Crucial Signs It's Time to Hire or Fire | William Vanderbloemen

In this episode of the Vanderbloemen Leadership Podcast, Jared sits down with William Vanderbloemen to talk about one of the toughest leadership decisions: knowing when it's time to add a team member — and when it's time to let someone go. Drawing on lessons from church plants, nonprofits, and businesses alike, William shares practical advice, honest stories, and leadership insights for navigating team changes wisely.

Key discussion points include:

• The Volunteer to Staff Shift: How to know when a volunteer is too vital to leave unpaid — and why delaying can cost you.

• Living on Margin: Why operating with financial margin is crucial to growing your team the right way.

• Hiring Doers vs. Leaders: How recruiting, training, and retaining volunteers is the real engine behind church and nonprofit growth.

• Avoiding Cheap Leadership: Why underpaying (or over-relying on free labor) eventually backfires — and what Scripture says about honoring laborers.

• Building a Resilient Team: Why every leader needs a "vomit list" — and how to plan for the inevitable transitions ahead.

Whether you're leading a startup, growing a church, or scaling a nonprofit, this conversation will give you practical tools for building a stronger, healthier team — one wise decision at a time.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hey everyone, welcome to the Vander Bloom and Leadership Podcast, where we help you build, run, and keep great teams. Thanks for being here. Let's dive in. Well, hey, welcome in. We're so glad you've chosen to help build, run, and keep a great team with us today. And uh we're talking about a specific issue. If you've planted a church before or led a church in a smaller context and grown it to a larger one, or maybe even a nonprofit you, or even a value-based business of when to add to the team. And specifically, William, if we want to talk to pastors and nonprofits, when we've wanted to take the volunteer to a paid staff member. Give me just your initial thoughts on how do we navigate this reality that we all face?

SPEAKER_00 0:54

Yeah, well, this is not just a church planter question. I think every pastor, every CEO of a nonprofit, even schools, uh are trying. I mean, we particularly the nonprofit in the church sector, uh, we live out of the widow's cupboard. And what I mean is the, you know, the the people who put money in the offering plate or make donations to your annual fund, uh, those are the people that are that are paying for everything.

SPEAKER_01 1:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:21

And so if you're a good leader, you're like, oh my gosh, I need to be really careful with that, right? Yep. And I think that uh church planters, especially. I mean, I'm a founder of a business which isn't quite the same, but when you first start out and you have nothing, you're like, I am allergic to overhead, I don't want to spend any money. That's right. I I remember, you know, church planters don't hire us a whole lot until they've gotten to a certain uh place. And I remember uh a church planter called me one time, he wanted to do a search, and he said, How much is that gonna cost me a month? Like he was measuring salary in monthly dollars. I'm like, first of all, if you don't have the ability to commit to an annual salary, you're not quite there yet. Yeah. Right? And that's okay. I mean, you you know, don't despise small things. Um, but I I would say first thing that comes to mind, until you think you can reasonably spend money on an annual salary, you're not ready to employ someone annually. Okay. Um, but the flip side is I think most leaders of nonprofits and churches are so used to living out of the widow's cupboard, yeah, and so used to asking volunteers to do things for them that they kind of are vulnerable. And I mean this in the nicest way, you're vulnerable to thinking you're gonna get something for nothing. And you're not. Yeah. You might find somebody who will do something for nothing. I mean, uh, golly, the stories. When I was a pastor, I'd come home from being on vacation and my lawn was mowed because somebody showed up and just to be nice to pastor had done a small thing, and you're like, yes. But what I didn't realize was just how incredibly uh dependent I became, not on people doing favors for me, but on people doing something for the church, volunteering their time. It wasn't until I was running a business and raising children and coaching soccer teams and softball teams and attending church on the weekend that I started to get a realization of what it's like to then ask somebody to volunteer 10 or 15 hours a week at the church as well.

