FIVE WAYS TO GAIN AND MAINTAIN MINISTRY VOLUNTEERS

7 Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap. 8 For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life. 9 And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up. 10 So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith. (Galatians 6:7-10, ESV)

Volunteering is Good for Everyone!

God’s economy of giving is wonderful news for you and your ministry volunteers. By volunteering, you and your church members are setting into motion God’s spiritual law of success. This has also been called the spiritual law of sowing and reaping. The basic biblical foundation is found in Galatians 6:7-10.

When a believer volunteers their time, talent, effort, and resources to the Lord, they are giving an offering of themselves to God and God promises to reward them. Lest you forget, Jesus himself talked about rewards as a motivation for serving the Lord. Jesus said:

“For truly, I say to you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you belong to Christ will by no means lose his reward.” (Mark 9:41, ESV)

“And whoever gives one of these little ones even a cup of cold water because he is a disciple, truly, I say to you, he will by no means lose his reward.”” (Matthew 10:42, ESV)

“But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil.” (Luke 6:35, ESV)

At the very least, Jesus promises a reward for things done in service for Him. There’s no better place to serve Jesus than through a ministry of the local church.

The apostle Paul also writes to church members and shares with them how their service to Christ will be tested. If they pass, there will be a great reward for them.

“Each one’s work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If anyone’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.” (1 Corinthians 3:13–15, ESV)

“Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ.” (Colossians 3:23–24, ESV)

Rewards can be a great motivator. Jesus used it and so did Paul. There’s no reason why you couldn’t use the potential blessings given to a volunteer as motivation to join your ministry.

Some rewards for volunteering are found immediately. Here are a few:

• A volunteer will build a stronger sense of community. Volunteers rarely, if ever, suffer from ongoing loneliness.

• A volunteer’s self-esteem is improved. Helping others boosts your view of self. It gives a feeling of accomplishment and purpose.

• A volunteer will likely live longer but will also live healthier. Research done by AmeriCorps (americorps.gov) reveals that people volunteering over 100 hours a year are some of the healthiest people in the United States.

• A volunteer is happier. Contemporary social neuroscience research shows that donating to charity and volunteering fires off feelings of reward, the feel-good chemicals in the brain, which spurs them to do even more volunteering.

• A volunteer has more resources for fighting the effects of stress, anger, anxiety, and depression. Having meaningful connections with others mitigates against all these negative forces. There is a comradery built among volunteers that forms a support system, increasing their psychological well-being. This protects against the effects of anxiety and depression.

Wow! As you can see, encouraging people to volunteer in a ministry for Jesus Christ is good for the church, good for them, and good for those who receive the ministry. It is a full-circle blessing!

Ways to Gain and Maintain Ministry Volunteers

I’m going to give you five ways to get and keep your volunteers. I hope that as you read this, you will think of other ways in addition to these basic five that you could use in your ministry context.

1. Enlist Them

Information should come before enlistment. Let them know there are opportunities open to bless and be blessed as a ministry volunteer.

A Wide Net

You can share these ministry opportunities in multiple ways: Announcements, newsletters, church bulletins, website, and social media channels. Get creative in how they are presented. Use images and video to capture their attention and imagination.

A Personal Touch

Calling for volunteers in a blanket format and in a general way usually attracts very few volunteers. Many assume that someone else will step up. When you approach someone and ask them personally, your chances of success are much higher.

Made Clear and Accessible

People like to know what they are getting into. Provide specific information: What is needed, how long a commitment and how often. It’s the simple who, what, when, where, and how. If you have a church website (if you don’t have a church website, you have other issues that are bigger than this), create a section that is for volunteer opportunities.

Once prospective volunteers find opportunities they’re interested in, they should be able to register for your church volunteer ministry painlessly. If there are too many hurdles as part of church volunteer application, you may accidentally discourage future volunteers. Respond promptly when members express interest in your ministry. Send a thank you message with details on clear, actionable next steps, so they know exactly what to do to participate in your ministry. Remember to not skip any of the important vetting and background checks when volunteers are working with children or youth.

2. Train Them

I’m an advocate for training. Many churches do little to train the people they enlist for volunteer positions. For example, if you enlist volunteers to work with elementary age children, train them in the best practices for working and teaching them. At this time, your association is offering a free training, based on the latest brain science, as to how to best work with children suffering from trauma and how to recognize it. I’ve been through the training, and I recommend it to anyone who works with children. It’s here: Connections Matter, deadline to register is September 8, 2022. Click on the image below.

Many people don’t know what they are good at or even what their gifts are. Help members of your church identify their spiritual gifts, talents, skills, and passions. This will be a great help to them personally and to your ministry as well.

3. Motivate Them

When your members learn about spiritual gifts, they will also learn about the diversity of the body of Christ. 1 Corinthians 12:12-31 paints a powerful picture of the diversity of the church. They will learn that each member of the body of Christ has a different gift-talent-skill mix and a different function in the church.

