Face it! When volunteers step up, raise their hands, and offer to help, leaders in churches hungry for workers often push and push to the limit. One by one, those volunteers go from wonderful to worn out. It’s a cliché, but it’s true. Too often leaders expect volunteers, officially or unofficially, to sign up for long tenures—sometimes until death do us part!
Do your committed volunteers feel the need to be committed—to an institution—because they are running on empty? Has your list of available workers grown smaller than the mustard seed your pastor uses in his children’s message every year? Do people run when they see you coming because they suspect you’ll recruit them to help . . . again? If you answered “Yes!” to any of these questions, you may want to consider working with Volun-TIERS, instead of volunteers.
Volun-TIERS will help your church create happy, healthy, helpful, heroic, heavenly volunteers. Here’s the idea in a simple, 3-point nutshell:
- List all the positions for which you need volunteers. Study the list. Ask which could be set up on a short-term, rotating basis.
- Create a bank of volunteer names.
- Recruit fresh volunteers for specific, well-designed job descriptions.
List all the positions. Break down some of your larger positions into several opportunities for service. Create some jobs with greater responsibilities, some with a little less, and some with very limited duties. In other words, create tiers or levels of service.
For example, one church went without a Sunday school director for three years! It fell on the pastor’s wife to keep this children’s program afloat. Then the church took another look. They broke the job down into several segments. A Sunday school secretary took attendance, distributed the offering plates, and turned the money in at the church office each week. Two moms agreed to direct the traditional children’s Christmas service. The Children’s Pastor took on responsibility for teacher training. All this freed the new director to recruit and encourage teachers, set a vision and communicate it, assign classrooms, order materials and supplies, and communicate with parents.
Does the director still have a big job? You bet! But with many former duties spread out among other workers, her job seems at least doable! And she’s encouraged each week as all those adult helpers scurry around the children’s area, sparking enthusiasm in one another for the service they are carrying out in Jesus’ name!
While you’re breaking down jobs, don’t get carried away! Remember to analyze tasks from a ministry perspective. Even if you could find 52 folks willing to rotate into the teacher roster for this year’s fourth grade Sunday school class, would you really want to staff the position that way? No! The children need consistent role models, consistent teaching, and consistent love. Don’t sacrifice true disciple-making on the altar of making life easy for every volunteer.
Create a bank of names. Include people who have served in the past, but also those who have never served. Think of individuals who have the gifts and willingness, but perhaps limited time and energy.
You might even develop a vocabulary everyone in the congregation can learn to understand. A tier-one job may require the equivalent of 60 minutes for one month. A tier-two job could demand an hour a week for a year. A tier-three job may involve an hour a week, plus two committee meetings each month. You get the idea!
Recruit fresh volunteers. Once you have the tier system and the name bank in place, use them in your recruiting efforts. State clearly the time and energy commitment you’re asking for. Get specific! For instance: “This is a tier-one task that involves transporting food to the homeless shelter downtown each Friday morning during November.”
Assure your recruits they can reenlist when their term of service ends, if they like, but right now, you’re only asking, for example, for four Friday mornings next month.
With many names in your bank to choose from, rotate volunteers, all the while encouraging them, publicly recognizing and thanking them, and praying for them. People need breaks. Fresh servants make for fantastic service!
While finding volunteers may never be a snap, it’s just possible that recruiting volun- TIERS will help to dry the tears of otherwise overworked and exhausted recruits who love the Lord and want to serve his people!
