Serving as Spiritual Formation (Part 1)
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Most churches say they need more volunteers. But answer this honestly: What is your theology of serving? How well is your church discipling people to offer their spiritual gifts as part of the Great Commission?
Many churches have gotten further away from viewing serving as an integral part of spiritual formation than they’d likely admit.
In this new series, Amy and I—along with some special guests—will share best practices on the strategy side of engaging people in serving, as well as critical elements of team-building and structure to engage more people using their gifts in the mission of your church.
INCREASING VOLUNTEER ENGAGEMENT
In the first episode of this new series, Amy and I unpack the strategy mistakes churches are often making that inhibit a strong volunteer engagement culture:
- Core tensions with engaging volunteers
- Why volunteer numbers are down
- Next steps to increase volunteer engagement
This episode is brought to you by Planning Center: an all-in-one software to help you organize your ministries and care for your church.
With an easy-to-use platform of products, you can bring people together with event signups, room and resource reservations, automatic volunteer scheduling, and much more.
Start using for free now at planningcenter.com.
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Transcript
Sean:
Welcome to the Unstuck Church Podcast, where each week we are exploring what it means to be an unstuck church. There’s a tension that exists between getting ministry done and increasing an individual’s spiritual formation when it comes to serving in the church. And with less attendees volunteering than before the pandemic, many churches are finding it harder to engage people in the ministry. On this week’s podcast, Tony and Amy begin a new series on serving in the church with a conversation on how to assess volunteering in your ministry. If you’re new to the Unstuck Church Podcast, you won’t want to miss out on downloading the weekly episode show notes. Each week we share important information to support that week’s episode. From time to time, we offer bonus resources and we give you access to the full archive of resources when you listen to past episodes. To learn more, just go to theunstuckgroup.com/podcast. Now, before we dive in, here’s Tony with this week’s podcast sponsor.
Tony:
This episode is brought to you by Planning Center, an all-in-one software to help you organize your ministries and care for your church. With an easy-to-use platform of products, you can bring people together with event signups, room and resource reservations, automatic volunteer scheduling, and much more. Start using Planning Center for free now at planningcenter.com.
Amy:
Well, hey, Tony, good to see you today, and I’m glad to be kicking off this new series. I have to tell you, the last church I served, I got to serve a fellow Minnesotan church. It was fantastic.
Tony:
Oh really?
Amy:
Yeah, yeah.
Tony:
Well, tell me about that.
Amy:
Yeah, it’s about an hour north of us and what a fantastic team that gathered to start and kick off the unstuck process. They’re part of a mainline denominational church, and they look like that from the outside, but you get on the inside and they are just amazing. I don’t mean that – there are some great mainline denominational churches that do church really well, but I have some preconceived things growing up here in Minnesota on what all of those denominations reflect. Anyways, they just love their community and they’re doing a great job at trying to do even more so they can reach more people.
Tony:
Yeah. Amy, it seems like you have a Lutheran church on every street corner in Minnesota, don’t you?
Amy:
We do. You betcha with the potluck. Good community up here in Minnesota.
Tony:
That’s right. That’s right.
Amy:
Well, again, we’re kicking off a new series today, and I’m excited about the conversation we’re going to bring to our listeners, because most churches say they need more volunteers, and they probably do. Before the pandemic, our group typically saw 45 to 50% of all adults and students serving on a volunteer team at least monthly. But our more recent data shows churches report only about 35% are serving today.
Tony:
Yeah, that’s right Amy. And we’re going to get into the reasons why that’s happening, and there are many, but underpinning them all is this: many churches have gotten further away from viewing serving as an integral part of the spiritual formation journey. And so over these next five episodes of the series, we’re going to share some best practices on the strategy side of engaging people in serving as well as critical elements of team building and structure to engage more people in using their gifts in the mission of the church.
Amy:
Yeah. And our listeners I think really appreciate this on topics like it to hear what successful churches are doing right now. And so we’ve got some great interviews set up with Chris Hodges from Church of the Highlands, Daniel Im from Beulah Alliance Church, and John Thomas from Mariners Church to share some practical examples of how their churches are making sure serving is a part of their spiritual formation strategy. So Tony, let’s go ahead and dive in and actually talk about the tension. What do you think are the core tension pastors are feeling when it comes to engaging volunteers and serving?
Tony:
It’s pretty obvious. Pastors are just feeling it. Pastors and church leaders generally – there’s just not enough people engaging in serving opportunities in the church and everybody’s feeling it. In fact, Amy, I was just with another team in the last couple of days, and because they’re not seeing as many people serving, the staff team then is just feeling overworked and overwhelmed right now. And we can blame the pandemic on this a bit because I think for a number of months, years we were actually training people just to kind of watch church happen online. But the reality is we started to see this trend even before the pandemic. In fact, a good friend of ours was talking about the fact that at their church for many, many years, people would give their time, but then it would take quite a long while before they were to a place where they were giving financially to the church. But even before the pandemic, we were starting to hear from churches that that was beginning to shift. I think it’s just because in our culture, our time is so precious. We were hearing from churches that people were giving financially before they were willing to give their time to serve. So, I know this is a big challenge for ministries because we have a big mission and we want people to engage in that mission, but finding enough volunteers to actually accomplish that, it’s a challenge.
