A Few Things About Volunteers in the Small Church, Part 2

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by Carol

As we started this series on church size, I mentioned the poor-little-me syndrome that occurs with volunteers in many small churches.  But there are some definite positives to being in a small church.

POSITIVES

Making a Difference
For one thing, it is easier for volunteers to see where they make a difference.  The same volunteer who is chairman of the deacons may also teach the only children’s Sunday morning Bible study class.  At Christmas, the choir has to have all hands on deck or there is no program.  It’s harder for people to fall through the cracks — everyone is needed for something — and people seldom wander the halls unattached.

Generalists
It is easier to help, too.  Volunteers don’t have to be experts since jobs in a small church are less specialized.  A jack-of-all-trades is highly valued.

Haven for the Young and Old
Although generalists are valued, many small churches are blessed to have older members who bring expertise and wisdom.  Some small churches are blessed with young members who are highly enthusiastic and willing to find a way to get a job done.  These same younger and older members are attracted to the small church when they get crowded out by staff or mainstream members in a larger church.

Unique
The skills and interests of the individual members of small churches tend to shape the church’s personality and strong points.  As a result, each small church is unique — sometimes novel, sometimes innovative, sometimes quirky, sometimes bordering on cultish.

This uniqueness can be a strength that carries volunteers through hard times.  But it can also insulate them from beneficial change and engaging the culture around them.  A good antidote to this drawback is to interact often in training workshops that draw an attendance from multiple churches.  Denominations, Christian publishers, and non-profit ministries offer lots of options to cross-pollinate with participants from other churches.

UNEXPECTED

There are a couple of unexpected things about volunteers in a small church:

Core, Not Clique
First, small groups that hang together in a large church are known as a clique (with all the negative connotations).  In a small church, that same group is the church core.  Yes, they may need to soften their edges to let newcomers in, but the solid relationships they have forged over time are the foundation of the church’s resilience.

Volunteer Pockets
Second, the budget in a small church may look miniscule and locked in, but that is not the whole story.  Volunteers in small churches often reach into their own pockets — because they can, with such small numbers — to fund things that really matter to them.  And sometimes they foot the bill for the fun fluff!

KEY TAKE-AWAYS

The key to taking advantage of the small church is to find the up-sides of having a small campus, small numbers, and a close network.

  • Use chatter in the network to encourage others in a round-about way.  Example: Talk up what some volunteer did and share your appreciation for them.  Positive attitudes spread even faster than gossip!
  • Use the instances where economy of scale works in reverse.  Example: Meet off-campus at a local ice cream parlor.  Example: Buy a fun (or inspirational) book for all of your volunteer team.
  • Use the established familiarity.  Example: When you need help, tap into what people know of each other and their talents.

Small churches are great, and the volunteers in them matter!

A Few Things About Volunteers in the Small Church, Part 1

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by Carol

We’re looking at how church size influences volunteers and volunteer coordination. If you want to learn about the characteristics of a small church, there are quite a few good books about small churches, with more coming out periodically. We will review some of them, so come back and check our Reviews page. For this post, we will look at a few basics and a bit of what that means for volunteers.

How big is a small church?

When I did my doctoral research, I defined a “small” church as one averaging 100 or fewer in worship each week. Some experts would go as low as 50 and some as high as 150. An argument can be made for either one, but a better argument can be made for looking more at the organizational structure than at simple numbers.

Small churches are often said to be like a family in their organizational structure. Be careful, though, that you don’t assume that the pastor is the “father” of this “family.” The comparison with a family simply means that the church is organized on the basis of relationships. The congregation is small enough for people to know each other, at least on some level.

Think about a family reunion. All of those people are related to you in some way, even if you are a little fuzzy on what it is.

How big can the extended family grow before you have trouble remembering which toddlers belong to which of your cousins? At some point, the people you see at the far picnic table don’t feel like “family” anymore.

How does this impact the volunteers?

There are some obvious implications for volunteers in a small church. For example, due to numbers alone, small churches don’t have as many programs. As a result, volunteers have fewer choices of programs in which they can serve.

On the flip side, if there is an unmet need in the church, a volunteer may have more opportunity to start a program to meet that need and to serve in a leadership position. (And down the road, they may have a higher risk of burnout because they tried to meet the need without enough manpower, training or resources.)

Next time

But what about the not-so-obvious implications? How do the relational aspect and other unique characteristics of the small church impact volunteers?  In Part 2 on Small Churches, we will look at the less obvious ways in which the characteristics of a small church influence its volunteers.

 

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.

What about vacations?

