What’s The Secret To Volunteers
Posted on April 23, 2008
Volunteers are vital to any church, they can actually be a blessing or a curse. I know many Director’s of IT or other tech leaders in church have a tough time finding and keeping volunteers, yet the situation God has put me in, I find myself surrounded by willing, capable volunteers, with a heart to serve.
In a former church, I was the lone tech volunteer and I did it all. By the time I left, I was supporting nearly 50 desktops and 3 servers and I knew everything about everything there. I knew the amount of expertise each user had…or didn’t have, I knew what computers had what quirks and things were going well, as far as I knew.
I thought I wanted some volunteers to help me but didn’t really know how to go about getting them. It might have had something to do with the environment in the church or it might had to do with my heart. Did I really need help? Was there anything that anyone could add to what I was already doing? The answers I kept going back to was no.
The short answer to a very long story is that gig went down in flames, my family was affected and many other families were affected and still, to this day, over two years later, are being affected.
Through that, God led us through what Mary and I consider to be our wilderness experience, a period of over a year where we searched for something, anything, and did not find. God grew us during that time and humbled us and showed us that He mattered more than “game” we were trying to play at church. After not being committed to a church during that time, we landed where we are now, at a church that has always been less than a mile from our home.
Again, to make a long story short, God provided an opportunity to me, more than I expected and I resisted at first. I wanted to do it but I didn’t want to get back into a similar situation. I finally agreed to take on the role of overseeing all things technical in the church.
Right away, I made it clear that I wasn’t going to do it alone and I planned to build a team of volunteers, yet I had no clue how I was going to do that. Plus, I didn’t really know anyone. It took a few months for this transition to occur, so I observed and learned and watched people and got to know people.
As I talked to people, I started telling them about some areas that I felt I needed help in and wondered if they would be interested in serving. Also, right away, I came out with this crazy idea of doing this thing called a PC Workshop and it was sponsored by the Tech Ministry. When that was first publicized, the Tech Ministry consisted of…me! In the announcement, I invited people to come and help if they were technically inclined and they did.
From there, I took this handful of people and started doing other things. Plus, I had a built in team already working the sound booth and I had to begin to lead them, without offending or disrupting things some had been doing the same way for years.
So, I just talked to people. I asked what they did, how they did it and left it alone. There were things, at some point, where I said lets change this and of course I was told no, we’ve always done it that way. I said I understand but let’s try doing it a different way, just once, and if it goes down in flames, I’ll take the hit and we’ll go back to doing it your way. To date, I’ve taken very few, if any, hits. Slowly, things have changed and people have stayed on board and more people have joined.
What’s the secret? God’s blessing! My role in this is to put people first, listen and provide opportunities. My goal in doing what I do is to really not do that much, I want to empower people to serve in ways that they are gifted and interested. I also encourage people to take ownership of their area and to make it their own.
I did quickly learn to set boundaries on what volunteers can do, such as not having free reign on the network and that kind of thing. I still hold network access pretty tight, but the desktop support people know the routine when they do get on someone’s computer and I am always there at the time they are on.
I have been told I have a way of listening to people and showing that I care about them, which is a new thing for me, I think. God has grown me to be that person. I don’t look for skill first, although that’s cool to find skill, but I look at a person’s heart and their willingness to serve. I can teach you anything and more than likely, we’ll be learning things together.
My role in leading this ministry is serve the people that serve under me and provide the way for them to do their thing.
Oh yeah, at this point, I’m a volunteer too, so maybe that’s part of it. I understand working 40-50 hours a week and squeezing church stuff in around that and I truly appreciate all that everyone does. I’m praying for the day when God allows me to do even more in the church, but for now, I’m doing my best to help a growing team of volunteers do more to help Jesus shine.
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6 Responses to “What’s The Secret To Volunteers”
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Great post, Jim! Thank you!
Enjoyed this post!
Hi Jim
Interesting post. I’m heading up a tech team at our church but was wondering what sort of hours you were putting into the church work. I take it from your post that you are not employed, so assuming you have a job elsewhere.
I work in I.T. in the secular world and am praying/thinking about “what point do I make the jump to doing this full time”.
Mike
Mike,
I work in the secular IT world as well and feel that God is leading me to fulltime work in the church in some way. I pray that I stay in His will and am sensitive to where/how He is leading. At the moment, my church is not in a position to add a new position but I’m told it’s in the plans for sometime. Whether it’s my current church or a different one, I’m open to where God leads
For awhile I tracked my hours of church work pretty closely and have not lately, but the months of January and February, I averaged about 15 hours a week, including Sunday mornings. Sunday is about 5 hours, 2-3 hours in preparation for Sunday, then 7 or 8 doing actual work within or for the church. That’s still about the same now.
How much time do you spend doing church work?
Great post Jim! Good insight about the real ministry side of media or tech ministry.
In ministering to volunteers I could not recommend a better book than Simply Strategic Volunteers by Tim Stevens & Tony Morgan if you have not already read it.
Mike & Jim, I’m also in the same situation and have been for years. Let me just warn against taking on more and more at church and keeping the same workload on your “day” job. From personal experience it can cause a multitude of problems physically, emotionally, spiritually, mentally, etc. I pray that we all three keep our priorities straight of God, family, work and then ministry. I also pray that we keep seeking God’s will but be patience and not try and get ahead of His timing. (More personal experience)
Jim, Check Facebook requests!
Good post Jim … and the perennial issue of finding volunteers is something I hold close to my heart.
Speaking from a British perspective I get very frustrated by the lack of willingness to ‘muck in’ and I really struggle to understand the mentality that says “I’m waiting for the pastor to recognise and use my gifting”.
Early on in my Christian walk I read “God’s Armor Bearer” by Terry Nance which superbly encapsulated my feelings towards service and the way we should all be. However it simply doesn’t happen that way. But like yourself I continue to try and find folks who will help first and then try and fit their willingenss to available tasks.
For me a major key has to be relational and reading between your words you endaevour to do just this. God bless you as you continue this work Jim.
As an aside note – I presented my pastor with a overall vision document for Tech in my local church and he came back (after a period) with the comment that “you know this will become a full time role eventually” … he also had a negative which I may email you over one day …