I recently asked ChurchMag Church Technologists what their greatest obstacle was. The majority of responses had something to do with not having enough volunteers or funding.
A week later, Tyndale released a survey on Church and Technology and the top two obstacles were indeed, volunteers and funding.
At first I thought about this problem in only the realms of Church IT, but the more I thought about it, I realized the lack of volunteers and funding is an issue for most ministries in the Church.
First, let me propose a solution for the lack of volunteers (we can get to funding in another post).
Digital Discipleship
If you don’t have enough volunteers, make them.
Several years ago I became “head” of the audio/video team of my 300 member Church. Even though I was the producer for a national syndicated radio program on over 900 radio stations, I wasn’t a volunteer.
I found the situation very ironic.
Here I was heading up an area of the Church that had no volunteers and I was one of those people who hadn’t volunteered.
Why No One Volunteers
One of the biggest reasons people don’t volunteer is because they’re never asked.
I wasn’t.
The reason I didn’t volunteer myself is because the two man A/V team had their domain on lock down. They weren’t very good with people.
Let’s be honest, geeks don’t have the greatest people skills and we often feel threatened by geeks who know more than we do. If you don’t think you’re this way, think again.
Build a Team
After “running the show” for quite a few months straight, I decided I needed to build a team. I started putting feelers out to see if anyone knew anything about A/V stuff.
Nobody. Just the former A/V guys that were burned out after doing it for years and years straight.
I didn’t want to be “that guy,” so I began to recruit anyone who was interested. After all, I could train them, right?
So, I began my mission to recruit:
This was added to the mix of pre-service announcements, but it wasn’t quite enough.
So, I asked for help. Not help with A/V, but with the recruitment.
I talked with other Church leaders to keep their eye out for people and to spread the word that I needed someone.
The A/V Team
Getting volunteers was slow, but I was grateful, since it took about a full month to train people. I did my best to change the atmosphere in the A/V area. It went from a place people avoided to a cool place to hangout. A number of youth kids began hanging out before service and asking questions. A buzz was starting.
Once I had a few volunteers, the vision began to catch on that if we had enough volunteers, the commitment would only be once a month — at the most — to serve on the A/V team on Sundays.
I successfully duplicated myself.
Now there wasn’t one A/V guy to do everything and there wasn’t one A/V guy to recruit volunteers.
We were a team.
Paul says
Digital Discipleship (cough).
http://beingministry.com/2011/07/15/digital-discipleship/
Glad to know someone else is thinking these things.
Eric Dye says
AMAZING!
vajaah says
Eric, do you have an outline of the month of training that you gave for new volunteers? A friend of mine is The “media guy” at his church and is headed towards a major burnout! He has some interested youth but could definitely benefit from some structure 🙂
Eric Dye says
Hmmmm…. Let me see ….
Tim Clayton says
Yeah, I would love to read a post on your month of training. I train our av crew and I always wonder what the balance of getting people involved with just the basics versus wanting professional people. I’d love to see your training plan.
Eric Dye says
Sounds like I need to weave something together … soon …