Why None Of Your Volunteers Are Stepping Up To The Plate

There was a while when I had been working on my telepathy skills.  I figured as a youth pastor, it was going to be a whole lot easier reading the minds of my volunteers so that I know what they want when it comes to student ministry.  So every day I spent time looking in the mirror, staring at fruit, strengthening my mind.  I'll be honest it wasn't working, so I decided to sit down with some of my new volunteer ministers and have them evaluate the entire student ministry.  I got a ton of great feedback and helpful criticism; however, the one piece of information that stood out was this desire to do more.  Anytime, you get people on your team that want more responsibility, you've struck gold, and now that you've gotten that desire to do more, you need to get rid of any obstacles that may prevent you from doing so.  Such as:

• Pride.  We think, "Only I can do it the best." or "Only I can do it the way it's supposed to be done.", but in reality we can be the largest obstacle.  The church is made up of many parts, we are only one part of it; yet, our pride makes us out to be more than it is.
• Fear. "If I don't do it, then it will fail."  is what we tell ourselves, but we forget the times we failed.  We forget that we don't even get it right the first time, but we are afraid of failure.  In reality we need to failure because it then becomes an opportunity for growth.  A ministry that isn't willing to fail is one that isn't willing to grow.
• Laziness. It's easy to tell someone, "I need you to do this."; however, if there isn't a system, if there isn't clarity then we aren't setting our team up for success.  It takes work to put a system together, test it out, tweak it and keep it running.  It takes time to take instructions, vision or a mission and make it clear and engaging.  Too many times we want instant results; however, if we aren't willing to put in the investment, then we'll have static success but nothing long term.

When you can effectively delegate and hand over responsibility to your ministers, you create a culture that is not only healthy but attractive.  Many of the reasons we are slow to attract new volunteers is because we underutilize the ones we have.  Your ministers are your best recruiting tools, so if they are happy they are going to share their experience with others.  To get started we need to be willing to look at what's holding us back.

What is holding you back from handing a piece of the ministry over to your volunteers?