052: A (Re)Solution For Competing For Dates & Volunteers In Your Small Church

052: A (Re)Solution For Competing For Dates & Volunteers In Your Small Church

Laurie Graham 0:01
Hey, this is Laurie Graham. Welcome to the Small Church Ministry Podcast.

Laurie Graham 0:14
Hello, and welcome to Episode 52 of the Small Church Ministry Podcast. I almost can’t believe it’s the last episode of the year! Once a week, each week, we’ve dropped a new episode serving small churches everywhere. We have talked about volunteers from finding and developing, to appreciating, and even releasing volunteers. We’ve talked about vision, worship, sound and tech, a little bit about women’s ministry, youth, leadership, and tons more. Before we get into today’s topic, which answers a real need in many small churches, I can’t help but look back just a little bit on 2022 with gratitude, and also thankfulness. I’m really grateful for you! And when we started this podcast a year ago, I wondered how it would go, like, who would find us and what would keep us talking each and every week, and after 52 episodes, honestly, we have barely scratched the surface of the uniqueness of small churches, the challenges, the opportunities, the joys.

This year has been an amazing time of growth for us at smallchurchministry.com. We’ve produced another four successful live online conferences with over 8,000 free tickets reserved all year! We held our first worship and tech conference. We’ve experimented with some free workshop series live on Facebook that were amazingly received with over 500 people reserving spots at each one. And probably the biggest news of the year was this fall, when we launched the first ever Inter-denominational International Network, just for small churches. And with a few meetings already under our belt, we are learning so much and leaning into some really exciting stuff as we grow, and not just what we’re currently offering, but also we’re really seeing the wild potential for what the Small Church Network is going to become.

If you’re unfamiliar with the Small Church Network, our goal is equipping more volunteers and staff in small churches with specialized training that’s accessible, ongoing, for your whole church. So for less than $15 a month, network churches have access to not only a monthly live training with breakout sessions and connection and application, but also the replay that is a focused 25 minute training to utilize in your church! The training topics have been picked and chosen by churches in the network so they meet real needs, and this is not just a network for pastors, or even a network for one person in your church in one ministry area. It’s actually designed to support your church in developing more volunteers and functional teams that are excited and on the same page, sharing the vision, the strategies, and the learning too! And we are making it ultra-easy to access and easy to share and incredibly flexible for your church.

Laurie Graham 3:22
We’ve started with three different timezone options. Our European friends are showing up a lot at the 2pm Eastern Time, and our New Zealand friends are actually showing up a lot at the 7pm Eastern time. That’s the next day after, in the afternoon for them, and even our 10pm Eastern Time is allowing our West Cpasters to get home from work in time, but also we’ve got a bunch of night owls who are on the East Coast, joining us at 10 o’clock at night! And whether people are making it live or just watching later, that’s the beauty of the network, is you don’t have to be there at a certain time or you miss out. You can use the replays at team meetings, volunteer trainings, leadership retreats, and many have even just been sharing one-on-one with that special volunteer in their church or their pastor. With discussion sheets and guided applications, it makes the learning even more helpful, and more applicable to unique challenges in unique ministry settings.

We are so excited about what’s in store for the network. It has already been a great way just to get encouraged, build relationships, stay connected, and share success stories and so much more. If you’re familiar with the Small Church Academy, and you’re wondering where that went, that’s still going strong too! We have 100 people engaged in a two year Personal Leadership Development Program with the Academy and it’s specific to small church ministry, where individuals are not only growing as leaders for themselves, but it’s intended to impact other people in your churches and community. And so, we’ve already been watching the account Academy and the Network kind of move in tandem in equipping people in small churches all over the globe. But it has just been an incredible year.

So whether you have found our blog posts on our websites, or you’re just kind of tuning in for the podcast, please know, there is so much here! If you want encouragement, ideas, strategies and solutions for small churches, we have got you covered. Our intention is to serve and to shine a light on small church ministry for what it is a unique place where Jesus reigns, where the needs of people are being met, where we can shine His light in our communities, even in, and especially in, our small spaces.

