Creating Passionate Volunteers

Do you remember when you first started your church or ministry? Those exciting times when you spent hours setting up and tearing down the church in your local school or apartment conference room? Do you remember how you worked one or more jobs to support you and your family while you devoted your off time to reaching those in your neighborhood? Or how about when your ministry was new and you had so many big dreams? You were going to change the church, the community, the way you do service! Do you still have that passion now? How about your volunteers – are they getting the same passion from you and giving it to others?

One of the struggles our church faces is building up teams to setup and teardown 2 different satellite locations. They are back-to-back and across town, so teams are needed for each service. Unlike our main campus, we rent these satellite locations. One of these locations has a great sound system, as it is newer and was wired for a variety of media needs by the owner. The other is older and was not designed for sound quality or wired for media. Through all of this, each location has a small core of dedicated volunteers that can smile through it all. They give their all to make it a great experience each and every Saturday evening. They are passionate about what they do. As I questioned why and how, some things were obvious and some things were hidden for a while. Here is what I’ve noticed:

1. They believe that what they do, no matter how simple of a task, is their purpose and calling
2. They see others as more valuable than themselves, their time, and their comfort level
3. They think about yawning by smiling more to everyone, not just those they know
4. They keep things light-as-a-feather simple in an over-complicated world such that their life is easier and training new volunteers is trivial
5. They constantly share their vision and passion with others, because they know what their vision and passion are

People often ask how to better recruit volunteers, how to grow a ministry and make it scale as the church gets bigger. When you ask these questions, first ask: Am I creating an environment where volunteers want to serve? Are volunteers begging to join your ministry because of your passion? Because, if they don’t see passion in all you do, it doesn’t matter how much you do with the few or many you already have. You are just “doing church.”

Popularity: 1% [?]