Increasing Leadership Capacity in Your Church (Part 2)
You probably have people serving with more leadership capacity than you know—and you may have volunteers that have taken on more leadership than they actually have capacity for.
Often, churches hand leadership responsibility to volunteers who don’t have the capacity for it. Or, they fail to develop the people who do have leadership capacity, because they’re spreading attention evenly across everyone instead of investing deeply in a few.
The problem isn’t a lack of leaders. It’s a lack of a system to develop them.
In this episode, Jonathan and I break down what it actually looks like to intentionally develop volunteer leaders through a pipeline:
- Auditing your volunteers & putting your framework into practice
- The evidences of leadership capacity
- The three levels of volunteer leadership to have in your pipeline
When we pretend everyone is a leader, we hand leadership responsibility to people who don’t have the capacity for it. [episode 452] #unstuckchurch Share on X A framework is only as good as our willingness to resist the temptation to promote out of need rather than out of discernment. [episode 452] #unstuckchurch Share on X Naming someone’s leadership capacity is a part of helping them see themselves the way God sees them and the way God has equipped them. [episode 452] #unstuckchurch Share on X
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Transcript
Sean:
Well, welcome to the Unstuck Church Podcast. I’m Sean Bublitz, managing director here at The Unstuck Group, and I’m joined today again by my teammate Jonathan Smith, lead pastor of One Church.to in Toronto, Canada, and Unstuck consultant. And to add to that, my co-host for this series, you’re a lot of things, Jonathan.
Jonathan:
Wow.
Sean:
Last week on the podcast, we spent some time laying the foundation for today’s conversation. We talked about why so many churches are running with a volunteer bench that’s too lean, what it costs them in the long run and then how to start thinking about closing the gap by setting goals and creating a plan. And we ended with this idea, you’ve probably got people sitting in your seats right now with more leadership capacity than you know. The problem is that most churches don’t have a system to find them or develop them once they do. And that’s exactly what we’re getting into today: how you identify volunteers that have leadership capacity and then once you find them, what does it look like to actually develop them intentionally through a pipeline?
Jonathan:
I think last week we were reading pastor’s mail ’cause I don’t think that we have an intention problem. We have attention problem. Pastors and leaders are pulled in so many directions, and ministry often rewards the immediate and the urgent, but not the important. And that’s part of the problem.
Sean:
Right.
Jonathan:
But if we can resist some of that energy and give attention to the volunteer bench as well as the leadership pipeline, we’ll not only make better disciples, people who are equipped to do the work of the ministry, I think we’ll have better outcomes long-term for our organizations.
Sean:
I completely agree with that. I love that. Alright, so before we get to the content, Jonathan, let me take a second and just thank our podcast sponsor for this series: The Church Lawyers. You know, most pastors, you might be one of them, Jonathan.
Jonathan:
I am.
Sean:
Would rather preach 10 sermons than talk to one lawyer. But here’s the good news: The Church Lawyers, and I have lots of experience with The Church Lawyers, they really do speak the language of churches. They’re a law firm that has served thousands of churches of all sizes and denominations throughout the United States. They handle everything from church bylaws and employment issues to real estate transitions. If that’s something that would be helpful for your church, you can check out their useful free resources and affordable membership options at thechurchlawyers.com.
Alright, so here’s where I wanna start this week, Jonathan. Last week, of course, we talked about the importance of having enough volunteers, but clearly, just having warm bodies and serving roles is not the goal. The goal is to identify and develop the right people into leaders. And eventually, for some of them, leaders of leaders as well. And here’s the tension that I keep running into with churches. Most of the time, leadership development is completely informal. Like somebody just notices a person seems capable and then starts giving them some more things to do. Or sometimes it’s basically non-existent in the church. There’s no framework, there is no clear pathway for developing as a leader. So what ends up happening is the same thing that we talked about last week. The same people in those leadership roles carry everything. And the volunteers who actually have leadership capacity, either they never get developed, or they get handed responsibility without any real support. And eventually, if they’re really wired up as a leader, they’re either gonna drift away because they don’t have opportunity or they’re gonna overwork themself and burnout. So the problem isn’t a lack of leaders, it’s a lack of system to develop them. So I want to talk and spend some time on solutions today to all of this because I think that’s why our listeners tuned in. But how do you see this playing out specifically in either your church or the churches that you work with?