Laurie Graham 5:47
And speaking of shining His light, let’s jump into today’s topic. When people find us at Small Church Ministry, I ask them this question, and I get tons of answers all the time. I typically ask people, “What is your biggest challenge in small church ministry? What’s your biggest struggle?” And last week, I received an email saying, “Well, our biggest challenge is actually competing for dates and volunteers. With a small amount of people, it just seems to either be an either or. Like our pastor doesn’t want us to have weekly youth group because it takes away from volunteers in the children’s ministry. And ministry gets limited because we’re all competing for dates, and for volunteers.”

Now, if this sounds at all like you, I want to tell you, this is not the only time I’ve heard this, this is a pretty common struggle in small churches. When the prayer ministry can’t really take off because people who would want to be involved in that are already at the women’s events, and those are programmed out pretty far, or the outreach team wants to do more, but the men’s and women’s events are going to have to take a backseat because it’s either or. Now have you been there? If this is a struggle in your church, as I said, you’re not alone. I hear this quite a bit. And today, we’re going to talk about one of my favorite solutions, because really, it doesn’t have to be like this. We’re all going to the same place, and if we go there together, it’s a lot more fun too.

Now if you don’t have this issue in your church, maybe you’re just trying to find volunteers or there isn’t much going on, or maybe your church has pulled back in a time of healing, I still want to encourage you to listen because in the solution that we’re talking about, it’s also a great solution for just building increased unity in your church, or between ministry areas, or better relationships with other leaders in different ministry areas, and even having greater impact too.

Laurie Graham 7:50
With New Year’s Day coming up and New Year’s Eve coming up next week, I just have to say, I have a love hate relationship with New Years, mostly because of this whole resolution thing. We have an entire mass of people, an entire culture, who over and over again, dream dreams and commit to things that they will never follow through on. So, as this podcast episode is named A Resolution or a (Re)solution For Competing For Dates and Volunteers, I just want to unpack that a little bit. There are lots of reasons why we dream dreams and never put them into action, but that word resolution really is a beautiful word. You can break it up in a lot of ways like re solution, a new solution, a solution for something you’ve been struggling with.

Resolution means determined or resolved, and there is nothing wrong with being determined or resolved. Those are beautiful things! Where this word comes from, like at its origin, its original Latin meaning, part of it has to do with undoing, or loosening, or untying. And I just want to say, that part of resolution gets me in my gut because when we’ve been doing something the same way all the time for a long time, we really do need to undo it or loosen it, in order to come up with a new solution, something that would move us in a different direction. Because when we’re holding on so tightly to the way we’ve always done things, it’s pretty impossible to move in a new direction.

So as I’m talking about a resolution, a new way of, of dealing with or moving to solution for competing dates and volunteers, would you keep that image in mind, just to loosen or undo what you’ve always done, just to make space for something brand new to make space for a change? Because I’d like to propose a different kind of resolution, a solving this common struggle in many small churches and a really different way, because we’re not going to talk about better time management or finding necessarily more volunteers, or splitting up people’s time and efforts. Instead, I want to talk about combining it in a different way because I don’t think most ministry areas, or people in different ministries, intend to compete.

Like, it’s not like we should be trying to get ahead and snag dates from other people so that we get the best Friday night of the season. But it does seem to happen sometimes because there are limited dates on the calendar, and there are limited volunteers. No matter if you’re in a tiny, micro church, or a bigger, small church, there’s still a limit. There’s a finite number on dates and volunteers. But I want to propose that there is not a finite number on impact.

Laurie Graham 10:55
There’s not a limit to how much impact you can create, even though we’re limited in other ways. Now, maybe in the past, you’ve planned a date for an event, and maybe the pastor’s wife or a ministry leader scheduled an overlapping leadership team meeting on top of your date, and your date got moved. Or maybe you’ve worked really hard to plan your schedule a year in advance, and you’ve got everything all locked in, and a month ahead of time, something happens in the building and the deacons decide to do a work day, and they couldn’t avoid your date, and so your date got booted off the calendar.

