218: Mistake #3: Treating Volunteers Like They’re Volunteers | Church Volunteer Series

In this episode of Stop Doing This to Volunteers: Top Mistakes Our Churches Are Making, we talk about something subtle but powerful: the way our language and posture shape culture. 

When we treat people like “just volunteers,” we reinforce hierarchy instead of partnership, and “helping” instead of ownership.

In this episode, we cover:

1. How subtle language changes send powerful messages
2. How hierarchy creeps in without us noticing
3. Small shifts that move us toward shared ownership

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Transcript

Laurie Graham  0:01 
Hey, welcome to the Small Church Ministry Podcast, where we help volunteers and ministry leaders experience less stress, more joy and greater impact as we share strategies that actually do work in smaller churches. I'm your host, Laurie Graham. Let's dive in.

Laurie Graham  0:23 
Hey, hey, welcome back to the Small Church Ministry Podcast. We are back into our series that is called Stop Doing This To Volunteers: The Mistakes Our Churches Are Making. So, we're going through top seven mistakes that we see small churches making all the time with the way that we work with, involve, develop, recruit volunteers. 

The first week, we talked about not asking people what they'd rather be doing. That's a mistake to not ask people what they'd rather be doing. The second week, we talked about making jobs easier in ways that actually cause people to kind of shrink back or come with less energy, so that's a mistake to make things easier for volunteers, and this week, we're stepping into something that's a little more subtle, but we're calling it treating volunteers like they're volunteers. 

So this is mistake number three, stop treating volunteers like they're volunteers. By the end of the episode, I really hope you'll notice how some small shifts in language and posture, and to me, how we internally believe and think about other people, can really shape your church culture, and how sometimes calling out volunteers, even as volunteers, can build a hierarchy that we're not intending without realizing it. Now, even as I said that, I understand that sometimes it is intended, and I would kind of like to knock that to the ground too, this particular episode is not just about systems. It's really about our beliefs and our values of each other as human beings, some of the divisions that we create that I really believe hurt our church cultures. 

And as we're talking about volunteers this month and even into the next month, this is just so foundational to me in small churches like this shouldn't be a conversation that gets ignored. This should be a conversation we are having more and more every day where we step out of doing things the way we've always done them, or being on autopilot in the way that we even develop roles within our ministry areas, and really start doing ministry more and more like Jesus every single day. 

So let's start with this volunteer language and talk about really, what the problem is with it, what it can look like in real life, where we're doing more harm than good in the way that we talk about volunteers. So one thing I just want to call out is this phrase, just a volunteer. And I know that many of you listening right now call yourself just a volunteer. I know it because I get emails that say, Well, I'm just a volunteer. Or, you know, we'll be at a conference, and people will be talking saying, Well, I'm just a volunteer. If I could eliminate that from all of our mindsets, not just our language, not just what we say, because sometimes I think we control our language. 

Maybe you are the pastor, or you're the ministry leader, and you want to help elevate people by not saying just a volunteer, if you even think it, I would like to knock that to the ground, because the reality is, the role that we have, the title that we have, the name that we call ourselves, has nothing to do with the value that we bring into a room. It doesn't. And I know you know what I mean. You have been in work situations and volunteer situations, in church situations where the people having the most impact the most the best reputations, the most kindness, the most loyalty, the best mentorship. Is not always with people who have a title. 

Think about who influenced you the most in your life growing up, it's often a neighbor, a Sunday School teacher, a parent, a wonderful relative, a friend of a friend who works down the street. Oftentimes, the people who've had the most influence on our life aren't the ones with the titles. And so I think some of this language shift starts here. It's realizing that every human being we connect with has an influence, title or no title. So could we just kind of strip out this division between the volunteer and the ministry leader, or the volunteer and the staff, or the volunteer and the pastor? And I'm not saying we don't have different roles or different levels of responsibility. 

But when we start thinking of volunteers as just a volunteer, or ourselves as just a volunteer, something happens, and I think it really cheapens our own service and our own sense of commitment responsibility, like truly, aren't we all disciples? Like, is there a higher term than being a disciple? To me, we all have the same calling in following Jesus and patterning their lives after Him, in being kind to those around us, in, you know, being committed to that whole Malachi verse that I love so much about justice and mercy and just stepping in the way that we're supposed to step. 

