The Business of Church: Volunteers

Today's post is the final topic of my series. Next week's post will be the wrap up and will be that uniting post of how everything is interconnected. But for now let's discuss the topics of volunteers.

Throughout this I have referenced that many of positions in the church are volunteer based. The vast majority of leadership positions in the church are volunteers, which can be good but can have a downside.

To bridge some of the gap before getting into the business side of this let's focus on the positive and negative aspects of having the vast majority of leadership positions be volunteers.

The positive:

• They want to be there
• If they are asked to be in a leadership position, they can very easily turn it down. Typically if you accept a position like this, you want to help out. This gives a volunteer the opportunity to help make changes and be able to work with people to help the mission of the church.
• They have a passion for it
• You go into leadership positions knowing that they will include some type of work, but people have a passion. For example, there is a volunteer who helps out at the youth group that I help lead who doesn't have to be the main person in charge, but loves helping, teaching and just being there for the kids. He has a passion for helping teenagers and he doesn't need anything for his services. He volunteers because he loves working with the youth group.

The negative:

• They aren't always consistent
• With volunteers, even in leadership positions, aren't always the most consistent people. This is not questioning their dedication, but since they are not getting paid and this is not their main job, they may not show up to important meetings, which can start to lead to lack of communication.
• Can go through a power struggle
• Volunteers in leadership positions may not be in leadership in any other area of their life. This can lead to negative side effects such as trying to become a tyrant of wanting to get only their way. They enjoy the control and misuse their power. 

In my mind, it is relatively easy to find the connect to business with the two points in both the positives and negatives. In business you want people who want to be there and who have a passion for your business. Seems pretty self-explanatory to me. As does the negatives. In business you don't want inconsistent people and you do not want people who go through a power struggle. These two items can cause company turmoil and makes it difficult to be effective and efficient.

When dealing in business and have a manager who carries both of the negative traits listed, a boss or human resource manager can have them removed. This is not the case in the church.

The difficulty when dealing with the negative points is that they are volunteers. Depending on your church size, they may be the only people who are willing to take on this position or ministry, which leaves the pastor in a difficult situation. You want to have a team that will be able to work together, but you may not have that team. In fact, you may only have one player who wants to work as a team and the rest may be mavericks. This is why strategically planning for a church can be so difficult, because of lack of consistency and power struggle.

Side note: These two negatives are not the only negatives, but I find them to be the most overarching ones. Also with the positives, which I will be discussing next, are just the two most overarching ones as well.

Now I don't want to be a Debbie Downer by just focusing on the negative. Volunteers can be great, but by just focusing on the positive is naive view that isn't focusing on the reality.

The other side being positive are truly positive. When you get the right volunteers who want to work as a team and get things done, their enthusiasm is just overpowering.  They have a passion for what they are doing and are excited about anything you have to do. Those volunteers want to be there and their excitement can spread to others. This makes the pastor's job easier, since he has people on board who want to be there and have that passion.

The difficulty for both sides is finding the balance and being able to properly handle the negative situations. Like I mentioned before, a church may not have a plethora of options for leadership roles and you may just have to roll with the punches. It's not like having people submit resumes and interview the top 5 people, but more like finding the most willing person to take on this volunteer leadership role. The pastor doesn't have the luxury of letting go people who aren't working out, but has to find a solution on how to work with them.

In a simple version, it's all about collaboration and having an understanding of each other, but both the pastor and volunteers have to have the mutual agreement of each other.

Next week, which is my last week on this series, I am planning on tying everything together and I will be digging deeper into the concept of volunteers with everything that I have mentioned. If you have any questions before then, please don't hesitate to comment and I will try my best to answer them.