They are important because each member of the Body is important. We would not be all that God wants us to be without them and their ministry. This is a great motivator. Pair volunteer enlistment with a message series on the Body of Christ. Whether they are a hand or a foot, they are needed and they need the rest of the body to function well.

4. Honor Them

Volunteer appreciation is one of the most important things you can do to maintain healthy and happy ministry workers. Think about it. Your current volunteers will be the best recruiters for ministry or the worst advertisement, depending on how they feel valued. Make sure they are happy and valued.

Public appreciation of volunteers goes a long way. You don’t need to buy a gift or do something extravagant. What you need to do is to have the church publicly express to their volunteers how important they are and how much they are appreciated.

One way to show public recognition is to feature volunteer testimonies. With video creation so accessible, even on your phone, you can place a volunteer’s testimony of service and what they get out of it on video. That can be shown in your worship services and posted on your website and social media. I’ve found that personal testimonies are more powerful than anything I could say as a pastor.

It should go without saying but part of honoring volunteers is to honor their time. Your volunteers are sacrificing other activities and rest to serve. They could be with their families and friends or enjoying a favorite hobby, but instead they are serving the Lord in His church. Appreciate them by honoring their time. Don’t waste it and don’t take it for granted.

5. Rest Them

Volunteering does not mean they are in that role for years. They need to be released to rest just like anyone else. Many ministry teams and committees in church have a rotation. Most churches I know of have a Deacon rotation. Allow your volunteers to rotate off. If someone has been serving for several years, don’t be afraid to ask them how they’re doing. You don’t want to give them the impression that they are not needed anymore, but that you want them to be fresh and energized in their ministry. After all, God may have someone else he is raising up to take on that assignment. Elisha took over for Elijah and Joshua took over for Moses. A good way for rest is to have someone else helping them the load and being trained for the future.

The last thing I want to give you about volunteers is to encourage you to apply at least one of these soon. You are busy, just like most everyone else, and the best way to make sure you gain and maintain great volunteers is to calendar a few of these five ways on your church calendar. You and your volunteers will be glad you did.

FIVE REASONS YOUR MINISTRY VOLUNTEERS QUIT

Church and ministry leaders have a perennial struggle in finding and keeping good volunteers. Let’s face it, without volunteers the ministry of the church would come to a grinding halt.

Today the ministry landscape for keeping good volunteers has become even more difficult. I'm going to cover this issue in two parts. My next article will focus on gaining and maintaining ministry volunteers. Right now, this article lists five reasons your ministry volunteers quit. Here we go!

1. It’s Out of My Control

I’m not giving this first reason just to make you feel better, but I hope it does. Sometimes volunteers quit because of things out of your control. Perhaps a volunteer has had a change in life. Maybe they had an addition to the family, or a job change that keeps them from being able to serve for the immediate future. I know of people who have stopped volunteering in church ministry because of aging parents who needed them more often. This is exactly what they should do. They need to take care of their family. We can all understand this. My point is simply this: You must prepare for life changes to happen in your volunteers that are out of your control.

2. I’m Burned Out

This is a common theme in our post-pandemic world. Many of our volunteers have heroically held things together. They’ve persevered through stress and trauma such as: life changes, job changes, loss, and health threats. When the pressure eases up, they begin to realize their emotional and perhaps even spiritual “tank” is empty. You’ve heard the saying, “You can’t give what you don’t have.” Well, they don’t have much left to give. It’s gone and so are they.

3. It’s Not a Good Fit

A volunteer may agree to join in a ministry, but later find out that it just is not a good fit for them. They, for whatever reason, are not passionate about it. It’s good to discover what your volunteers are passionate about, but that's for later.

Besides the “passion” issue, volunteers may not have a good experience in that ministry. Ministry expectations on the part of volunteers is an important thing and may contribute to more defections than you may realize. Some church leaders, in their eagerness to recruit volunteers, have painted a picture of a volunteer role that isn’t accurate. Be careful in your eagerness not to cause more problems down the road by mis-characterizing the experience of that ministry to a potential volunteer.

Sometimes it's not passion or experience, but an issue of skill that causes a volunteer to bow out of a ministry. The volunteer could come to the place where they believed his or her skills were not best utilized in this ministry.

4. I’m Not Being Supported

It’s common for volunteers to feel forgotten. A lot of attention was showered on them in recruiting and once they started, that attention went away. Hey, I’ve been there on both sides of it. We are busy people. There are so many things a church leader is trying to do. They don't have a lot of time to check up on all their volunteers to make sure they're okay. But it still needs to be done! They need to hear from you. Develop a system, offer some training, do an orientation, and find a way. More on that in the next article.

