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Jonathan Hardy 0:26
So I recently spoke with the girl who oversees our hospitality team at our church, and it was a day where she was kind of flipping out and she was scared. She was not in a good place and anxious and like, ah, Jonathan, what am I gonna do? And I was like, Well, you know, get the story and find out that several people called in sick that day, couple people had left out of town forgot to tell her and so all of a sudden, she thought she had a full roster when only she had maybe half of her volunteer roster for the hospitality team ready to go and it was not a pretty situation for her. So she’s scrambling, she’s looking for people in the lobby that could just come help fill the slots and get to the doors and be there ready to go. And no one wants to be at that place. And we want to have room for margin. And it’s so important because the hospitality team is such a critical role for the church because they’re the front lines. And so in the previous episode, we talked about the beginning of the eight steps that you need to take to recruit more hospitality people. The fact is, you have to have a team in place with margin so that you have plenty of people so that you can be prepared for moments like she faced where she didn’t have everyone because of some cancellations. And so we want to continue that discussion today of the eight steps to recruit hospitality volunteers and I mentioned that another good episode for you to check out would be episodes 12 and 13, where we talk about the process for recruiting church volunteers as a whole, but today we’re talking specifically about the hospitality team. So with that being the case we talked about four last time, so today would be the fifth one and Dick, you want to jump in?

Step #5: Do Not Pressure People

Dick Hardy 2:01
Let’s do. Number five. When you’re recruiting first impressions people, do not pressure them. Pressuring people will get you some short term results, but it’s going to shortchange you on the long haul. You’re, again, you’re going to feel fine today, but you’re really going to regret that on the long haul. Besides that, you want people to want to be with you. Not to be doing it out of obligation. Treat your prospect as you would want to be treated. Number six.

Step #6: Make Sure That There Are Empty Slots To Fill

Jonathan Hardy 2:33
Number six is make sure that there are empty spots for you to fill. And here’s what I mean by that. What can happen for people is if you fill your spot, say you got four spots, four hospitality people at the doors or something like that, well, if you have all four, then you automatically save yourself. “Well, I don’t need more than four.” But that’s not the case. You need more than four so that you might create some new spots if you need to, that are the quote unquote floaters or the people that fill in and so maybe you’d have them floating just in the lobby area, because they can serve a purpose there and help just catch people or help people who might have needs. But you also know mentally, you’ve got them there, because you plan for that margin that my friend didn’t have earlier. So if she had margin, she would have been able to easily slide them over, because that’s what that role kind of was. And so you want to make sure that you’ve always got what you’re considering some empty spots that you can be filling. So if you have all your doors fulfilled, if you have all the ushers in place, if you have everything quote unquote, filled, that you feel like you absolutely need, well, plan for a few more spots. Get some more spots in place, so that way, you’re constantly working to get more people, but you want to keep building that team bigger and bigger all the time. So that way, you’ve got enough people to be able to handle…

Step #7: Create A Sense Of Team

Dick Hardy 3:52
Handle what you need. And that really takes us into number seven, and that is to create a sense of team. People don’t minister in isolation. People minister in a team that’s where they begin to build friendships and connectedness. People want to be bigger than something than just themselves. So therefore the team is that which can allow them to be part of something bigger. Show people how what they do connects to others in ministry. So while they might be part of the hospitality team, but what they are doing connects with the children’s team, with the youth team, with the worship team. All this pulls together in creating a sense of team and then help the inside your hospitality team, your first impressions team, help the greeters connect with the host who connect with the car parkers who connect with the post service hospitality. That’s the sense of team that you need to create. Number eight.

Step #8: You Have To Ask

Jonathan Hardy 4:50
Okay number eight. The final one we want to give of the eight steps to recruit. It’s simply this: you have to ask. And you have to make sure you go to them and ask for their help. Now, I want to mention here that you can’t be afraid to ask. And sometimes I know that in ministry, at least I think we often, feel like “oh, well, they already do so much.” Or “they’re already so busy as it is.” And we make excuses for people why they can’t serve. When that’s not our job. My job is not to make an excuse for someone why they can’t be on the hospitality team. My job is to ask them to be on the hospitality team. Their job is to say yes or no. And so that’s something I think that sometimes we’re just shooting ourselves in the foot. We already said no, before we even let them say yes, because we didn’t go ask them.

Dick Hardy 5:36
It’s not their call. It’s not your call to do that.

Jonathan Hardy 5:38
Absolutely.

Dick Hardy 5:39
Let them do it.

Jonathan Hardy 5:40
Yes.

Dick Hardy 5:41
So do you have anything else on that?

Jonathan Hardy 5:44
I was going to also add that I recommend talking to people in person if you can. If worst case, you know, call them on the phone and ask them if you’ve got that relationship. But I think if you ask in person it’s super helpful. Because then you’re able, especially if it’s on say a Sunday morning, you’re able to kind of paint the picture physically for them of “hey, here’s what I’m looking for, here’s what we have, here’s an opportunity. Follow the tips that we talked about in the eight step process in episodes 12 and 13.” But, I guess to summarize this is the first thing you have to do, before you’re going to get that final commitment, is you just have to ask.

Dick Hardy 6:20
You have to ask.

Jonathan Hardy 6:21
Yep.

Dick Hardy 6:21
You’ve got to ask.

Jonathan Hardy 6:21
Okay, now you can take it away.

Recap:

Dick Hardy 6:23
Now I can take it away! Well, I’m gonna do a little recap here. So we’ve gone through, we’ve talked about the eight steps to recruit the first impressions folks. So we did four in the previous episode and then these four. Let me just fly down through what those eight are, number one, from the previous episode, pray for the right people. Number two, look for outgoing personalities. Number three, tell stories of life change. And number four, define the timeframe. And then the four that we covered today were, don’t pressure people, make sure that there are empty spots, create a sense of team, and the eighth, the last one is that you have to ask. If you’ll do these things, you’ll be well on your way to recruiting the finest hospitality team you ever imagined and your church is going to go to new levels.

Dick Hardy 7:07
Now, I will say as well, you know, you’re the recruiter, you’ve got to make the asks. You’ve got to put these things in place. And one of the things that needs to happen is you need to get better at doing that and we talk to pastors all the time that say, “man, I’m not that good at recruiting, I don’t do this.” Well, one of the things we encourage you to do is to take advantage of the Five Day Leadership Challenge for pastors. This is a challenge for you individually to get better. And if you get better, your church will get better and the church is going to be able to get better. You’ll get the ripple effect where you’ll be able to break barriers and move forward. For the Five Day Leadership Challenge just go to Leaders.Church/challenge. That’s Leaders.Church/challenge and if you do it today, this is day one of your five day Leadership Challenge. You’re going to be given a video, a 10 to 15 minute video every day. So you’re gonna slice that time away to invest in you, not the church, not stuff, in you. Again, when you get better, the church gets better. So take advantage of the Five Day Leadership Challenge for Pastors. And by the way, it’s no cost. So just jump in, we make that available to you. Also, it certainly would be helpful if you would subscribe to the podcast on whatever platform you’re listening or watching this or on YouTube. And if you’ll do that, you’ll get the regular content coming your way, day after day. We’ve really appreciated having you with us here today. We’ve covered a lot of territory. Jonathan, anything we’ve missed here?

Jonathan Hardy 8:35
We’re great.

Dick Hardy 8:35
We’re good to go. Thanks for hanging out with us. We’ll look forward to seeing you in the next episode. Make it a great one, and be blessed.

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