Recently, I was asked to expand my thoughts on building a team in ministry. Building a team is crucial to ministry’s success. In fact, your ministry will grow as far as your team grows. For example, if you try to do it all yourself, your ceiling is much lower than if you grow a team of leaders. Every leader you recruit doubles your capacity.
So the secret to raising your ceiling is growing a large volunteer team.
• Recruit, Recruit, Recruit!—Always be recruiting. I am the director of our volunteer teams at our church. We are a campus plant and launched our church last year. We oversee 120 volunteers and I do the scheduling for them. I speak with two to three new people a week and the intent is simply to recruit. I view every person as a potential leader and a future part of our team. Every time I recruit someone, our ceiling as a ministry grows.
• Have a plan—The more you recruit, the better plan you must have. Have a plan for the team or else they will not want to be a part of it. The plan must be in place before you recruit. The plan needs to be a mental job description, clear expectations, accountability, follow up and scheduling (do not burn them out, schedule them on a rotation).
• Give Leadership away—When we launched our church, we immediately gave leadership away. So, we developed directors for each team right at launch. We recruited directors for parking, hospitality, security, worship, audio/visual, nursery/preschool, elementary and ushers. So, I immediately started our team with seven individuals who were all volunteers. I gave them the expectations and I followed up with them each week. That raised the ceiling of our ministry so much. Do not try to do it all yourself. Find others to lead teams. As your ministry grows, your teams need to stay small. Keep making positions to expand your ministry.
• Start an internship program—We are a year old and just now developing this plan, but I wish we had of thought of this sooner. Find volunteers who want to go deeper and give them access to your life and ministry. Create a program for interns who can grow. Hopefully you can find your next hires from your interns or you can recommend them for other churches around the world. It is my goal that we start having different tracks (hospitality, music, student ministry, kids ministry, etc.) for our internship program. So our interns can focus in on a specific ministry of the church.
Do you have an internship program at your church? If so, email me at jevans@tbc.org and I would love to chat with you regarding your internship program.