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Sarajevo, Bosnia

Relaxing in old Sarajevo

by Carol

Do volunteers get “time off for good behavior”?  That’s an old term from the prison system.  Sometimes volunteers get locked into a position and feel like they are serving a life sentence.

Experts often recommend that we recruit volunteers for a fixed length of time.  Sunday School teachers, for example, are asked to serve for a calendar year.  But when the end of the year rolls around, do they have an all-or-nothing choice — stay for another 52 weeks or quit?

A good pool of substitute teachers helps somewhat.  But what about offering a refreshing break?

Some ministries in the church have a built-in break for the summer.  Most regular Sunday morning roles, though, do not.  How can you give volunteers (or yourself) some time off?  Here are some possibilities:

1.  Take a good, solid break for the summer, if possible.
I remember being president of an adult choir when the director suggested that we let the choir have the summer off.  We met every other week for a while, which confused us all and never really gave us a break.  The next year, we took the whole summer off.  I was amazed at how energetic and reinvigorated the choir members were when they came back.  And they did come back.

2.  Give your volunteers a vacation.
If you are a grown up, you usually take a week or two (maybe more) for a summer vacation.  The purpose is rest and relaxation, which is why we joke about needing a vacation to recuperate if we travel or stay active the whole time.  Volunteers need rest and relaxation, too, even if they love what they do.  Rotate the team, pull in some substitutes or close the ministry for a couple of weeks so everyone can have a few weeks off.

3.  Scale back the program to take a breather.
Lighten up.  Create a “summer” event that is less intense.  Instead of sessions with a short video, deep discussion, and homework, try a good movie.  Some movies have discussion guides available that take all the stress out of planning.

4.  Ramp up your program to take a break.
Go big or go home?  Sometimes you can pull everyone into the auditorium for a big event.  Small and medium classes are great for interaction and building relationships.  But getting everyone into a big group gives the small-group leaders a break from preparation and allows a few of them to take the day off.

Find the mix of alternatives that work for you and your ministry.

Got ideas?  Post a comment.

Helping Church Volunteers to Thrive

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by Carol

Volunteers and church staff need to remind each other of the deep truths they believe and how that fuels their mission.  Simple enough.

But when holidays, special events, and the week-to-week routine roll around (= 24 / 7 / 365), that’s not as easy as it sounds.

Take Easter, for example.  (Side note:  If you let your events get hijacked by the so-called “Easter” bunny, you’re on your own, folks.)  Your church probably has extra services, more music, more sprucing up, more decorations (though not nearly what we do at Christmas), and more printed/electronic communication to the community.  All of these take a lot of additional time and creative effort.  And all of them can siphon off volunteer hours galore.

You would think that the extra emphasis on the Easter message would help volunteers and staff to appreciate Jesus’ suffering for our sin and His resurrection even more.  Many times, though, the appreciation stays on the surface.  Volunteers get tired and staff get burned out.  I’ve seen exhausted music directors turn cranky and crazy.

A quick prayer at the beginning or end of a rehearsal just doesn’t cut it.  A brief reminder doesn’t penetrate the veneer.  You have to be intentional about focusing minds and hearts on your purpose and where it fits within the overall mission.

It’s never too late to help church volunteers thrive, whether you are a leader or a co-worker.

Try these steps:

1.  Keep it healthy. 
Even Leonardo da Vinci had assistants.  No one needs to work around the clock. No one needs to lift and tote and build until they drop over.  No one even needs to shop ‘til they drop!  Provide healthy snacks, plenty of H2O, and adequate rest.  Recruit a big enough team — and let others help.  Pay attention to the health and safety of the people around you.  Worn out people can’t appreciate the meaning of ministry.

2.  Keep it happy. 
Laugh a lot and have fun.   Even the most serious projects and events should have moments when you enjoy each other’s company.  Yes, our efforts have eternal ramifications, but not every step has life-or-death consequences.  Tempers tend to flare when people get too tired or excessively serious.  Find ways to put a smile on your own face and the face of those around you.  Take your mission seriously, take yourself seriously, and take your joy seriously!

3.  Keep it holy. 
This may seem counter to #2, but it shouldn’t be.  Remember that you are with people who believe in the God who does not tolerate sin.  This is where you set limits on the things you do to provoke laugher or light heartedness.  This is where you take time to remind each other of the profound reasons that you are doing what you do.  This is where you remind yourself that members of God’s family are still growing — they need your patience, your example, and your wise counsel.  You shouldn’t have to think hard about how your activity ties to the reason you are doing it, but you may need to think ahead to communicate the reason.  Take more than a “moment” to think deeply and connect sincerely.  You will find that it is well worth the effort.

