In the Fall, I have the honor of speaking at the Institute of Children’s Ministry ICM in North Carolina and became friends with Jason Vernon, a pastor in North Carolina’s research triangle. Although he is a senior pastor, he’s a huge advocate for Children’s Ministry. I happend to be on his church’s website today and I saw something I really liked. His church, RTP Community Church is not a huge church. Rather, it represents the demographic of most churches in the United States. However, I was highly impressed by how they manage their volunteer process on their website.

It reminded me of Jim Wideman’s principles as illustrated in his book STRETCH. If you’ll organize your systems, you’re only preparing yourself and making capacity for growth. If you want more volunteers, you have to prepare yourself to handle them. That’s what I saw on the RTP Community Church website.

On the Kid’s Ministry webpage, they have very clearly listed out all the ministry roles. They communicate which roles have vacancy’s as well as what roles are filled. In addition to a list of roles, they’ve included job descriptions for each role so a potential volunteer can determine which role is their best fit. Lastly, they’ve listed the staff/volunteer process along with providing their ministry application/background check form. They’ve made it into a 5 step process, making it so easy to volunteer and know what to do next.

I think there are a lot of larger churches that miss the simplicity of this process. Good job RTP, may you have all the volunteers you need.