5. I’m Not Appreciated

Your volunteers will probably not come right out and say, “I’m not appreciated.” That would sound just a little too needy. However, they will quit if they feel like this for very long. Your volunteers need to know they are making a real difference to others. They didn’t volunteer because they didn’t have anything else to do. They volunteered because there was a need and meaning behind that ministry. Lack of appreciation translates into “not important.”

As you read through this, you likely had faces of volunteers appear in your mind’s eye. Why not take a moment to show some gratitude for them? Send a text, email, or a handwritten note. Think how you would feel if someone took a moment to express appreciation to you. You have in you the power through gratitude to lighten someone’s day and perhaps keep them as a ministry volunteer.

10 Ways to Promote Prayer in Your Church

“Nothing is more important to God than prayer in dealing with mankind. But it is likewise all-important to man to pray. Failure to pray is failure along the whole line of life. It is failure of duty, service, and spiritual progress.” (Bounds, E.M., The Complete Works of E.M. Bounds on Prayer, Baker. compiled 1990, pg. 370.)

“What the church needs today is not more machinery or better, not new organizations or more and novel methods, but men whom the Holy Spirit can use-men of prayer, men mighty in prayer. The Holy Spirit does not flow through methods, but through men. He does not come on machinery, but on men. He does not anoint plans, but men-men of prayer.” (Ibid, pg. 447.)

I’m afraid that many of us, without thought, have equated the work of the church with organizational activity. God's great power in the church is its faith and faith increases through prayer. “Jesus replied, ‘This is the work of God-that you believe in the one he has sent’” (John 6:29, CSB).

While most of my recommendations for promoting prayer are written from a pastor’s perspective, I believe that there is much in here for other church leaders and members. As you read, reflect on applications to your personal life and ministry. Here are the 10 ways to promote prayer in your church.

1. Make prayer a priority in the church leadership

Whether you have a large paid church staff or if they are volunteer leaders, spend regular and consistent time in prayer together. As a senior pastor, I led our staff meetings by first spending significant time in prayer before moving on to our other agendas. At the close of the staff meeting, we would pray over the plans that came out of the meeting at the end.

Two of the churches I pastored were elder led churches. These were my favorite. Our elder meetings were the best because we brought everything to the Lord and did not make decisions apart from a unity of spirit in prayer.

If it’s appropriate, try to pray with everyone you interact with during the day. When I had an appointment with a staff member, a church member or someone in the community, I would not let them leave without spending some time in prayer. I still do this frequently when I meet with people even over the phone or online.

Another way to make prayer a priority is to have your staff or volunteers read through a great book on prayer together. You could discuss it chapter by chapter at regular meetings and pray together. You will have your own ideas that are best for your setting.

2. Designate a time of clearly defined corporate prayer in services

We are notorious for using prayer as a segue from one part of the worship service to another. Prayer is certainly more than this. Think about adding a pastoral prayer time in your worship. This can be a very reflective and instructional time. During the week think about issues that your people are dealing with, struggling with. Take the time to write out a prayer, perhaps a little each day during the week. In other words, craft your prayer to the Lord on behalf of your congregation like you would a sermon. You could even publish the prayer in your bulletin or online.

3. Share stories, recent and past of answered prayer

One of the privileges pastors enjoy is hearing the ways God answers prayer in the lives of his church members. This is worth sharing and there are many avenues you could make this happen: In the worship service either live or on video, social media, and the church’s website.

Another inspiration is recounting answered prayer from the past. Our Christian history is full of prayer and God’s wonderful timely answers. Ample examples are found in the Great Awakenings and revival history of the United States. There was the great prayer revival of 1857 with Jeremiah Lanphier in New York City. Prayer so saturated the area and later the country that sailors on ships entering the harbor, not knowing of any spiritual awakening taking place, were falling under conviction of sin, and repenting even before docking. Here’s a couple of videos about these things.

4. Seek to improve your own prayer life

There is a certain gravity that envelops a praying person. It is also called the “fragrance of Christ”. “But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere. For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing,” (2 Corinthians 2:14–15, ESV)

People recognize it when you spend extended time in prayer. The time is spent not just praying through a list, but seeking God with your heart, mind and soul. It is like the prayer of Moses to see the glory of God. Moses prayed, “Now therefore, if I have found favor in your sight, please show me now your ways, that I may know you in order to find favor in your sight. Consider too that this nation is your people.”” (Exodus 33:13, ESV)

My friend, Dr. Donald Whitney has some great advice on generally improving your prayer life. You can see it here.

Dr. Whitney also has a prayer app that was developed by one of his students to help add variety to his prayer life. You can download it from the App Store or Google Play for free.

Five Psalms: Praying Through Psalms of the Day

Five Psalms from App Store

Five Psalms from Google Play

5. Make an opportunity for ministry prayer at the close or between services

At my last pastorate, I was inspired by a neighboring church pastor, Sam Storms at Bridgeway Church, to add prayer ministry teams of two or three individuals who were available between and after worship services to pray with and over those who have needs.