Volunteers? Gotta love em’!

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by Carol

Back in college, my favorite Peanuts poster was the one that quotes Lucy:  “I love mankind.  It’s people I can’t stand.”

Sometimes it is easier to love volunteers in general than to love individual volunteers.  There must have been days when it was easier for Jesus to think of giving His life for all of humanity than to be nose to nose with smelly, obstinate fishermen and tax collectors.

But what if you really do love them?  Do they know it?

Two types
Experts in organizational leadership identify leaders in two different camps:  task-oriented and relationship-oriented.  I should be the poster child for the task-oriented types.  I’m not that way all the time — and no one is 100% either one anyway.  Still, I need to take time more often to stop and enjoy the volunteers for the roses they are.  (Do not insert the mental note of “thorns and all” here!)

More than thoughts
I think that the volunteers in our ministry are a GREAT group of people who inspire me by their time commitment and love for the Lord.  But if it doesn’t get beyond my thoughts, it doesn’t help.  Volunteers are not mind readers.  They are behavior readers.

At one point, I thought that I was helping our people to become more effective.  I was working with people, though, who were wise enough (and loving enough) to tell me that I was coming across as critical and disapproving.

I’ll bet that we can all reach back in our memory to examples of leaders who have created negative vibes when they first came to a church.  Leaders may have a lot of experience, be highly trained, and know a lot about their field.  They may be able to quote 1 Corinthians 13 in their sleep.  And yet, we can still fail to let church volunteers know that they are loved.

Something changed
Lately, I have been having a lot of fun enjoying our volunteers.  How did that happen?  I didn’t have to cook up ways to make them feel special.  I’m not flattering them with untrue praise.  I’m not overlooking their flaws.

I probably changed several things, but I know I made these changes:

1. I quit thinking, “They are doing a great job, except…..”  I dropped the “except” and enjoyed the great job for a while!

2. I quit dwelling on the things we needed to change.  Yes, we can improve, but the negatives tended to spill out in my facial expressions and tone of voice before I could catch them.  I have to think about changes at a separate time.

3. I talked with my team about what motivated them.  Literally, we had an evening when I asked them about what church was like (or not like) when they were kids.  I was amazed!  I have a whole new appreciation for these people.

New attitude
It’s easy for Christians to say that we love one another.  We are supposed to.  (And we know that we have to work hard to love people that we don’t even like.)  I’m giving and getting a lot more smiles, though, since I refocused on Philippians 4:8:

Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise (NLT).

In fact, I am finding that I don’t just love our volunteers — I am delighted with them.

7 Underestimated Words for Leading Volunteers

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by Carol

In Matthew 5, Jesus repeated the phrases, “You have heard it said that ……, but I tell you……”

You have probably heard that the “seven last words of the church” are, “We’ve never done it that way before.”  But I tell you, maybe the seven most underestimated words for leading volunteers are, “We have always done it that way.”

Neither statement is necessarily true, thank goodness.  Still, they seem contradictory, so let’s take a look.

Some congregations fight against change with every ounce of their strength.  Staff members come and go, but the nucleus of the church holds fast to an old mindset that will not budge.  And yes, in that case, the congregation that refuses to entertain any new thoughts or different ways of doing things will die.  It may be a slow, lingering decline.  The church might even look like it is thriving, but only because it is a sealed-off pocket of ancient rituals in the midst of a landscape of change.

But we have a saying about not throwing the baby out with the bath water.  Think about that picture for a moment.  Who came up with that one?!  I’m trying to picture my grandmother or great grandmother heaving a washtub of soapy water from the back porch — along with the little, pink bundle of joy.

There are things in church that are precious to us.  They tug at our heart strings and define the roles we play and carry the faith to the next generation.

Take Christmas traditions, for example.  Candlelight services probably mean more to those of us that have always lived with electric lights.  We have a core group of Christmas carols that have been carried on for decades (some for centuries).  And most Americans could stage a Christmas pageant, even if they have no personal relationship with the central character.

Traditions, rituals, and things we “have always done” give us a head start with volunteers in the church.  People can imagine where you are going with a concept.  They can see themselves as a part of it.  They can build on last year’s event.  Youngsters can look forward to the day that they will join (or grow into a new role).  Newcomers can get a sense of what holds this group together at the heart level.

Change can be good.  Don’t underestimate tradition and repetition, though.  And don’t be surprised if, when you try to repeat something, you find that it turns out different.  Remember, we serve a God who makes snowflakes.

How many volunteers?