So when we start phrasing just a volunteer, one of the things that happens is we have this division between being a helper and being the visionary, being the one responsible and being the one who shows up to help or serve in a different sense. And you know what I believe about leadership? I believe we are all leaders. I believe we've all been called to influence title or no title. So instead of thinking as of volunteers, as the people who help out the leaders. It can become some something more of let's build this together. Instead of leading those who are following. We all become part of that team. 

There's something really beautiful that shifts when we make a difference. Here. Another thing I learned early on in ministry, people talk sometimes about how you can't really hold volunteers to commitment levels or to things because they're just a volunteer. I totally disagree with that. Completely disagree with that. I am a big proponent in let's just being clear with everyone what we are saying yes to and what we're saying no to. I believe that volunteers should have clear job descriptions. It doesn't mean that we're requiring volunteers to work 40 hours a week, but let's let our yeses be yeses, and our nos to be nos. So if we're going to commit to teaching Sunday School, to me, that's just a commitment that's being true to our word. If you're just a volunteer, you don't have less of a call to be committed to your word. 

Now we may agree to different things at different levels, but can we hold volunteers to commitments? Yes, as much as we could hold employees to commitments, because it's just about being true to our word, true to our promises. I don't believe being a volunteer means we can be less committed. I think if we say yes, we say yes, and if we say no, we say no. And we're going to have throughout this series of, you know, top mistakes we make as we lead and develop and and as we even serve as volunteers ourselves, the top mistakes, calling them out, you're going to see a lot of different levels, but this one I want to talk about today really has to do with not just mindset and verbiage, but it has to do with our beliefs about ourselves, about how much worth we bring, title or no title, pay or no pay, volunteer, ministry leader, pastor. 

When we really start looking at that value of human beings, being human beings, and knocking down some of the division, I believe we have a lot more potential to serve as the Body of Christ that we were called to serve as, where the toe has a job, and the kidney has a job, and the neck has a job. We all have different jobs in different ways, but we're all committed to the same body. 

Sometimes, when we think about labeling volunteers as volunteers, I'll tell you some of those subtle things that it can protect on the side of pride, or control, or authority or hierarchy, it really does or can protect control. It can protect authority. Sometimes it can protect predictability. But I don't think we're really called to protect those things. There's a lot of damage that this just a volunteer mentality can do, not just in the church as a whole, but in all of us as volunteers as well. As individuals. When we treat volunteers like helpers, think about this, when we treat volunteers like helpers.

Laurie Graham  10:12 
We shouldn't be so surprised when they act like helpers. So helpers aren't as significant. Helpers are great, but they can be filled in by other helpers, and this is where I think we're causing some damage. What if we elevated volunteers to team members or partners instead of a sign up sheet? Can you bring this? Can you do that? So what does this look like, or what could it look like? So treating volunteers as partners, or elevating people servants, people on sign up sheets as partners, changes a lot. One of the things that changes is you have more shared voices in conversations, the language that comes out in public can elevate people instead of minimizing them. 

We're raising people up as people who are contributing to the vision, to the initiatives, to the impact, not just helping out the few who are promoting the cause, when we have a Women's Ministry leader and a Women's Ministry leadership team and then people who help, do you see the difference? Like, why don't we level that out a little bit and work to do ministry with everyone instead of for or to them. It also helps decision making get distributed in a really different way, instead of being hoarded. Now I know for those of you who make decisions like, sometimes it feels like a burden, or sometimes it feels stressful, and sometimes we're like, I wish other people would step into this. 

But some of the way that we have divided tasks and jobs and ministries and roles with this edge of having leaders or a leadership team, and then another slew of people on the other side being labeled as volunteers or helpers, help us do our mission versus be part of the mission? Do you see the difference that this is a really clear shift. I think I started this episode by saying it's kind of subtle, and it can feel really subtle, but there is a clear shift that happens. I've seen it in churches I have served in. I've seen it in churches I have gone to visit, gone to speak at. It's very clear when everyone in the church see themselves as needed, as a piece of the puzzle, instead of being on the peripheral. 