I put together a Prayer a Prayer Ministry Team card. I personally recruited couples and individuals who were mature and prayerful. I gathered them together for about 45 minutes of instruction with the card. Every single one of them volunteered. In fact, they were excited to see what God would do. Here’s how we did it: During the announcement time and again near the close of the service, we would announce that prayer teams would we at a certain location if anyone would like to receive prayer. Not a Sunday passed by that we didn’t have someone want prayer and a few times we had people accept Christ during the prayer ministry time.

If you’d like a copy of the prayer ministry card we used, you can download it here.

Prayer Ministry Team Card

If you’d like help setting up a prayer ministry team, I’d be glad to assist.

6. Designate a prayer team for each church event

Every year your church has important and life-changing events. They range from Vacation Bible School to the annual Christmas Pageant. For each of these events, make sure to have a prayer team that is praying over every aspect of the event. The team doesn’t have to be big; it may be just 3 or 4 people. However, design a prayer sheet for that event and ask them to get together two or three times and to pray over the sheet. They may meet in person, on the phone or online. Focused, purposeful prayer for each event will make a difference in the heavenlies and on earth.

7. Have a congregation wide 21 day or 40 day prayer initiative.

The perfect time to have one of these is during the Lenten season. You could do it in preparation for the passion week or you could start it after Easter Sunday and set up 40 days that coincide with ending on Pentecost Sunday. You could also start the new year off with a 21 days of prayer emphasis for your church. Whether you do it at the first of the year, in preparation for Easter or in preparation for Pentecost, I wouldn’t do this more than once a year or once every two years.

Here are some guides that may help to inspire you. I feel confident that if you were to ask these churches if you could customize what they have done for your church, they would be flattered and of course help you to do that.

21 Days of Prayer

40 Days of Prayer

Rick Warren has a whole kit available for purchase if you are interested in all the bells and whistles.

Pastors.com 40 Days of Prayer

8. Teach your church how to pray

Yes, actually teach how to pray. I’ve done this several times. At my last church, we still had a Wednesday night meal and prayer service. I used this as an opportunity to teach on prayer. Once I taught through the Apostle Paul’s Prayers. After the teaching we would gather at our tables and pray on that subject of Paul’s prayer for that night. I had many, many compliments on this kind of praying. I also used some of Andrew Murray’s writings to help me in teaching on various subjects of prayer.

One year I preached a series on The Lord’s Prayer called “The Prayer that will Change Your Life”. I took 10 weeks on the Sunday morning series with application each Wednesday Night prayer service. One of the best resources that helped me design this was by Elmer Towns, “Praying the Lord’s Prayer for Spiritual Breakthrough.”

You can get a PDF of this book for free here:

Praying the Lord's Prayer - Towns

9. Promote prayer walking events coordinated to the church and community calendar

Create a prayer walking guide that matches the needs of a particular event. For example, with the start of a new school year it would be appropriate to ask different families or small groups to prayer walk near a school or around a school. For people who cannot walk distances, they could “pray the windshield” from the car. There are a variety of needs students and teachers will have. Prayer walk the school bus barn and the sports complexes. In the wider community, prayerwalk before and during county fairs and festivals. If there isa city council meeting, ask if you could pray in the meeting room before the event takes place. When asking, find out if there is anything they would like remembered in prayer. Any community or church could use groups of people praying on-site with insight before an even

Here's a link to a prayer walking guide I created for my last church. It’s in a word document, so you can change the graphics and text.

Prayer Walking Guide

10. Use available technology to enhance prayer

Create a page on your church’s website for prayer requests. Get your webmaster to set it up where a request can be posted on the page for all to see or to be private. You can make the page one that people have to register to access. That will keep out spam. You can create a prayer wall and project that on the screen during your prayer service or prayer time in church for those present to pray over the requests. Promote the prayer wall page on social media. Just make sure you have a designated person to monitor the page and to reply to requests.

Encourage your small group ministries to form social media groups where they can share prayer needs with one another. Ask these groups to provide a link on their social media to your church’s prayer wall page.

Leveraging technology with prayer and outreach provides a fresh new way to intentionally reach your areas for Christ. Your church could join the www.BlessEveryHome.com ministry and encourage your members to join with their own individual accounts. This is a great way to saturate neighborhoods with prayer and good deeds. It may be the best outreach tool that uses prayer as a basis for ministry.

Check out the BlessEveryHome.org website. There is a video that explains how the process works, and it does.

BlessEveryHome

I don’t intend for you to try all ten of these ways to promote prayer in your church. Perhaps you won’t try any, but while reading through this list, you thought of another way to promote prayer in your members and in yourself. That is even better. My prayer is that you will grow in the knowledge of Christ through the time you spend with him. Amen.