It doesn’t even seem to matter that maybe you worked ahead or reserved the date and feelings got hurt or people have overlapped and relationships get a little crunchy, right? It happens with our volunteers too. Maybe you need five solid volunteers to run your event and your regular volunteers are saying they can’t help because they’re overcommitted in another ministry area and it’s like another ouch, where it feels like we’re competing with each other. Or maybe your church allows fundraisers, but only one a year, and the youth have already stepped up to claim it because they want to raise money for a mission trip. But, that leaves the women’s ministry efforts short where they wanted to outreach in the community.

I imagine if you haven’t faced these types of competitions in your churches, you probably know those feelings, right? Where we feel like we got a little stepped on or a little left behind, or maybe we don’t have a whole bunch of fans who are like rooting for our ministry area to succeed. Because let’s face it, there are a lot of good things we can all do, but again, resources time, energy, volunteers, even building space, it really is limited. But I just want to ask, do you think competition is the only way to resolve this? Competing for dates or volunteers and resources? Because I want to tell you, there is another way! There are ways for you to reach your ministry ideals, and for other people to reach their ministry dreams too.

Like, wouldn’t it be fun to actually be on the same page, for different ministry areas and different ministry leaders to be for each other, working together, knowing that all the other ministry areas have your back, and them knowing that you have theirs too? Because it really is possible! So, I’d like to propose this resolution. Now, not a New Year’s Eve resolution that you’re going to decide on and not follow through, but actually something to resolve, something to commit to, something to decide on, and you really can do it! You can decide on this today and it’s all up to you to put it in place. It’s not huge, you can start really, really little, but it’s all about doing life together and serving in unity within your church body.

Laurie Graham 14:06
So here’s what I’d like to propose. I’d like to propose that you lead your ministry area to serve other ministry areas. Now hang with me, because I’m not telling you to let go of your dreams or your ministry goals or your ministry vision at all. I just want to propose a little “both and” instead of “either or”. To figure out a way how you could serve another ministry area. It’s a little bit like carpooling. Like, do you ever carpool to a place where several people are going to the same place at the same time, and not only did we want to save money, like gasoline, but maybe you just want to save time? Like maybe you’re carting somebody like a youth or a kid somewhere and you’re like, oh my gosh, you’re going there. Could you take them with you?

Because really in ministry, we are all going the same place, and how much more fun would it be to ride together? Like, wouldn’t it be great if a church was more like that? Carpooling instead of competing. So let me give you a few, a few ideas, a few pictures of what this might look like. Now, I realize you are probably not the pastor who’s listening, if you are the pastor, awesome! We have pastors listening too, but most of the people that tune in to the Small Church Ministry Podcast are Sunday school teachers, or youth leaders, or they sing on the worship team. They’re really serving to make a difference somewhere, and they want to help their small church.

So whether you are the pastor, and you’re the one who sets the vision for the church, or you’re the one who follows the vision that the pastor sets, this is still for you. In most cases, whether or not others join you in this vision, or maybe it’s just you catching this vision and deciding to run with it, it has the potential to change your trajectory, the trajectory of your ministry, and even of your own joy and satisfaction. So set your own mind and your heart to serve other ministry areas with your ministry.

Okay, let me unpack what this looks like. Because not only will you accomplish beautiful things, but you are not adding more to your time schedule. I’m not asking you to do one more thing, please hear that. It’s also a great way to build a really great fan base of people who love what you’re doing, even if they’ve never been involved in your particular ministry area. Here’s some examples. Men’s ministry.

Laurie Graham 16:48
Let’s say you head up the men’s ministry and I’m suggesting that you look for ways to serve other ministry areas. I’m not saying other people, but other ministry areas. Like, think of the women’s ministry in your church, the children’s ministry, the prayer ministry, maybe there’s a decor team or deacons. Like what would it look like to pick one thing and offer to serve them? Now, I’m also not suggesting that you go up to the children’s director and say, “Hey, how can we partner together?” Because that’s giving them more to do too, right?