Jonathan:
Yeah, I’d like to push back on something I think that I’ve been a part of and maybe the church has inadvertently created because I think there’s an even harder layer underneath what you just said. The framework problem—that is real; the system, the identifying the track, the development part. But most churches don’t have a system at all. But before you get to the system, there’s a posture problem. And here’s what I mean. In the church, we have this beautiful conviction, I think is a true conviction. It’s a right conviction that every person matters and every person has something to contribute. I believe that. But somewhere along the way, that conviction got translated and kind of flattened the idea that everyone is a leader, and that’s just not true. Not everyone is a leader. Some people are gifted to serve faithfully alongside others their whole life. And that’s holy, that’s meaningful. That’s a calling. And it’s not a lesser calling.
Sean:
Yes.
Jonathan:
But when we pretend everyone is a leader, two things happen. One, we hand leadership responsibility to people who don’t have the capacity for it. And I think they either get crushed underneath it or we lose them because they get burned out by it. Number two, I think we fail to actually identify and develop the people who do have a leadership capacity because we’re spreading our attention evenly across everyone instead of investing deeply in a few. I think of Jesus. He did the opposite of that. He preached the crowds. He discipled the 72, but he poured into the 12, ’cause within those 12, he also took three up to the mountain alone. Now, that’s not favoritism, that’s wisdom about capacity and calling. So I think the first tension is we don’t have a pipeline. The second tension is, are we willing to acknowledge that some people in our church have leadership capacity and some don’t. And our job is to discern which is which. You need to be able to identify that to build the system.
Sean:
Yeah.
Jonathan:
I think in about when you first walk into a church, Sean, and when you’re working as a consultant, you’re helping a church get unstuck. What are the early signs you pick up, that tell you a church has confused everyone serves with everyone leads?
Sean:
Oh yeah. Well, you know, a lot of times, especially on the staffing and structure work we do and Jonathan, you do this, a lot of times we’ll see a flat organizational structure. You know, from staff to volunteers to volunteer leaders. And that creates the expectation that everybody can essentially lead at the same level and accomplish the same tasks in terms of their leadership capacity, and that’s just not true.
Sometimes it’s in the language as well. I’ve seen a number of churches who champion leadership to the extent of where if you are really just gifted at faithful service and accomplishing tasks, you almost feel devalued. You feel like, well, I don’t have the gifts to give to the church in what everybody celebrates because what gets celebrated gets repeated. Right? So that language is really important as well. And celebrating people who do tasks, because that’s what God’s wired them for, just as much as we celebrate people who lead groups of people or maybe lead other leaders, those are two of the common issues I see rise to the top. Is there anything specifically that you’ve seen as well, Jonathan?
Jonathan:
I think in organizations, sometimes I’ve noticed that, in their effort to flatten it in some ways point leadership is often devalued. And so there’s a team of people responsible for something, and nobody’s responsible for anything. And I think this kind of, plays out in leadership culture if everyone’s a leader and everyone’s involved. first it doesn’t honor the gift of leadership in some. And as you mentioned, it doesn’t honor the faithful contributions of others, maybe that have high tenacity, maybe low galvanizing, and somehow they don’t get valued in that process. So I think really being clear about your leadership culture and recognizing not everyone is a leader and nor should they be.
Sean:
Right? Yeah. That’s good. Alright, so let’s talk about what a healthy volunteer leadership pipeline actually looks like. Because this is where a lot of churches that, that I’ve seen, again, when I come on site and consult with them, this is where they get stuck. They know they need to develop leaders, but they don’t have a clear picture of what it even means in practice. So let me lay out just kind of a simple framework for this. Think about your volunteer leadership structure in three levels. The first level, of course, is your volunteer. This is your individual contributor. They show up, they serve, they complete tasks. They’re not leading anyone else yet. They’re just doing the work. And that’s great because this is where everyone starts at. But here’s what you’re watching for at this level. Initiative, attitude. How do they interact with the people around them? Do they show up consistently? Do they do what they say they’re going to do? Do others seem naturally drawn to them? Those are the early signals that someone might have the capacity for more.
