Growing Your Ministry Through…Starting Small
Does growing a ministry mean having lots of volunteers? While some of you may be managing large-scale ministries, the majority of us deal with ministries from one to ten volunteers. As leaders, we often desire to have more help so that we can accomplish more. Closing out this series on “Growing Your Ministry Through…”, here are some thoughts on being effective by staying small.
Staying Small Improves Communication
Staying small helps keep the amount of time you spend retraining your team, especially in the early days when you haven’t found your exact procedures. This allows for experimentation in what your ministry does by the few, before you try to train the many.
Here is an example from my own life: I had to keep a team of 18 people up-to-date for a project I was leading. While I was able to keep some amount of order, I spent most of my time talking to everyone on the team. This meant many meetings to ensure that my team had all of the information required and didn’t duplicate work. This problem is actually a corollary to : the more people on the team, the more time you spend keeping everyone informed. This is a ministry-killer, especially in the early days of a ministry.
Staying Small Provides Focus
Stay small until you have found your team’s preferred process and procedures. Once you have a solid foundation, then begin to grow by adding new volunteers. Don’t recruit volunteers too fast, but don’t take on too much too fast either. By staying small, your time will be very precious and you will focus more on what is really important. You will also prevent burnout for yourself and your team.
Staying Small Creates Fellowship
There is a limit to the number of personal relationships that can be made within a church, from which true fellowship emerges. Large churches often encourage fellowship through numerous small groups, creating an environment that fosters fellowship as if they were a much smaller church. They often place limits on the size of a small group to prevent unhealthy growth. Learn this lesson and consider how to grow your team strategically. If necessary, build smaller teams to accomplish the bigger goals, but do it slowly.
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