How to Retain and Inspire your Church's Volunteers

Recently, my team embarked on a project. We asked ourselves:

“What’s the one thing?”

In other words, what’s the one thing that if we focused on it, it could impact everything else in our ministry in a positive way? We wanted to focus. Our desire was greater effectiveness in our ministry.

After some research and a series of team debates, we landed on volunteers. In our ministry, our success rises and falls on the effectiveness and longevity of our volunteers. My suspicion is that your ministry is the same. Whether you lead a children’s ministry, student ministry, hospitality ministry or care ministry, the number and quality of your volunteers is a determining factor in your success.

So, here’s a question: How do you inspire volunteers towards greater effectiveness?

This is a question that we’ve been wrestling with and although we’re not completely where we want to be, I think we’re headed in the right direction. Here are a few ideas.

Stories that Need to be Told

Over time we’ve come to recognize that nothing inspires like a good story. We’re built to resonate with a good story. This is why we love a good movie or book so much.

Because of this we include a segment in each of our staff meetings called, "Stories that need to be told." During this time, we share stories of impact in our ministry. These stories remind of why we do what we do and they energize us toward our goals. In short, a good story inspires.

Recently, we decided to expand this tradition by also starting each of our volunteer meetings with "Stories that need to be told." The truth is nothing inspires volunteers like a good story — a good story that reminds them of three things:

1. This is why it’s worth it.
2. This is why this matters.
3. I want to be part of this!

If you want to inspire volunteers, you, as a leader have to become a story collector. Everywhere you go in your ministry and everyone you talk you, your job is to collect stories and then retell them in ways that inspire the team.

Clear Wins

Most volunteers battle with a nagging question:

“Am I doing a good job?”

Everyone hates to fail. It’s part of human nature. We want to win. We want to succeed.

The trouble with volunteering is often that the win isn’t clear. In my experience, when the win isn’t clear, human nature often leads us to believe we are failing. Volunteers who believe they are failing won’t last long.

The remedy for this is clear wins. When your volunteers know exactly what it looks like to win, they are very likely to hit the mark.

So, in your ministry, what’s the win? Can you clearly and succinctly state the win for each volunteer role? If not, it’s time to gather your team and create one sentence job descriptions for each volunteer role. The clarity will inspire your volunteers.

Right Now

Something I’ve learned in ministry that is incredibly frustrating and yet liberating is that people only want to know what they need to know only when they need to know it. It’s the principle of “right now.” What I mean by “right now” is “what is immediately next?” It’s perceived as “right now.”

In other words, your volunteers aren’t going to catch most of the information that you share concerning what they need to know next month or next semester but they will listen attentively to what they need to know next week, or even better, what they need to know today.

For years, I bucked this phenomenon saying things like “people need to plan!” and “people need to care about what is coming!"... and finally, “people are just the worst!”.

And then I found myself ignoring most of the communications from my kids’ teachers that didn’t pertain to right now. Sigh. I am those people.

Here’s what I’ve learned: The way to maximize your communication impact and keep your sanity is to focus on what matters right now. Why? Because that is when people are actually listening and you are serving them well by helping them prepare for and understand what is coming up next.

If you want to inspire your volunteers, adjust your communication and training plan to focus on what is immediately next. Focus on the right now.

Targeted Encouragement

Two recent conversations led me to a breakthrough in understanding encouragement. The first conversation was between myself and co-worker. My co-worker told me that when people write him a letter of encouragement it’s basically a waste of time. He doesn’t even really read them. I was like:

“Wow. You’re a horrible person!”

That was conversation number one. Conversation number two involved my entire team as one of our team leaders led us through a conversation about the book "The 5 Languages of Appreciation in the Workplace".

You probably know Gary Chapman from “The Five Love Languages”. The book follows the same ideas but in the work-place. In the course of our team conversation, we all discovered that everyone on our team has one or two languages of appreciation that really speak volumes and one that really speaks nothing.

What I learned from this exercise is that while I may believe I’m appreciating the heck out of one of my teammates, they may not be receiving it at all. Hence, my teammate who could care less about an encouraging note.

One of the best ways to inspire your volunteers is to appreciate them really well. It may be worth your while to explore this book and learn more about speaking the appreciation languages of your volunteers.

Food

The last strategy for inspiring volunteers is the easiest and quite possibly the most effective. Food. That’s right. People love food and when you show up for a meeting and there are great snacks, you know it changes your mindset completely!

If morale is low among your volunteers, you probably have a lot of work to do to get moving in the right direction but quality snacks can provide a quick boost.

Wrap Up

Let’s wrap this up. For us, everything rises and falls on the effectiveness of our volunteers. I’m guessing, you are much the same. So, how do we inspire our volunteers towards greatness? Tell stories, provide clarity around the wins, focus on the right now, target encouragement and for crying out loud feed them!

I would encourage you not to become overwhelmed with this list but rather to focus on whatever one thing you believe would create the most immediate impact. Let’s inspire our volunteers!

Have some additional ideas for inspiring volunteers in your church? I'd love to hear them in the comments below.