And I said, might. I remember Jonathan, a volunteer named Leroy at a church that I served at. He joined the band and was serving, and Leroy was a skilled musician. But I noticed really quickly that he also had what I’ll call “Woo.” He was great with people. He was great in conversation. He went out of his way to be helpful to others on the team. Leroy would show up early. He was so excited to be a part of what we were doing. I saw qualities in Leroy early on that showed the potential for leadership. And man, I’m not always right, but I got this one right. Over several years, Leroy grew from being a band leader to joining our staff team and overseeing services at one of our campuses. And that started with just that little sparkle of, oh, I think I see this in him, so make sure that your eyes are open for who on your team might embody those gifts.
The second level in this framework that I’m walking through is what I’d call your team leader. This is where someone moves from leading themselves to leading others. They’re not just doing the work anymore. They’re modeling how the work should be done. They’re kind of the player-coach. They set the example; they start to take ownership of the people around them, not just the tasks. And this transition is actually harder than it sounds because a great volunteer isn’t automatically a great volunteer team leader. The skills are very different. You’re asking someone to shift their focus from what can I do to what can my team do? And that shift requires coaching. It requires investment. It doesn’t just happen because you gave someone a new title.
And then the third level in this framework, I’m gonna call coach. That’s the language we’ll use this. This is a person who’s leading other leaders. They’re not just modeling. They’re actually recruiting. They’re building teams; they’re solving problems. And sometimes even managing conflict. It’s no longer about what they produce personally. It’s about what their team produces. This person has demonstrated that they can develop other leaders, not just lead themselves. And here’s why this level matters so much for our conversation today. If someone can’t function as a coach, like leading other leaders in a volunteer context, they are not ready to step into a staff role. This is where you find out if someone actually has the capacity to lead at that next level. Jonathan, anything that you would add to that framework?
Jonathan:
Man, it brings to mind a quote, I think it was from Tony Morgan, saying to one of the staff members that Unstuck at one point, I’ll no longer reward you for what you do; I’ll reward you for what you give away. And that’s getting to that upper level of leadership and coaching. And I love this framework. If I was gonna give advice to leaders here, ’cause I’ve learned this the hard way. You can develop someone into their God-given capacity, but you cannot develop them beyond that.
Sean:
Yes.
Jonathan:
And I think I’ve overestimated. I think I’ve sometimes hired a project before a ministry sometimes, or a ministry before a minister sometimes. As Andy Stanley would say, I’ve overestimated my ability to develop people because I’ve wanted things for people or maybe needed them to be in roles that exceeded maybe their capacity. And I’ve made that mistake more than once. And I’ve had volunteers who were phenomenal at level one. They’re great on the volunteer bench. I mean, just rock stars, great individual contributors showed up early. Did the work, encouraged people even around them. And I thought, this person needs to be a team leader. And so I promoted them, you got it right. I’ve gotten it wrong many times. And it was a bit of a disaster. And they weren’t bad people. They were great people. They were gifted as individual contributors, less as leading a team. Thriving volunteers get discouraged when you make them a team leader. And this is not who they are.
The flip side happens, though, too. You know, you find someone. I’m thinking of someone specifically; you talked about Leroy. I’ll talk about a guy named Vinny on our production team a couple years back. He joined the production team. Faithful, I mean faithful. But I never saw him as an obvious leader. It just didn’t gimme that. I don’t know, it just wasn’t something I saw in him naturally. But we started to notice that other volunteers were orbiting around him, and they’d show up early because he was there, and we realized that this is a bit of what natural leadership looks like before it gets named. And we pulled him aside, had the development conversations, I think of our production lead, Jeff, who really mentored him and poured into him. And within a year he was not just a team lead. He’s now in a coaching role in our organization as a volunteer.
Sean:
I love that.
Jonathan:
Coaching others. And sometimes you just need to see it and name it and then develop it, right? So the framework is great, but it’s only as good as our willingness to resist the temptation to promote out of need rather than out of discernment. I love those labels that you guys have developed, that volunteer, the team lead, the coach at different levels. What are some of the ways you’ve seen churches use it for maximum impact?