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How many volunteers does it take to change a light bulb?

Okay, seriously. This is not a joke. When you are trying to fill volunteer positions in your Sunday School or recruit volunteers for your Fall Festival, how many volunteers do you need?

You can probably come up with a pretty good estimate. As the deadlines draw near, it is easy to see how many positions are unfilled. At that point, you start to scramble for space in the bulletin (if your church still has one) or make phone calls or call in personal favors. As things get desperate (from your point of view — Ever wonder about God’s sense of humor as He watches this play out?), I have a better question for you:

How many volunteers do you actually have in your church?

I had an epiphany the day the pastor sent me into all of the Sunday morning Bible study classes to recruit volunteers for a Fall Festival. I looked at folks with walkers, young parents lugging diaper bags, people I knew were taking trips, etc., etc. After adjusting for all of the limitations, we didn’t have enough actual human beings to fill all of the volunteer positions we had created!

I’m not saying that people were unwilling. I’m saying that I did not see enough adults (youth included) to fill the slots — people who could be there to lift and tote, or watch kids carefully, or walk at a brisk pace (or toss balls back) for an hour or two, or cook at a grill for three hours.

If I had been looking for Bible study leaders, I would have run into a different set of limitations. Not everyone can be there 50 weeks out of the year or read well enough to plan a lesson or speak in front of even a small audience. For example, teenagers can do a lot of things, but they rarely lead a home group for couples. All of that shrinks your pool of potential volunteers before you ever consider their spiritual maturity or the personality fit.

In community theater groups, we knew that 10% of the tickets that people reserved for our programs would end up not being used. Life happens.  I haven’t seen numbers that involve church volunteers, though.

For every 100 people in your church, how many of them are actually available in your volunteer pool? There may be some guidelines that tell us how to calculate the number.

It’s time to go looking for them — or figure them out. If you know of any, leave us a comment!

Spread the Load! Part 2 of 2

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by Kristi and Carol

What if …. Your usual volunteer pool is shrinking and your responsibilities are growing.

In part 1, we looked at the steps to evaluate your current situation:

TAKE A DEEP BREATH AND THINK: What is stressful to you or other leaders in your organization?

STOP FOR A SECOND AND LOOK CLOSELY: Are the job descriptions in your existing organizational structure up-to-date?

COMPARE REALITY TO WHAT IS ON PAPER: Although capable people are working hard, do their jobs match reality?

Now that you have identified the stress points and have a firm grasp on what your volunteers are actually trying to do, it is time to take action. Read on to see what “Org-C” did.

1. WE ADDED NEW FACES.

It looked like stay-at-home moms re-entering the workforce were depleting the pool of easily accessible volunteers. Older adult volunteers, though, had never previously been asked to take on this volunteer role. They were available to work on these tasks during the week and it gave them an excuse to get together with friends. Even better, they were excited to do something that they were good at.

2. WE ADDED NEW PLACES.

Although many moms couldn’t come during weekdays to do prep-work, some could work from home.

3. WE ADDED NEW POSITIONS.

It may seem counter-intuitive to increase the number of volunteer positions. To keep the supervisors focused on people (the volunteers they supervised), we created new job descriptions related to the computer work. These “extra” volunteers were designated to handle issues at the command center desk while the supervisors were in hallways and classrooms. They cross-trained in many areas and were able to help with tasks beyond the computers.

4. WE ADDED A NEW STATION.

A gathering point a few feet down the hallway became a new check-in station for supervision and dispatching of rotating substitutes. This took the congestion away from the main command center. Handling substitutes seemed to get in the way of the supervisors’ core job, and it could easily be done by volunteers with administrative talents. We sliced off those responsibilities and created a whole new volunteer position. Several volunteers were passionate to fill this role, as it was scheduled just for the first portion of the program day, and if they wanted to, they could finish and leave. In many instances, these volunteers stayed to pitch in and help with other needs that arose.

Spreading the load may seem like a lot more work at the beginning, but purposeful adjustments in this area will have multiple benefits. After new positions were created and the load was more evenly shared at Org-C, the supervisors were more successful in supervising volunteers. Prospective volunteers began observing an organization that was no longer frenetically out of control. Instead, they saw an organization they could successfully join. In case after case, the volunteers who came into the new positions eventually spread their efforts beyond their initial job descriptions. Because they felt fulfilled in the role that fit their key passions, many had enough energy to help in other areas — and had the motivation to do so because they had become loyal to the supervisors and to the program.

BOTTOM LINE: If you can’t recruit more of the volunteers you are looking for, start looking for different volunteers for different positions!