Some of the changes that happens is in how we introduce people, how we celebrate people, inviting more people into planning conversations, instead of helping to make sure things get done, publicly crediting not just people who showed up to serve, but the people who had the ideas elevating that part, it's asking for insight. What do you think about this? What are your ideas and not just availability. Can you help do this thing that was already planned? We talk about this so much inside the Small Church Network, there's so many cultural shifts that we are watching happen that we're working toward, I don't know, kind of being part of making that happen in our own spaces and places as we share and move toward this. But can you imagine being part of and helping to build a church where volunteers are initiating ideas, volunteers are initiating different movements in the community where things aren't held so closely to a leadership kind of circle. 

Can you imagine a church where leaders aren't burning out because there is so much help surrounding them, where ministry really feels shared and not with these divisions where we stop carrying so much weight, not because we dropped it, but because we have others who are surrounding the very weight that we thought we had to carry by ourselves. This is a shift that feels subtle, that can be made in, I guess, tiny little baby steps along the way, but it has incredible impact in a church, we don't have to treat volunteers like they're just volunteers, because volunteers can carry as much significance and weight as a person who has a title or a different kind of role. I love talking about volunteers as team members. That's my favorite phrase, and I don't think it's just semantics. It's because I believe it. It's because I believe that everyone who's stepping up to serve is a valuable member of the team. Do you? I think sometimes this really is a value shift in ourselves, in how we see people. 

It's very easy to have lip service and say that, yeah, all the parts of the body are equal. We're all called to different things, but then unintentionally, we elevate people with gifts that are more public, like speaking or vision, the vision side of putting together an idea. But if we really, really believe that God has created all of us with amazing gifts, amazing things to share that contribute to making the body where we are, the church body amazing, I think I may have just said amazing too many times there. Sorry about that. This is what happens when you go off the cuff and you teach from your heart, right? 

But when you really see people that way, that's where the shift happens. It's not just in calling them something different or changing our semantics. It goes back to our heart, our values, our belief systems. When we really start seeing people for the value that they have been created to carry, I get pretty done with the hierarchy that we create amongst ourselves, not just in the churches, but also in community areas and neighborhoods, in workplaces, I understand the need for order and structure, but value. I'm going to tell you right now, when you go into church this Sunday, wherever you're at and wherever you sit? Would you just do this one thing look around you, and if there's different stereotypes that pop up in your mind for how often a certain person comes to church, or where they sit, or their lack of involvement, or their over involvement, whatever you usually think when you look around, and maybe you don't usually look around. 

I just want to challenge you to look in the eyes or at the back of the head of the person who's sitting in front of you or next to you, or to the side, and just notice and ask, God, what is this person? What is unique, what is beautiful, what is special? Because I really do believe that every single person I meet is my superior in some way. I believe we're called to learn from each individual. I believe we are better, because every individual we encounter. Can you imagine if we thought that, if we believe that, if we walked into our church this Sunday, not thinking, oh my gosh, I have to do this again. Oh my gosh, nobody's helping me. Oh my gosh. I wish this were and just notice the people around us, and started to see them the way that Jesus would see them if he walked in the room, Jesus would not be rushing by anyone. He would not be thinking some people were worth his time and some people were not. 

So is there such a thing as just a volunteer? Not in my head. So let's stop doing it. Let's stop treating volunteers like they're volunteers. Let's elevate everyone in the way that Jesus would be doing if he were walking in our churches today. So this is mistake number three, calling out for stop doing this to volunteers. Mistake number three is treating volunteers like their volunteers. So have a conversation with somebody. Share this podcast. Just say, hey, what do you think about this? Let's talk about this with a friend, with with somebody in your family, with your ministry team, with your pastor, with your board of elders. Let's just talk about this. Where are we? Where could we be, and what difference would

Laurie Graham  20:06 
it be? Would it make in our churches if we made some shifts in this area? So this was mistake number three in our stop doing this to volunteer series next week. We're talking about meetings, not meetings in a boring way. Although, you know, a lot of meetings are boring these days, but mistake number four that we're going to come into next week is I'm going to say it stop requiring volunteers to come to meetings if you already just had some feathers ruffled there. I'm totally with you.

We're going to talk about what I mean by that, and why it is a mistake, why it can be a mistake, why it is a mistake in many places these days, and how we can still build great teams, develop people, vision cast, and be the church that God wants us to be without requiring all these meetings. So all right again, share this podcast episode with somebody, and if you find some meaning and value from our podcast, please drop a review. Give us some stars, especially if you are listening on Apple. Those podcast reviews make a real big difference in how people find us and really find the help that they're looking for. So all right, we'll see you next week, until then, be a light.