SPEAKER_02 3:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:25

It's a big ask. And you can you can, in the name of, well, ever we're a priesthood of all believers, or we need to keep the overhead down so we can give more to missions, or you know, just the it's like in every candidate I've ever interviewed, I know this is true with me, everyone's greatest strength has a shadow side that's their weakness. Yep. And I think leaders of nonprofits and churches particularly have a strength of asking people to donate. Yep. The shadow side that's a weakness is being dependent on people giving them something for nothing, and it's just not always gonna work that way. So I I I don't think you should rush into converting someone from a volunteer to a paid position, but don't cheap out. Yeah, you kind of get what you pay for. That's good. And you know, Paul was the first one to say, let the laborer earn what he deserves. You know, let the ox eat the grain, like let the laborer be paid. So when is that the time to do it? Uh I ask a couple things. First of all, uh, do you have a volunteer you really couldn't live without? Like they are here all the time, they're doing everything. I couldn't live without them. Yeah. Well, what if they move? What if they die? What if they start going to another church? What if they're no longer here? Yeah. How are you gonna replace that volunteer? Is it gonna take 10 volunteers? Are you gonna have to hire someone? Many, many times when I was leading a church, some of the best volunteers I had, I should have salaried, and I got away with not having to do it because they didn't complain or they didn't need the money.

SPEAKER_01 5:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:07

And it bit me every time because people, just like staff come and go, volunteers do come and go. Yes. And uh even if they work until they die, they die. Like everyone on record has died. Even Jesus died. I mean, he came back, but like Yeah, it is so uh question would be just just like you, you should have every staff, every leader of a staff should have what one of my mentors called uh the vomit list. Okay. Okay, the vomit list is uh when the leader, if you're a leader, you know this. It's Friday and somebody says, Hey, can I talk to you at the end of the day? It won't take long. And you go, Oh. Because you know what that means. They're leading. Yeah, they're going to another place and you want to treat them right and deploy them well and and celebrate whatever it is God's called them to do, but you're like, oh. All right. Within the list of your staff, you should go, oh, anytime somebody has that conversation. Yep. But there are probably two or three people on your staff that if they said, Can I see you for a minute? It won't take long. You the first thing you want to do is look for a trash can and throw up. Yep. And it shouldn't be a long list, it's probably a really short list, but who is your well, I would encourage you to do the same thing with volunteers. I love it. Who are the two or three volunteers that if they said, you know, my wife has cancer now and I can't do this now? That happens, right? Or we got redeployed and I'm being stationed at Fort Bragg, I'm not going to be here anymore. That happens. You know, who are the what's your vomit list for volunteers? And if they left, how would you replace them? If they're that essential, it probably ought to be a paid position. Yep.

SPEAKER_01 6:50

That's great. That's great. Who who all is involved in that process of decision making when it comes to uh adding uh a team member, specifically a vault from the volunteer context to a paid staff employee. You know, you mentioned, I think it was either last episode or a few episodes ago, that um as the senior leaders, sometimes you want to have people who will dwindle down candidates to the final three because we can get stuck in a mode of recruitment versus discernment. Maybe talk me through that process and talk our listeners through that process of who do you involve, who do you let, who do you allow to be involved in the process of making that decision?