Amy:
Yeah. And you know, I think pastors want to view serving as a part of the spiritual formation process. They might even agree with that, but I think when they’re feeling like there’s always a lack of volunteers, it can get easy to just put all of your energy towards filling key needs. Being consumed by the whirlwind of need versus pausing to actually get strategic about how our church is really going to face into this so that people get engaged in serving enough. In other words, I think we get more focused on just needing people to volunteer rather than really helping people understand the spiritual gifts they’re given and how it forms them spiritually.
Tony:
That’s right. Well, Amy, on this topic, a good friend of ours reached out a number of months ago – large church, fast growing church. And that’s actually the growing churches that I think are feeling this challenge the most right now. And he just asked me, “Tony, why do you think it is that volunteering is down at churches?” And so I shared some things and I shared that list with you and I thought it might be fun in today’s podcast just to kind of roll through all of those reasons, kind of rapid fire style, Amy. So will you kind of get us started here?
Amy:
All right. So the reason that volunteering is down at churches, I would say number one is because through the pandemic, we all ended up pretty overstaffed as a church. And so there wasn’t as much pressure, especially coming out of the pandemic to add volunteers.
Tony:
Yep. That’s, and on the staffing topic, I think one of the reasons why volunteers are a challenge, serving’s a challenge in churches is because churches, when they hire, they’ve tended to hire doers rather than leaders. And it’s folks that actually want to get their hands into the ministry rather than building teams to accomplish the ministry. And so that kind of compounds the volunteer engagement challenge that churches are experiencing.
Amy:
Yep. I think another one, just based on what you talked about earlier, increasingly all people are becoming more consumeristic. And as a result, I think in the church world, we just kind of consume content services rather than actually engage in the mission. And you know, I’ve said this before, but if we allow people to believe that just giving money to the church is the way to go so that the church can hire people, then we’re allowing them to miss out on a key part of that journey that God wants them to take.
Tony:
That’s right. Another reason why I think volunteer engagement is down in churches, pastors may not be teaching Christians what it’s like to be part of the great commission. And as you just mentioned, Amy, using their spiritual gifts as part of the body of Christ. It’s God’s design for us. He’s gifted each of us uniquely to help accomplish the mission of the body of Christ.
Amy:
All right. Here’s another one. I think sometimes staff are so focused on filling positions that in doing that they don’t really communicate the value of engaging the mission. You know, the fulfillment, the joy of serving others. That relational connection. And that’s related. I don’t think one of the problems or mistakes is when we don’t provide volunteers the opportunity to build community. I’ve heard you say this many times, I think we always tip towards groups when we talk about community, but for many people, the value of serving alongside other people is actually a higher relational connection for them.
Tony:
That’s right. And this is overgeneralizing, but especially for guys, I think guys tend to build relationships when they’re doing something with other men. And so by not offering serving opportunities for guys, we’re kind of taking that opportunity for building relational connection away from them as well. Another reason why volunteer engagement may be on the decline right now in churches is that they are creating competing opportunities for people to invest their time in church activities, which then reduces the time they’re available to serve. So it’s kind of a catch 22, Amy. We feel like we have to offer more activities to engage more people in the church. But when we offer more activities, that takes more volunteers, it takes more people to serve, and we’re actually creating more challenge for people that are already very, very busy. Which leads to then churches just becoming over programmed, which then spreads out our most committed volunteers too thin.
Amy:
Yeah. I was just working with a church where their volunteer numbers are quite low, and as we were going through the process, one of the ministry opportunities was, “Ooh, events” and whatever are slowly creeping back in to our offering where they had done a good job of pruning pre-pandemic coming out of it. It’s creeping back in and there’s a cost to that.
Tony:
That’s right.
Amy:
How about this one? I think another mistake is that staff leaders don’t actually ask people to join their ministry. In other words, the church announces it, you know, we have these needs here, you can get involved here, but as people and as leaders, we don’t actually ask. Announcements happen from the platform, but the ask should really happen one-on-one, and we should ask to help solve a problem or be engaged in our ministry movement. Don’t say no for people.
