“The Church may be the most leadership intensive organization in all the world.”

I’ve been reading John Maxwell’s 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership and that quote stuck out to me…and I completely agree with it.

It’s hard to work with volunteers because you have little to no leverage. You don’t hold their well-being in your hands. You aren’t the key to that next promotion. Sometimes you’re little more than an acquaintance. And you still have to lead and ask more from them than they’re readily willing to give.

It’s a huge leadership challenge.

But it’s worth it.

I can’t think of many things better than seeing a volunteer connect into an area of passion. Watching volunteers grow and take ownership of the mission of the Church is incredible. If you’re not asking your people to give – and to give much – then you’re missing out on so many opportunities and so many things God wants to use to raise up His people.

How does it feel to be used as part of God’s plan for His people?

I couldn’t imagine it any other way.

In production leadership, and ministry in general, it’s not uncommon to fear not having enough volunteers. In fact, you may have already noticed something: we’ll never have enough volunteers.

At least not enough to make us comfortable.

Confident, yes.
Effective, yes.
Comfortable, probably not.

So what do we do? We set the bar low and beg anyone we can to help. It’s a natural reaction. We can’t find enough high-capacity, passionate volunteers to help us with our ministry so we lower our expectations and beg people to help us. And while this may make us fully staffed, it doesn’t make us good. In fact, it is a recipe for disaster. Here are 3 common problems and their solutions.
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I had a great lunch today with Kent Boyd, my production director at our Dalton Campus. We got together to talk about something that I’ve noticed in the past few weeks.

As I’ve moved from leading volunteers directly into leading leaders (who lead volunteers), I’ve become more disconnected from the daily lives of the volunteers.

For some reason, it took me by surprise. I really don’t know why. It shouldn’t have. In fact it makes complete sense. The problem is that when I became disconnected from the daily lives of my volunteers, my ability to care for them decreased. So we had a good long discussion about deliberately trying to care for our volunteers. It can’t be driven by my personality or ability to “catch” when someone is hurting. We have to make sure that we’re being deliberate and asking the right questions – the system to care for people has to be in place. Why did this take so long?

Think about it this way. As churches, we typically know where every dime gets spent. We spend hours and hours budgeting and planning and tracking and reporting about our finances – whole teams are devoted to managing the budget and to making sure we’re being good stewards of those resources. How much time and resources do we spend stewarding our people?

I let this happen to me recently. A volunteer was not meshing well in her new role and I let it slip. She didn’t tell me, but if I had been around to ask her she probably would have told me. She lost the vision, got burnt out and no longer comes to church regularly.

It hurts.

I really believe that God cares more about the one person who fell through the cracks than your whole budget.

I just bought my first house so I find myself watching HGTV a lot more than I ever have before. My personal favorite is Holmes on Homes. Each week Mike Holmes takes on a project that was done incorrectly (or left unfinished) and “makes it right.”

I was watching a few nights ago and I heard him say the following:

I don’t want to do this, but right now this is my house. As long as this is my house, I’m gonna do it right.

Man.
That’s quality and commitment.

Imagine what would happen if we, as leaders in the church, thought about our people that way.

The students in student ministry are ‘my kids’.
The visitors in the services are ‘my brothers and sisters’.
The children in children’s ministry are ‘my kids’.

There would be things I wouldn’t want to do for someone else’s kids…but that I’d do for mine. There would be an urgency for my brother to see Christ that might not be present for someone I’ve never met. But what if it was?

This morning Stephen Proctor and I were chatting over breakfast about Passion Conferences (among many other things) and one thing came out that we were both so attracted to:

As leaders, we’re attracted to the boldness by which they pursue their vision

God has given them a vision and they are unapologetic about achieving that goal. They could probably make more money if they started “Passion for Singles” or “Passion for Adults” or “Passion for High School Students”…but they haven’t. Those people are welcome to attend, but their audience is and always has been college students. And they don’t apologize that a Passion event might not connect with you if you’re not a college student.

How often to we allow the people in our congregation to determine what we do? Why is that we, as leaders in the church, are so drawn to people who are bold about what they are going to do (and what they are NOT going to do)?

It’s vision and the boldness to support that vision. Everyone wants to follow a leader who is passionate about where they are going – and not willing to waiver to public opinion.

Give me a leader who is boldly following God and His vision and I’ll follow them anywhere. Give me a leader who bows to public opinion and I’ll be out of there pretty quick. We don’t have time to mess around.

P.s. I also need someone to put me in my place and tell me that my great idea doesn’t serve the vision of the church…gently of course.