So instead look at it this way. How about looking at it like a little puzzle, something to solve? Like, what, where could you serve them? Like, where could you come up with a plan to help them in what they do? So first off, you’re going to need to know what they do, which might involve a little research or asking questions. Hey, what does the women’s ministry do? Or what do the children do on a Sunday morning or Wednesday night? Like, do a little bit of recon. Do some investigating and be thoughtful. Think of the skills and the talents in your ministry area. In your men’s ministry, what could we do? How could we serve them?

I’m pretty sure if you approached the women’s ministry and said, “Hey, we would love to do the work to honor the women on Mother’s Day this year, all women? Or if you approached the youth group to say, “Hey, we know you have a fundraiser for your mission trip. We would like to be part of that. Could we host a barbecue and give the donations to you? I am pretty sure if you approached another ministry area with an idea like that, I’m pretty sure it would be a “Oh yeah, that’d be awesome.” If you’re involved in the youth ministry or teaching Sunday school, who could you serve? What other ministry area could you serve? Again, be thoughtful.

I’m not talking about partnering with the women’s ministry so they’re doing something for you and you’re doing something for them. I mean, really thoughtfully look at the calendar, at their calendar. Maybe your women’s ministry hosts a yearly craft fair. Do you know the kind of work that goes into hosting a craft fair? Because there is an incredible amount of setup and organization and teardown that happens, and if you’ve got even three youth, what if you approached the women’s craft fair table person and said “Hey, I teach the youth Sunday school we would like to help you at your craft fair. I will be in charge of these three students. They want to help set up, bring water bottles, and tear down. Could we do that for you?” Do you see it? Do you see how you would be developing fans, developing relationships, but also starting a trend of carpooling instead of competing?

Laurie Graham 19:50
Now, where does the carpool come in? I mentioned that we’re all going the same place. As a youth person, a men’s ministry, a prayer ministry, you have various goals for your ministry, or at least I hope you do. One of the things in youth ministry is teaching them to serve and work together, and participate, and being part of the larger church. So, I’m not suggesting that you help at that craft fair, in addition to what you’re doing, I’m suggesting you make that your youth event of the month. And if you think that’s going to feel more like a drudgery than their regular game time, piggy back in an ice cream run and a celebration, and make their serving a highlight for that month!

It’s pretty beautiful to partner up in these ways. If you’re in a prayer ministry, I know in most small church prayer ministries, it’s a struggle, getting people excited to pray, getting people excited to do a prayer night or to come to a prayer event, or you end up with the same four people or sixteen people, the same people who are in the prayer ministry, why is this? Do you have a goal or a vision to draw people into prayer? Maybe you could do a little research yourself on how to best teach children to pray, or to teach people who’ve never prayed how to pray, or to learn about prayer stations. And instead of just begging people to come to your events, or promoting your next prayer retreat or meeting in the bulletin, maybe you could offer as a prayer ministry, to go up to that Sunday school teacher in the children’s area and say, “Hey, I have these four active lessons to help teach children to pray, and to prioritize that in their life at their age levels.

Would you be open to me coming into the first 10 minutes of Sunday school, just for the next couple of weeks, and just do a little lesson with them on teaching children how to pray?” Can I just tell you, most children’s teachers in small churches would love that. They would love the break. They would love having a special guest. They will love introducing their children to someone else who also loves Jesus, in their church.

Laurie Graham 22:12
Do you see how we can, like carpool and piggyback together and be part of the same mission and vision? Because I want to tell you, all the segmentation and segregation in our churches, a women’s ministry, a young adult group, a fifth and sixth grade class, a, you know, all these different specialized things, a prayer ministry, an outreach team. That is not the only way to do ministry. Wouldn’t it be beautiful to integrate them a little more than we do? Now, if you’re like, wait, wait, wait, I run all those things. Like, maybe you’re in charge of the prayer ministry and the children’s area, or maybe you’re in charge of the men’s ministry, and you’re also the head deacon or elder. If that’s you, I hope you can also, like imagine and just vision, how you could combine your efforts and the people you work with.

