What’s in this Episode?

Have you ever looked around the church on a Sunday morning, just seeing all the same people, wondering where are you going to find some new volunteers to help you do the ministry that you want to do? Well, in today’s episode, we’re going to help you to identify five ways that you can find more church volunteers, so that you’re not dipping into the same well of people all the time. And you’re getting new people involved in the ministry, ultimately helping you advance the ministry of the church. Here, we identify 5 ways to identify more church volunteers.

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Read the Transcript

Jonathan Hardy 0:00
Have you ever looked around the church on a Sunday morning, just seeing all the same people, wondering where are you going to find some new volunteers to help you do the ministry that you want to do? Well, in today’s episode, we’re going to help you to identify five ways that you can find more church volunteers, so that you’re not dipping into the same well of people all the time. And you’re getting new people involved in the ministry, ultimately helping you advance the ministry of the church. Here we go.

Jonathan Hardy 0:29
One of the friends I had a conversation with as part of our church team, was trying to figure out how to get more volunteers. And she was just struggling, she kept dipping in the same well, so to speak, just kept going to the same people all the time asking for help. She’d be short handed for, we had two services at the time. And so one service she could get filled, but the other services she struggled to fill. And so she asked people, hey, could you stay over? And, it was just kind of this repetitive thing happening week after week. And so I sat down one day, I said, okay, well, are there some other creative ways that you can identify some people here to help fill some slots to serve a ministry, maybe some people that aren’t involved in ministry, and through the conversation, was able to really help open her eyes into a whole new realm of potential volunteers that were sitting on the sidelines, not in the trenches, and she was able to start going.

Dick Hardy 1:20
She just couldn’t see them before.

Jonathan Hardy 1:21
And I think, for a lot of people, this is an issue. It’s, we get stuck in the wreck, we get used to doing things a certain way in terms of finding people to serve. And rather than thinking creatively out of the box, using innovative or different ways, just to help get the word out. And we can’t just rely on pulpit announcement to get people involved. There’s got to be the personal recruitment. Today, we’re going to be talking about some unique ways that you can use to help get people onboard and helping serve in ministry.

Dick Hardy 1:51
Exactly, you know, one of the one of the first ways I observed, I’ve got one pastor friend of mine, great guy, leading a growing church. And I’ll tell my wife all the time. I said, watch him. He’s selling all the time. Now, you might be hearing that and saying, well, I’m a pastor, I’m not selling. Well, listen, you’re selling is you’re communicating good things. This guy is always talking about the good things that the Lord is doing. Not in a sense of, hey, I’m up here doing a promotion. He’s just always talking about it. Yeah. So whenever you’re with him, you leave thinking, wow, there’s just always good stuff happening!

Jonathan Hardy 2:34
And that makes you want to be a part of it.

Dick Hardy 2:36
I’d like to be part of that! Now, he’s not saying all this stuff to say, Dick, by the way, sign up for this thing next Thursday night. But he’s just casually talking about all the time. And you could do that casually talk about the high value of ministry, the great things that the Lord is doing, and you’ll begin to see people just say, I want to be part of that. I want to be part of it. And then…

Jonathan Hardy 2:57
It’s subliminal.

Dick Hardy 2:58
So yeah. And then when that gal that he was referring to earlier, makes that call. He says, yeah, I’d like to do that. Why? Because he’s been listening to you talk about the high value of ministry. I’m just telling you, that works.

Jonathan Hardy 3:13
Yeah. So that’s a very important key to be doing that.

Dick Hardy 3:17
All the time.

Jonathan Hardy 3:17
Yeah, absolutely. Very practical idea, and this is actually one of the ideas I shared with the girl that I was mentioning there a moment ago, was I was suggesting to look for people who are giving to the church financially, but are not serving in ministry on a ministry team. And so because you got people, those are people that are already bought in, they’re giving, they understand the value of it, but for whatever reason, maybe they’re not actually serving in any area on a Sunday morning or the weekend services. And so that might be some low hanging fruit to say, hey, you know, we’ve kind of do you know, of course, this means you have to have the data. You gotta be able to pull the reports, you use a database system or a spreadsheet or whatever, you have to filter these people out to see who those people are. And that becomes your potential volunteer calling. It’s a recruitment list.

Dick Hardy 4:04
I’m telling you, what he’s telling you right now. That’s gold. Yeah, that’s absolutely. And let me tell you something else about those people. They tend not to be critics. They as he said, they bought him. Their money is going there. And they’re supportive. So yeah. So anyway, don’t get me going.

Jonathan Hardy 4:19
Oh, man, I just did!

Dick Hardy 4:20
I mean, I know. Another thing that I’ve observed over the years is to listen for what people like. So if you’re talking to somebody and they’re constantly talking about hey, I love kids, you know, you know, and I was taking my grandkids out or I was taking my kids out, my nieces and nephews, and we were, you know, we’re at the pool, and we’re at a little league game or whatever. And you hear that they’re always with kids. That’s probably a pretty good sign that they might like to work with kids. If you never hear that talking about kids, or if you hear things like, kids drive me nuts. Don’t angle them to kids. Angle them some other direction. Listen, you pay attention to what people like. And you’ll be able to do things. And that will strike at the heart of what that person likes way better.

