A church without volunteers is an unhealthy church, because the act of volunteering is an expression of worship, it serves people, and it builds relationships. Churches are among the few organizations where the same people are the owners, the funders, the staff, and the customers, according to Leith Anderson and Jill Fox in their book The Volunteer Church: Mobilizing Your Congregation for Growth and Effectiveness.
Part 1 of the book addresses the issues involved in building a volunteer culture, Part 2 discusses ways of recruiting volunteers, and Part 3 covers volunteer training and care. The best method of recruiting volunteers is said to be using other volunteers. Happy volunteers are keen to recruit others, so one of the key ways of maximising recruitment is to take good care of the volunteers you already have.
In addition to providing the theory, the authors provide some useful practical tools. Appendix 1 provides a training plan for staff and those who lead volunteers, covering 5 key steps of volunteer development: recruiting, training, building the team, appreciating and celebrating, and empowering. Appendix 2 provides an outline for a personal Volunteer Development Plan.
I am not a big fan of the distinctions large churches tend to make between “staff” and “volunteers” which tend to assume that staff have the skills and volunteers are unskilled. Nevertheless, church staff are usually the ones responsible for making sure the ministry gets done, and in my opinion this book provides some useful ideas to help with recruiting, organising, deploying and maintaining lay ministry teams.