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11/10/07
Volunteerism
Why can’t we just salary Sunday School teachers?
The other day at staff meeting we were praying for one another and one staffer after thinking long and hard about what he needed prayer for finally cracked: “I just need prayer for my relationship with some volunteers.”
Ahhh… volunteerism. How does one motivate those under his or her care without wages? How does one lead in a volunteer-run environment when we live in a day and age of unprecedented transience and church hopping? And, from the other side of the fence: what does being a good volunteer look like? I want to spend this short series of posts on that subject.
Let me give two starter suggestions for leaders centered on what I think is the most important part of volunteer leadership, that is, effectively communicating your vision.
1) Infect them with the big vision: your church should be all about one thing. At our church that vision is: “making disciples in Princeton and around the world.” Your volunteers need to be your foot soldiers of that vision. They need to be the ones who spread that vision in their ministries and champion the church’s mission in conversation. If your volunteers don’t buy into your vision, no one will.
2) Connect the big vision to their ministry: given the vision of the church, they will make their own connections about how that vision relates to their own ministries. The problem is they will often make the wrong connection. Connect the dots for them in term of how their ministries are part of the church’s vision. At our church we have a second-tier statement, a mission statement that works our vision statement out in more detail. Every single ministry must be connected first to a particular in the mission statement and then to the broader vision statement. At this point you do need to be flexible. They may well offer some fresh insights as to how their ministry’s smaller vision is compatible with the church’s larger vision.
Your church’s vision is its DNA. If you don’t spend the time instilling that DNA in your volunteers you may end up with a nice gathering, but you won’t end up with a family committed to a singular purpose. Instilling your church’s DNA into your volunteers will create among your varied ministries a unified, singularly directed force.
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