Jonathan Hardy 5:14
Well, and this goes to a broader subject at hand, which is that you need your key people, because the lead pastor can’t do this alone. And so whether you are a lead pastor or are not, the key leaders of the of the church need to be out in the lobby having that conversation. We can’t, we can’t just be all, you know, running around covering our ministry areas, that the team needs to get to the point where they can be free the team leaders, where they can be free to be having these conversations. So that way they can be building relations, listening and so that way, then they can start to try to gear people towards certain things.

Jonathan Hardy 5:51
Fourth idea is to watch people excel. And so you know, if there’s people that are excelling in a specific area, or maybe they’re out and they’re doing something or serving in one area, and you can really start to see giftings come out, this is a way for you to identify and say, okay, hey, they might be a good fit for something over here. Or it could be, I know, we’re not talking about specific leadership roles in this episode. But it could be a leadership related role, where you could just see, okay, these people are excelling in something. And so we want to, we want to use this gift, we want to use the passion, and what they are good at doing. And tap into it even…

Dick Hardy 6:29
Well, and I would say even on this subject, Jonathan, is to watch for what people are excelling at, in their profession, in their career. Because if you’ve got somebody who is say good at sales, and their field, you know, and they’re selling widgets, they’re the best, they’re just the top, well try to figure out a way that you can capitalize on that gifting. I mean, it’s their livelihood, for goodness sakes, whatever it is that they excel at in their profession, that’s again, you’re paying attention to that and be able to use that in.

Jonathan Hardy 7:01
That’s a really good point. Yeah.

Jonathan Hardy 7:03
So then the final thing is that you want to engage other volunteers in this process.

Dick Hardy 7:08
That’s to your point, that pastor can’t do it all.

Jonathan Hardy 7:10
You can’t do it all. And even the key leaders can’t do it all. You need to start getting other people involved in the process. And so maybe, let’s just… Can we just give a practical example? So say, you’ve got some kids workers, and you need a few more kids workers. Well, get the kids workers who these aren’t, these aren’t necessarily even the leaders of the kids ministry. They’re just people that are serving alongside all the others, and express the need and the desire and then just say, hey, if you know anyone, that might be a good fit, let us know. And so someone may say, oh, well, I know someone that’s in my small group, that’d be a perfect fit for this. And as you like you immediately get them involved and even have them help make the ask because people will serve in ministry. But people who aren’t serving at this point will take a step to serve in ministry. If there’s a relationship. So there’s this connection. Yeah, I could just be some random leader that says, Hey, would you be willing to serve? Well, if I don’t have that connection relationship, I’m less likely to say yes, but if if the fellow kids worker says, hey, I’d love to have you join me, and we could serve together, then all of a sudden it’s good. It makes it so much easier to get those people.

Dick Hardy 8:16
That’s exactly right. That is good, you know, on this subject. Now, you have to do a little translation on here, but we did an episode, Episode 25, where we covered six ways to identify potential church board members. Now that’s unique to identifying board members as volunteers for your church. But if you’ll feel like watch that, listen to that, you’ll be able to translate that weather it’s your children’s ministry, your youth ministry, worship and so on. Because it’s the issue of identifying people for your volunteer positions.

Jonathan Hardy 8:46
That’s right. Well, let’s do a quick recap of the five tips here of ways to identify church volunteers. First is to casually talk about the high value of ministry on a regular basis. Second thing is to look to see who’s giving to the church financially, but not serving in ministry. Third is to listen for what people like. Fourth is to watch people excel. And then the fifth thing is to engage other volunteers in the ministry.

Dick Hardy 9:12
Yeah, that is so good. You know, and I will tell you, Pastor, one of the things we encourage you to do is to work at you getting better as a leader, if you’ve listened to Church Tips, watched Church Tips at all, you’ll realize we’re about you being better as a leader because as you get better, the church gets better. So one of the ways, one of the resources we provided for you in this way is the Five Day Leadership Challenge. I would encourage you to go to leaders.church/challenge and begin to slice off 15 minutes a day for you to get better as a leader, because when you get better as a leader, you’re going to be able to recruit, you’re going to be able to identify and recruit more and better volunteers. And it starts with you. Growing churches are led by growing pastors and we strongly encourage you to take it. It’s free to you and again today. If you’d sign up today, today’s day one and off you go for five days. You know we certainly thank you for watching or listening to this podcast on whatever platform you’re on we’d certainly encourage you to rate and review this episode or the Church Tips podcast. We’ve got, in fact, a review we want to read to you from Niger 17. Niger 17 says yes, please! Love these guys. Love this podcast. So much wisdom and help in bite sized chunks can’t wait for more. And I will tell you, Niger 17, we intentionally try to do this in bite sized chunks. So you can watch it quick on the go on your commute to whatever you’re doing. But we really are grateful for that kind of a review if you rate review us, who knows, we may read yours. Anything else, Jonathan.

Jonathan Hardy 10:44
That’s it.

Dick Hardy 10:45
Okay, we’re good to go. Thanks so much for being with us today. Make it a great one, and be blessed.

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