Tony:
Yeah. And on that note, I think I’ve actually referenced this on the podcast at some point in the past, Amy, this difference between announcing something and then actually asking somebody one-on-one. This was years ago. One of the churches that I was a part of, the student ministry in the coming, I think it was in the very next week, was having a big gathering for students that they were meeting in people’s homes. And because of that, they needed a lot of adult leaders to support this big event that they were pulling off. And the unfortunate thing is they hadn’t done their homework to actually do the direct one-on-one invites of people into volunteer roles for this big event. And so because of that, it was kind of last minute, “We don’t have enough people. Can we make an announcement on Sunday morning?” Now this church had thousands and thousands of people, but they went ahead, made the announcement. Only seven people after that announcement indicated, “I’m interested.” Only one of those people then actually followed through and committed to serving for that event. And it was just a reminder for me, now we feel like we’re doing something to engage people in serving by making an announcement on Sunday morning. But the reality is, if we’re going to invite people to take a next step into serving, that has to happen face-to-face one-on-one. And because of that, then I think more people are going to be more inclined to say, “Yes, I want to try that out.”
Amy:
And I do think you should leverage your platform. You know, I think it’s a mistake if we aren’t preaching on this regularly. One of the pastors this past fall, his church had never really done a serving message. And so he delivered the message, and he actually had in there in so many words, like, “We don’t need you, but this is for you, this is for your spiritual engagement.” And I think the mistake often is when we talk about serving, we talk about it in terms of a need rather than a calling or opportunity.
Tony:
Yeah, that’s good.
Amy:
And by the way, they had 450 people take a next step in getting connected with a ministry of the church.
Tony:
That’s fantastic. So rather than focusing on the need, how serving is actually for you, it’s an opportunity for you to take a next step. And here’s another one, Amy. I think, and again, we feel like we’re doing the kind thing, but there’s kind of a fairness mindset that sets in in churches where we believe all ministries should get the same amount of opportunity to recruit volunteers, even though they all have varying needs for volunteers. And actually, if we were to look holistically at the priorities of reaching people for Jesus and then growing people spiritually, there are some ministries that are actually more important than other ministries. And so giving focus to the roles that we’re trying to fill when we’re encouraging people to serve, I think it’s also one of the challenges that churches engage that we need to overcome.
Amy:
I think this one might be dicey, but I think another mistake churches make is that overall their ministry environments are just mediocre and because of that people aren’t really drawn to be a part of it. You know, I remember when I hired a worship leader, and he was a very skilled musician, very relational, and very networked. And he took our worship experience up a significant notch as he started. And as he built the team and built the experience into a better experience, people were now coming out of the woodwork wanting to be a part of our production teams, our weekend teams, all of that. So I just think, you know, good people want to be a part of good things, great people want to be a part of great things. And so sometimes the mistake is that our bar is a little too low in what we’re delivering.
Tony:
Well, and maybe lastly, and then we can start to get on the solution side of this. I think another mistake I see is that churches just make it too hard for churches to get started in serving opportunities. And I mean, it might be you have to go through our membership class. You have to communicate an interest in serving. Once you communicate an interest in serving, you have to show up to another gathering where we talk about the serving opportunity. Then you have to commit to the serving opportunity. And then after you do that, you need to fill out an application process, and go through a screening process. And then if you go through that, then we need to train you before you can start training. And then we need to go through a scheduling process. And I just think, oh my goodness, it’s no wonder no one’s actually following through with that. So just thinking about how can we streamline and create the easy button, if you will. And I know I get it. There’s some roles especially, dealing with kids and money and things like this where we need to do appropriate screening, but just trying to figure out how can we streamline that process so that we make it as easy as possible for people to step into serving roles.
Amy:
And there’s probably someone in your church who knows Six Sigma, who could just put your process through an amazing overhaul.
Tony:
Amy, you are so good at that. You are so good at creating flow charts that try to streamline a process. So maybe churches just need to hire you to create their flow.
Amy:
Well, numbers are your thing. That’s your nerdy thing. My nerdy thing is process flows. Well, let’s actually shift then. I think those are a good list of mistakes. I’m sure our listeners related to at least a couple of them, but let’s get on the solution side and talk through, if a church is really feeling like their serving numbers are not where they should be, how do we begin to work on this, Tony? What are some next steps people can take?
Tony:
And gosh, Amy, I’m going to feel like I’m very repetitive. It feels like this is a common theme that we talk about often on the podcast, but we still have churches that have challenges in this area. And I think some of these, what sound like very basic things would be very helpful for you when it comes to closing the gap in volunteer engagement in your churches. And the first is this, you gotta measure it. You have to know where you are, percentage of people serving. So think about how, compared to our attendance, as an example, how many adults, how many students are serving on a regular basis, how many adults and students are on serving teams, and actually engaging, using their spiritual gifts. Another measurement I think is critical is how many volunteer leaders do we have?