Sean:
Well, I want to answer that question, but maybe not in the way that most people would assume, because I think one of the most underrated parts of this whole conversation is the power of simply having a common language around these levels. When everyone on your staff and ministry teams knows what a volunteer is, we still get that question. What’s a volunteer? How do you define that? What a team leader is, and then what a coach is. You just talked about this in your context, Jonathan. And then those words mean the same thing across every ministry. Something really important happens then; people know where they are, they know where they could go, what the next step might look like, and then the leaders in the church know who to look for and how to develop them all just because of that shared language that we’re using across every ministry.
Without the shared language, every ministry is kind of doing its own thing. Kids ministry has their version of leadership development. Student ministry have theirs, worship ministry has theirs. And none of it connects. And you can’t build a pipeline across a church if everyone speaks a different language. I was working with a church in Ohio recently, and they knew they had a leadership development problem. And we looked at their data, and they weren’t where they should have been in terms of number of volunteer leaders. They had lots of volunteer opportunities, but looked at them more in terms of greeter, usher, musician, et cetera. When I introduced a different language, let’s think about it in terms of volunteer or volunteer leader or coach, and then applied that same vocabulary across all of their ministries. The development pipeline just clicked for them. All of a sudden, they saw a framework to develop people rather than roles that needed to be filled for services. And that’s the power of just having a common language.
So before you do anything else, get your ministry leaders in a room and ask them, do we have a common vocabulary for leadership and volunteer leadership in our church? And if the answer’s no or if people start giving different answers, you’ve just found your starting point, this is where to begin.
So let’s, Jonathan, move into the practical side. You know, now we’ve got our three different levels. We’ve got our language developed. Now what’s next? Step one, I would say, is what I’d call a pipeline audit. Go ministry by ministry within your church and map out who you actually have at each level right now. I found this exercise so powerful. I’ve done it with churches with just a simple spreadsheet and a volunteer matrix. And you’re asking the question, how many individual volunteers do we have? How many volunteer team leaders do we have? And then how many coaches?
Here’s what I think you’re gonna find. You probably have a decent number of volunteers at the first level and maybe a handful of team leaders at that next level. But then almost no one functioning as a coach. That top level of the pipeline is almost always the thinnest, and it’s the most important one if you wanna develop future staff. I get that question from churches sometime. Maybe we don’t have enough volunteers in terms of span of care to really need that level of coaches. But I would say implementing that early on helps you to identify who are those people that have potential staff-level capacity.
Step two after that is identifying who has that next-level potential. And this is where you’re gonna have to be really intentional because these people don’t self-identify. They’re not gonna walk up to you and say, “Hey, I think I might be ready to lead a team.” You have to be watching for them. You have to be looking for those indicators. So what is it that you’re looking for? A few things that I’ve experienced here. Have they been focused on and gotten results in their current role that they’re in today? Have they shown initiative by doing more than what’s been asked of them? Do they maintain a positive attitude when things get hard? And maybe most importantly, do other people naturally follow them? Not because they were asked to, but just because that’s who they are.
Jonathan, sometimes if we’re not looking for these things, we can miss some great leaders that are already on the team. You told a story similar to this already, but I had a volunteer in my church that was quiet. She was a little reserved, but she was very personable when you talk to her. What really stood out to me from her was her initiative. She was always on time, very prepared. She went the extra mile to help other volunteers and make sure they had what they needed, and nobody had to ask her to do it. She just saw something that needed to be done and stepped in. And even though she was reserved, she still had great people skills and intuition. I ended up inviting her into a leadership role, and I was so glad that I did. She ended up being a key volunteer leader that really served our church well. So I just think it’s so important to know what you’re looking for and to keep your eyes open.
The third step then I’d add to that is the actual development conversation. And this is the part that most of us don’t do well. Once you have identified someone with potential, somebody needs to sit down with them and say, Hey, I see something in you. I think you have the capacity to lead at the next level. I’d like to invest in you, and here’s what that looks like. That conversation changes everything because most volunteers have never had anyone tell them they have leadership capacity. And when someone does, when a leader takes the time to see them and name what they actually see, it is genuinely motivating in a way that no volunteer recruitment campaign ever would be.
Jonathan:
Right.