Because honestly, it may help you run around a little less, and to find a little more balance, and to have a little more time at home to spend with a friend, to read, or to even like shoot some hoops in your backyard. Because there’s way too many people in small churches running around doing too many things when they could be combining efforts, instead of having a separate event for every single different ministry area. We can combine together a little more. There is no reason why all these ministries need to be segmented all the time. Now, I totally believe it’s great for youth to have some space, and for parents to be without their children now and then, and for widows to have a separate space to be and to heal and to relate together, but what I’m saying is this does not have to be every event or every vision, or every month or every meeting.

Can you imagine if you’re small church just combined a few events in the year? Like think of your church right now. Is there an annual rummage sale? Is there an annual Good Friday service? Is there a monthly outreach event that maybe could be combined into a different function? Where would you see this working in your small church? If nothing is coming to mind, could you create a way to support another ministry area, or could you create an event where different ministry teams actually work together? I know I’ve been in churches where, we used to call it Rally Day in the Midwest, but like the first day of Sunday school back for the school year. I’ve been in churches where the children’s ministry runs Rally Day all by themselves and they are finding people to run the waterslide and to give the gifts and the children’s ministry team is doing it alone.

Laurie Graham 25:11
I’ve also been in churches, in small churches, where the men’s ministry takes a certain aspect of Rally Day and maybe they’re in charge of the grilling or supervising the outdoor games, and the prayer ministry takes a part of Rally Day and they find the gifts and do the dedication. Do you see what I’m saying? There is so much beauty to find when we work together, instead of apart, when we can take some of the competition or feeling like it’s a competition and turn it into carpooling instead. As I mentioned earlier, my love/hate relationship with New Year’s resolutions as we head to the New Year, that this time has almost become an empty listing of all the things we want to do but never act on. I would like to just encourage you to resolve to make a change.

To take that word resolve and undo, loosen up, untie some of the way you’ve been doing things to make some space for where God may have something new in mind. Because while I have a love/hate relationship with New Year’s resolutions, I have only a love/love relationship with the word resolve, with the words resolving to make a change, because I believe God has new stuff for us all the time, but sometimes we need to loosen our grip on what we’re holding on to, to make room for it.

So today, instead of thinking of all the things you can’t do, or all the things you wish were different, could you just choose one thing, one ministry area that you could see supporting with your ministry area? How your children’s Sunday school class could support the prayer ministry, or take part in a mission Sunday, a tangible part, or how your prayer ministry could support the youth group, not by asking them to come or do something for you, but by discovering how you could support their ministry? Wouldn’t it be beautiful? Now if you’re thinking, if only my church could get on board with this, or if I could just get my pastor on board with this, or if the pastor could just get the leaders on board with this, I want to encourage you, this is not something you need others to be on board with in order for it to impact your ministry area.

If you approached the pastor and said, “Hey, we would love to serve this ministry area,” I am pretty darn sure they would say go for it. You don’t need anyone’s cooperation to serve them. You may need their permission, you may need their support, but it doesn’t need to be anyone else doing something. This is one of those things that you, yourself, right now, could resolve to do and could make a plan to make an impact in your church this year, or even next month! If you are super excited to be sharing these kinds of things with other people at your church, that is awesome!

Laurie Graham 28:21
We have worked really hard to make it easy to share, to share a podcast, to share a blog post, but two other things. One, join the Network. This is exactly the kind of training that happens there each and every month, in a format that’s welcoming, friendly, not intimidating, where we start discussions that lead to transformation in small churches. And the other thing again, it, just let it start with you. Maybe you’re the only one that hears this message, one ministry you’re in charge of or involved with, just let it start with you. And start with one thing. Start small. Let people see there is no hidden agenda in you serving another ministry area, and I actually mean it.

