose and undefined, volunteers will get frustrated when they can't find an answer or decision maker. If there are leaders underneath of you, make sure its clear who is responsible for what and make it clear to the WHOLE TEAM. Effective communication is so important to make everyone successful. Even with churches where the pastor staff may have a more loose leadership structure, keep it tight on your team. Otherwise, the loose structure could impact your volunteers in a way that may not benefit them on the ministry. As a leader, swallow your pride and allow honest feedback from your team). Involve them in decisions if you can. But, help them understand that when a decision is made by leadership or a pastor, they need to be behind it 100%. And never, under any circumstance, allow gossip to occur within your team. It will destroy your culture faster than anything else. A great rule of thumb we had was that negatives were passed up and positives were passed down. That meant, if there was an issue or problem, take it to the next person up in the chain and then they could take it up to the next person as needed. If compliments or recognition was given, then it is leadership’s responsibility to pass that down to their team - every single one of them.

4) Spiritual Development

This one is probably the most overlooked piece of building a great volunteer culture. Why is that? I think we create excuses like, “we don’t have time” or “my team are all believers, what could I offer?” Volunteers long to be cared for and loved. As a ministry leader, your role should effectively be a pastor to your team. Your team are all on a spiritual journey and each one is probably at a different place than anyone else on your team. I recommend keeping a spreadsheet with a quick line about where each member of your team is in their spiritual journey and keep it updated. You might not realize it, but you may have people that are unsure of their salvation, baptism, or other parts of their spiritual journey. But they have wanted to connect with others who enjoy the same things as they do. You can not assume, just because they want to be involved in this ministry, you know where a team member is in their walk. Work to develop and care for them, not just their tasks, but also their walk. You should make your environment a place where your team knows that you, staff, and other volunteers care more about them than the task they are doing. You should ALWAYS value people over tasks or processes (and this is hard in churches as we are always looking for people to DO things). Remember, being a volunteer in a ministry does not mean that you are always pouring out. Find times to spiritually pour into your team and help them on their journey.

5) Celebrate!

You have to have fun! Find your team doing something right and celebrate that. That in turn will bread more team members to do the right thing. But only celebrate what you want repeated. Do you celebrate numbers like Salvations, Baptisms, or people finding community in small groups? Do you celebrate team members that do things with excellence? Are you celebrating Team Leaders, interns, or new team members? One of the things I do as a leader is send an email on Monday to ALL of my team talking about something great that we can celebrate together as a team (like pulling together with the worship team to make the worship time a very powerful experience). I would also point out at least one person specifically who did a great job on a specific task and ask the team to recognize them. True recognition is a lost art, but make sure you are doing this sincerely (as your team will know). You can also budget funds for celebrations like a pizza party, ice cream social, Coffee and Cookies, or other get-togethers. This is also a great opportunity to give out awards to team members. What ever you do, make it fun!

Your team will emulate their leader. Building a volunteer culture starts with you. Find ways to start doing these things and you will no longer have to recruit volunteers. Instead, you will be retaining your current ones and others will want to join your team because they want to be part of what you are doing and what God is doing through you and each of your team.