Monthly Archives: June 2015

Big Church / Little Church

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by Carol

What size is your church?  Are you sure?

For many years, I was in a church that I called “a small, neighborhood church.”  We lived in the shadow of a super church (bigger than a mega church) that was the size of a zip code.  As we considered relocating, though, we realized that we had members from 10 different cities!  And, according to experts in church size, we were at least a medium-sized church.  By some standards, we were large!

Big church little church

You can imagine the difference that made in how the members of the congregation viewed outreach, staffing, budget, and a host of other issues.

The concept of size has an impact on volunteers, too.  Have you seen one of these scenarios?

  • Volunteers visit a larger church.  It doesn’t have to be a “mega” church — everything else looks mega to these volunteers.  They underestimate themselves for being “only” a small church.  They “can’t” do the things they see in this big church.  They are overwhelmed at the supply rooms (compared to a supply cabinet) and enormous murals.  They feel like grasshoppers in a land of giants.
  • Volunteers attend a church that has television outreach and a well-known pastor.  Their ministry year always begins with in-house training and retreats led by highly educated staff members.  Although these volunteers are invited to training sessions outside of the church and have access to all sorts of ministry workshops, the volunteers in this church assume that the resources are for smaller churches that don’t have the expertise of their church staff.  They are missing out on the benefits of learning from (and fellowshipping with) folks with a different perspective.

In both cases, it would help for the volunteers to adjust their mental image.  Too often, we feel like small is inferior and big is self-sufficient.

For the next few posts, we are going to explore the categories of church size and what we can learn about the strengths / weaknesses of each — and what that means for volunteers.

Who is doing what?

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by Carol

Any time there is a position, whether paid or volunteer, there should be a written job description.  It spells out the expectations and responsibilities.  It should reduce the confusion and miscommunication.  Sometimes, though, it doesn’t.  Why is that?

At times, the written job description does not match the real situation.  But let’s say that the job description is up to date.  The volunteer coordinator and the volunteer literally have the same page of job description.  You have several other possibilities for confusion:

Possibility 1.
There is a difference in interpretation.  A volunteer may be bending over backward to do a job as he or she understood it, while the supervisor expected something totally different.  It’s painful on both sides!

Solution:  Ask what is going on.  Don’t assume, especially when you think you have discussed this before. Explain what you expected and find out why you are getting different results.

Possibility 2.
There are overlapping jobs and job descriptions.  This happens when you have a multitude of volunteers (instead of a few paid staff members, who are more likely to have specific roles and clear lines of supervision). Volunteers will jump in to do far more than their specific job — especially when they are conscientious and don’t want anything to fall through the cracks.  They can step on each other’s toes.

Solution: In ministry, we need to communicate more.  We need to let one another know why we are doing what we are doing.  People who communicate are better equipped to find a way to work in overlapping areas and fill the gaps with a minimum of personal friction.

Possibility 3.
Volunteers are unaware of the job descriptions of other volunteers — or even that other positions exist.  This also crops up when a new program is created without involving or informing a leader whose ministry is caught in the cross-current.

Solution: Keep in mind that job descriptions are not a private matter between an individual volunteer and the supervising leader.  Other people negotiate the terrain — needing to know who does what, who has a role, who needs to be asked, who will have the details.  Job descriptions don’t have to be widely distributed (which probably wouldn’t help anyway).  The information, though, can be distributed it bite-sized chunks that help people create a mental map of all the moving gears in your volunteer apparatus.

Bottom line:  If you notice that communication and information are common elements in the solutions, you are on target.  Church volunteers work together best when they have solid, reliable information.  New things don’t take them by surprise and they don’t have to guess at intentions.

Job descriptions don’t replace communication.  They themselves are a small piece of communication in a much larger mosaic of giving and receiving information.  Use job descriptions as a starting point.  Then get the communication flowing.