Let me tell you about the vision I’ve had. I actually just started communicating it about 5-6 weeks ago. In recognizing where we need to go as a ministry, I knew that we need significantly more help. As far as room coverage and functionality is concerned, we’re pretty good. However, to have a truly small span of care, we’ve got many positions to fill.
When I’m with or talking to Jim Wideman, I’m always challenged. He talks about develop his first, second and third string of volunteers and backups for his backups. Jim Wideman is an incredible leader and gifted in this area, but there’s no reason why we can’t have a similar experience in our ministry.
So, about a month ago I began telling my staff that my goal was to double our volunteer base in the next 12 months. I’ve done this before when in a rapidly growing church or coming into a run down ministry that I was going to turn around, but that’s not the case here. Things are fairly healthy and we’re currently running more volunteers than we’ve ever had before. In addition, our church is growing, just not at any kind of “rapid” pace. So, doubling our base would be a purely intentional thing that will take a lot of effort as well as God’s help.
So, we’re currently at 300 volunteers at our largest campus. Probably half of our volunteers serve every week. In the next twelve months, my goal is to have 600 volunteers. In addition, I want 75% of our volunteers to serve every week. I’m very excited about this vision and I’m looking forward to working through various strategies and efforts with my team to make this happen. Tomorrow I’ll share how we did something these last two weeks to get 1/3 of the way there.
So, what’s your big vision for your volunteers this year?
Sounds like exciting things are happening at Gateway! I’m curious, is this overall nextgen volunteers or just kids’ ministry?
My big vision for our volunteers is to see them take greater ownership for their area of ministry. Instead of seeing themselves as helping me, I want them to see that they are the leader and are valuable to the kingdom, not just to the pastor. We’re growing in that area, but we have lots of room to continue to grow.
This is right where we’re living. We’ve got great volunteers, and a lot of them- 400+who are active and another 200 or so who are seasonal or behind-the-scenes. But with all the growth we’ve been experiencing– combined with the fact that we just launched a new campus a year ago, they are adding a Saturday service at that campus– we will also add another campus next year– we can’t seem to recruit fast enough!
We’re also piloting a training strategy where we approach each month with a theme and do things that feed into that theme to equip our leaders.
I would love to hear how you plan on increasing your volunteer base. Would swap resources if you’re interested.
Patti Kirkland
Volunteer Care Coordinator
Windsor Crossing Community Church
wcrossing.org
Patti great to hear about your continued growth and Kenny you too. I would be interested in hearing from any of you what specific steps you are looking at taking? Any resources you would be willing to share, please do.
Just moved to this new church and its culture. We do run a few thousand but our volunteers are definitely below where they should be right now. So this is what I am developing now are ideas to increase our volunteer base. So please share away.