So, just making sure that we are tracking how many leaders we have in our ministry that are not only leading teams to get ministry accomplished, but actually helping to pour into people’s lives and mentoring and coaching and discipling people, but having a clear picture of the number of volunteers that are actually leading other teams of people. And then just considering that basic percentage of what is the number of volunteers that we need to accomplish the ministry that we believe God’s called us to do. And so some of that hard work is actually engaging with every ministry team leader to fully kind of map out what is, what does a full team look like in order for us to accomplish our ministry? And based on that, how many different volunteer roles do we need to fill in order to effectively accomplish ministry in our area?
So just getting a hold of clear numbers, clear metrics so that we know whatever strategy shifts that we make as it relates to volunteer engagement, getting more people to serve that we can actually look at the numbers to see if those strategic changes are having an impact. And then, and you I think referred to this a little bit earlier, Amy, we have to get honest about the amount of ministry programming that we’re doing. And the reason I say that is it’s not uncommon for me to work with a church and they communicate, “We just don’t have enough volunteers to do everything that we’re doing as a church.” And then I look at their overall engagement and in other words, the number of people that are serving, and it’s actually very healthy. It might be 50% or more of their adults and students are serving someplace in the church. And that’s an indication if they’re feeling like we don’t have enough volunteers. But the numbers say you actually do have a healthy number of volunteers. That’s an indication that your ministry is over programmed. And so you just have to ask the question, is it even realistic to engage enough volunteers for all the things that we’re trying to do as a church.
Amy:
Yeah. I think it might be a good next step too to, in the show notes, I think we’ll be listing out these mistakes we talked through, but to actually get a team to get your leadership team together and kind of red, yellow, green on each of those mistakes that we outlined. And I would actually add what you just said. How are we doing at bringing clarity to the number of people we have engaged in serving and the number of people we want to be engaged in serving, as well as where are we at on our programming schedule? I think all of that would give a clear picture of what would be, where do we need to put some energy to work on this ministry area?
Tony:
Yeah. So kind of just doing a gut assessment on each of those mistakes. And if you feel like, no, this is actually an area of strength for us that’s a green, if you feel like you’re doing some things well, but need to make some improvements that might be yellow if you’re not giving attention to it or whatever you’re doing in that around that particular mistake that we highlighted, it isn’t working, that would be a red. But just getting a gut assessment from your leadership team of how you’re doing against that list of mistakes when it comes to volunteer engagement. I agree, Amy, that would be very helpful. And then let me just say, identify the problems you need to solve. I mean, and maybe prioritize. You can’t, let’s say you have maybe six or seven different mistakes that you identify, ah, we need to give that attention. Don’t try to run after solving all six or seven of those at the same time. Figure out if we just fix this first, that will have the most impact. So let’s just give our time and attention to focusing on this first. And with that, I think you’ll find you’ll begin to get some momentum around solving this volunteer engagement challenge.
Amy:
I think what you’re saying, Tony, is the language I used at the beginning for this issue. Don’t focus your time on the roles you need to fill, focus your leadership time on solving the problems you need to solve so that you can fill the positions you need to fill.
Tony:
That’s very good. And maybe lastly, and this is kind of a side thought as you’re thinking about not just volunteers, but volunteer leaders, Amy, I’ve just seen this time and time again, leaders are already using their leadership gift someplace. In the marketplace and other community organizations, when it comes to inviting leaders to use that leadership gifting in ministry, this is the craziest thing. What I found is leaders are willing to invest that gifting if it’s trying to, if you’re trying to tackle a problem, they’re less likely to give you that gift though, and invest that gift if you’re inviting them into a position. So you have to cast vision for folks with leadership gifting, help us move our mission forward. This is the problem we’re trying to overcome. This is the challenge that we’re trying to engage. Will you come alongside us and help us figure this out? Rather than here’s a leadership position that we’re trying to fill. And I think if you approach conversations with potential volunteer leaders that way, you’re gonna get a lot more of them saying, yes, I wanna invest my time and help the church move its mission forward.
Amy:
That’s so good. Well, I hope this has been a helpful list. If you go through this discussion this week, then next week we’re gonna start talking about how the structure can actually address volunteer engagement as well. But before we close this one out, Tony, any final thoughts that you have?
Tony:
Yeah. If you’re listening to the podcast, I would just encourage you, make sure that you’re subscribed to the podcast show notes so you don’t miss any of the conversations and resources coming up in the series on engaging volunteers as part of the spiritual formation journey. We send out a weekly email with the new episode related articles and videos. And then we also include a leader conversation guide, which you can take to your next staff meeting to lead a conversation on these very topics. And you can sign up for the show notes at theunstuckgroup.com/podcast.
Sean:
Well, thanks for joining us on this week’s podcast. At The Unstuck Group, our goal is to help pastors grow healthy churches by guiding them to align vision, strategy, team, and action. In everything we do, our priority is to help churches and help people meet and follow Jesus. If there’s any way we can serve you and your church today, reach out to us at theunstuckgroup.com. Next week we’re back with a brand new episode. So until then, have a great week.