Sean:
I mean, think about you have this opportunity within the church, probably a church that you love to serve and use your gifts and somebody is saying that to you. I mean, that’s pretty special. And then let me wrap up this idea with this fourth step here. And I think this is critical is, that development has to be ongoing. It’s not a one-time conversation. It’s regular check-ins. It’s coaching in the moment. It’s giving people small leadership wins early and then walking with them through the experience. It’s letting them make mistakes without pulling the rug out from underneath them, which can be really hard for us sometimes. Development always costs control. And churches that won’t pay that price, they never really build depth. So, Jonathan, that’s a lot of context and several different steps. Anything that you would add here for leaders who are trying to figure out where they actually start?
Jonathan:
Yeah, I think, we call ’em high capacity volunteers at that coaching level. They’re at a different level, and we almost treat them like staff. They have access to our building, our meeting spaces with us, and they have regular check-ins to help them develop because they’re dealing with conflict management. We want to help them with that. We want to keep them, make sure they’re investing in people and keeping them on the vision of the church. And you would see a young man named Vinny on those weekends pouring it. He does such a great job recruiting, but it’s no longer about him getting the shine from doing the job. He loves seeing these younger people than him now stepping up, running our cameras, whatever it might be on the weekend, training them and equipping them to do it.
Sean:
That’s great.
Jonathan:
Something amazing happens when you sit across from someone and says, I see something in you. I want to invest in you. You’re not just inviting them into a role. For some people, you’re dismantling the story that they’ve been telling themselves about who they are. I think this is a powerful moment when someone gets recognized by that. So my encouragement to pastors listening is don’t underestimate the spiritual and emotional weight of that conversation. You’re not just filling a role; you’re speaking identity over someone. Naming someone’s leadership capacity is a part about helping them see themselves the way God sees them and the way God has equipped them.
The other thing I might add is, and this is something I’ve personally had to grow in, is that development conversations have to be honest in both directions. Sometimes, having a coach-level person who’s still operating like a team leader because they’ve never been pushed is maybe they’re in that role because you haven’t had a hard conversation with them. Sometimes you have someone in a coaching role that shouldn’t be there, and the development conversation in that case is harder, but just as important. I love you. I see you. I think we put you in a seat that doesn’t actually fit your gifting. Let’s talk about where you’ll, you thrive. That’s also a development conversation. And that’s hard, whether you’re talking to a staff member or whether you’re talking to a high-capacity volunteer, a coach or a team leader or even a volunteer. If you’re committed to development conversations, they’re ones that are calling people to step up, and sometimes they’re ones that are just acknowledging that maybe they’ve been elevated beyond their capacity. Find a seat that they’ll thrive in. The church will be better off for it but so will they.
Sean:
Absolutely. Yeah. That is so hard. But it is the kindest thing we can do. Right? It is the most loving thing we can do.
Jonathan:
I think it’s hard for pastors. Yeah. We wanna edify and build up, and sometimes we need to acknowledge that edifying and building up is also God corrects us, or redirects us. And that can be a healthy way of helping people find their next step.
Sean:
Yeah. Jonathan, thanks for joining me this week and sharing your wisdom in this. We’ve got one more week in this series, but this has really been great. I’ve enjoyed the conversation. Before we close, I wanna say one more thing to the leader who’s listening right now and thinking, you know, this all makes sense, but I genuinely do not have time for this right now. I get it. But here’s the honest truth. The reason that you don’t have time is probably that you don’t have enough leaders. And the way that you get more leaders is by doing exactly this work. It’s one of those problems that only gets solved by going through it, not by trying to go around it.
So I would encourage you to start small. Pick one ministry in your church. Identify one person who has next-level potential. Have that one development conversation. Sit down and tell them you see leadership in them. That’s it. That’s how you start spinning the flywheel. Because here’s what’s on the other side of this work, a church where the burden isn’t falling on the same five people. A church where ministry leaders are actually developing leaders, not just managing volunteers. A church where when it’s time to hire, you’ve already got people who’ve been proven, developed and they’re ready to go. That is worth the time investment for you.
So if this series has been helpful for you, would you consider leaving us a review on your preferred podcasting platform? It really does help us reach more church leaders and help them find the show. And if you’re listening and thinking, we need help building this kind of system at our church, that’s exactly the kind of work we do at The Unstuck Group. You can start a conversation with us at theunstuckgroup.com. Next week, we’re wrapping up the series by talking about the final level of the pipeline: equipping staff leaders because all of this volunteer development work only pays off long term if you know how to bring the right people onto your team and then set them up to actually lead. We’ll see you next week.
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