Don’t have a hidden agenda. And after you do something to serve their ministry area, evaluate, even with them, and say, “Hey, what did you love about this,” and then repeat it. It’s one of those things that you can do to start a new way of doing and of functioning in unity in your church. One of our desires for the Small Church Network is to help people build unity in their church, to get leaders and volunteers on the same page. Not just starting conversations, but providing foundational, solid training in small church ministry, specific to smaller churches with smaller numbers and smaller budgets. And if you ever hear people say that church ministry is church ministry, it’s the same whether you’re a big church, middle, medium sized church, small church, it’s not true.

Here’s one thing just from this podcast episode, that shines a light on the differences. Most volunteers in large churches are not wearing all the hats that we do in small churches. You don’t have the same person running the children’s ministry, that’s running the soundboard or the outreach committee. You have larger buildings, so competing for dates, that’s not the same thing because you can have different events happening in different parts of the building when you have a larger church. When it comes to channeling different ministry areas into the same larger events, that doesn’t work the same in large churches, but I also want to say this, it’s also not as needed.

Because as I mentioned, ministry areas are much more segmented. The same volunteers aren’t trying to do so many things. So, it’s not that we can’t do some of the same things as larger churches. It’s just that it’s not effective and it’s not meeting real needs, and it’s not what we’re called to do. In small churches, we have an opportunity. It’s not just a challenge, it’s an opportunity to serve together, to combine our gifts, to work our different ministry areas together, to carpool, to work alongside one another in a different way. Not better, not worse, but absolutely different.

Laurie Graham 31:26
If you’re ready to join together with small churches all over the planet, learning what does work in small churches, not just solving problems, but effectively ministering with incredible impact on people in your church and also in your community, if you want to learn how to do this small church thing, join the Small Church Network. Once a month, we have a live event with a very specific training that will help get your volunteers and leaders and staff on the same page. And if you can’t make the live event, it is no problem at all. In fact, we anticipate that! Network members receive a replay of the training, created to share with others in your church, whether it’s at team meetings, leadership retreats, new volunteer trainings, or one-on-one.

Can you imagine not just being excited all by yourself in your church, but having an easy done-for-you wait to help others get inspired too? Plus the action guides and discussion guides and ideas to apply what you’re learning in your unique setting, because this is how you can use the replays whenever and wherever they work well for you in your local church. We are so excited and we hope you are too. We’re already watching small churches get reenergized, develop new vision, and even having greater impact.

So come join us! We kick off our 2023 Small Church Network season on January 10, with our first live event. We’re going to be talking on that day about small church success. What is it, how to evaluate it, and giving you a great tool to keep you on track, to help evaluate what things are going right and help keep you focus too.

Laurie Graham 33:12
The reality is we all need support, we do better with support. We were not meant to do this life or ministry on our own. Over the past few years, personally, I have been really intentional to form a support system for myself, personally, professionally, spiritually, seeking out a team of people who have my back, to learn from, to share with, people who are not only cheering me on, but holding me accountable and supporting me to grow too. My hope is that Small Church Ministry is that for you, that we are part of your support system because that’s my intention. It has been my intention from the very first blog post I ever wrote. Small churches are unique, and so often we feel alone, but we are not alone.

The planet is covered with small churches who are impacting their communities for Christ. There is support and there are solutions for every single struggle you face. So come find them! You can certainly find ideas on the website here on the podcast, but if you’re ready to connect and get those ideas into motion, to share the strength that we’ve found connecting with other small churches, learning from those who are out there and making an impact, finding support that you wish you had. Come join us in the network. You can get more info on the network at smallchurchministry.com/network.

Just join us and get in for the next live event that’s coming up. Thanks for spending time with me today. I hope you’ll join us next week for a special interview with a pastor who will not only inspire you about small church ministry, but also be sharing practical strategies that have helped his small church leave a lasting mark on their community, and that’s our calling, each and every one of us. So until next week, be a light!