This post is in response both to a series of post from the “Just Pudge” blog (post 1, post 2 and post 3) and in response to the work I’ve been doing to get ready for a staff retreat I’m leading in a week. We’ve covering some foundational basics of our ministry such as mission, vision as well as developing some job descriptions, processes and the like. One of the projects I’ve been working on is actually putting together the organization chart so everyone can visualize where everyone fits into this great ministry. Some of my staff feels overwhelmed and overworked. I have a feeling that this organizational chart will show why… some of the staff are filling slots that should be filled by volunteers in this organization. So in the end, staff is overworked and volunteers are under-developed. I believe in the philosophy that ministry should be given away and our ultimate goal should be to work ourselves out of a job (theoretically… ha!). Ultimately, if my staff decided to all take a vacation on one Sunday (which they are not allowed to do), ministry should go on! So, at my upcoming staff retreat I’ll be sharing what our organization looks like so they can see what is expected as well as how to find and develop volunteers.

 Because we have two services a weekend (on my campus) we ask that all volunteers serve two services a month. We have several volunteers who serve every week and a handful who are only able to serve once. In the same way, my expectation is that ministry leaders would also serve at least 2 services a month, which means at the most, I need 4 per ministry area. The ministry leader oversees all volunteers for that particular service. The ministry coordinator (usually full or part time staff) recruits, trains and pours vision into these 4 ministry leaders. These ministry leaders are responsible to oversee all things that happen on the weekend.

Here is my only “undecided” area. I have a part time staff volunteer coordinator. It is her responsibility to recruit fresh volunteers into the ministry. Once a volunteer is recruited, she hands them off to the ministry coordinator. The mininstry coordinator then explains the ministry, trains them and schedules them. At this point in time, I don’t expect ministry leaders to call/email their volunteers. It’s just not an expectation that I’ve put on them. It’s a fairly big responsibility to run things on the weekend and a completely differnt thing to call/email during the week. Also, when you have volunteers switching with people from other weeks (the responsibility of another minitry leader), it starts to get administratively sticky. So I leave it to the ministry coordinator to keep up with all their volunteers.

I’m certainly open to suggestions here. I do expect every volunteer serving that week to be contacted on that week. More specifically, I expect every volunteer that is serving to be contacted the best way possible. Currently at my campus, some coordinators will send out a reminder email and 25% of the volunteers don’t show up. However, I know that when you actually call people until you actually talk to them, you get a better attendance rate and those who are not going to be there actually tell you (rather than just not show up).

 So, here it is. I’m curious as to what other people think or what others are actually using.

CT Kids Org Chart