SPEAKER_00 7:34

Of making the decision to change it to a paid position. Yes. Yeah, I I don't think that takes everybody. Okay. Um now if you're gonna actually hire the person, you there's two parts of this equation. Do we need this to be a paid position? Yeah. And then is this person the right person for that paid position? And they should interview just like anybody else. Now, granted, you probably have a candidate pool of one, but yeah, but I I think that's two different decisions. The decision to is this a paid position, that's probably something you and and and your structure matters. If you're a Methodist, you got to talk to your SPRC, if you're Presbyterian, you gotta talk to the personnel committee, if you're running your own thing and it's a staff-led church, maybe you talk to a few trusted staff. Because what you don't want to do is start a paid position and you've got two other staff members who are like, but I needed one more tech person for the worship team, and you're putting those dollars here instead of there. So yeah, so you just be smart about the ripples that are gonna happen. But the decision to move it from volunteer to paid, that that's probably gonna rest on the senior leader. I'm gonna give you a litmus test for uh whether or not a person should be considered for moving from volunteer to okay. Are they a doer or are they a leader? So I think uh, you know, there's some parts of the church and employment in the church that are highly technical. Yeah. Uh worship leadership. You you probably don't want me being the worship leader of the church, right? Or or if you're really old, you remember Saturday Night Live, if you remember the uh Tonto, Frankenstein, and who was the other one? Tarzan singing group. Uh, and they Merry Christmas. Like you don't want that for worship. There are some technical skills. Yep. Uh your A V guys need to know how to do lights, your preacher better know how to divide the word. Yep. But the vast majority of church work we talk about build, run, keep keep a great team. The vast majority of church work is recruiting volunteers, training volunteers, and retaining volunteers.

SPEAKER_02 9:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:44

So if you have someone who's great at doing, they they help with the parking crew. And they're faithfully there, and everybody loves them because they're so charming. Yep. They're the Walmart greeter of the church. Yep. Right? That's wonderful. I don't know that I'd hire that. What it would hire is the person, the woman, or the man who can go find all those Walmart greeters, recruit them, train them, and retain them. Yep. That's great. That's the ball game in church work. Yeah. And in nonprofit work. Yeah. Right? There's some things that need you don't want an accountant for your a bookkeeper for your church that doesn't know how to do bookkeeping. Yeah. Right. So there's some things you don't want like a volunteer neurosurgeon. That's not really most of the ballgame, children's ministry, youth ministry, volunteer ministry, missions work, it's recruiting volunteers, it's training volunteers, it's retaining volunteers. And the people that can do that really, really well, you hire and you pay them whatever you need to. Yeah. I I've got a pastor friend at a very, very large church, and they're, I mean, they're growing really quickly. They're doing very well with their finances and stewardship. And he told me recently, you know, my staff comes to me and they'll say one department or another, and they'll say, uh, we need to hire three new people in this and such area. This is a massive church, right? And I'll look at them and say, Well, three new people, uh say it's a $50,000 salary, but then you got payroll tax, and then you got benefits, and then you got this, this, and this. So you're probably looking at like $225,000 total cost for those three. So $225,000. Okay, you can go hire them. Or I can give you $150,000 that you can spread around your team as salary raises. What do you want? Every time they take the raise.

SPEAKER_01 11:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:39

And that's just smart leadership. It costs the church less money and it forces the team leaders to say, how do I go recruit, train, and retain more volunteers? It's just smart.

SPEAKER_02 11:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:50

So if you can find someone good at that, like if you're if you're out in the lobby and you see someone that people are always drawn to and there's always a crowd around them, yeah, they need to be on your volunteer team. And if they volunteer in a way that they're doubling your volunteer core, you need to hire them. Even just hire them to be head of volunteer recruiting, training, and retaining.

SPEAKER_02 12:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:12

So that would be the biggest litmus test for me. Yep. Doers are really important. Don't want to diminish that, right? But if all they're doing is doing, well, that might not be a paid deal. Yeah. Unless it's a highly technical paid deal. If you've got a computer coder that's donating their time to do back end work on your system, if they leave, you're gonna have to hire somebody. So you better be ready for it in your budget, right? That's right. But unless it's a highly skilled doer, look for the people who are able to recruit, train, and retain volunteers. And when you find one that's really good, pay them, and they will more than earn their keep because they'll double your volunteer core. Here's an interesting side note. Sorry for the rabbit trail. My friend Eric Geiger, okay, pastor at Mariners. We had a great privilege of working with Mariners after Kenton B. Shore did an awesome job moving that church from a hundred people to twenty thousand or whatever the number is. It's amazing. Eric's gone in taken it higher. Before that, uh, he was at Lifeway. Before that, he was an exec pastor at a church in Miami.

SPEAKER_02 13:15

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 13:16

And he had just written a book with Dr. Tom Raynor called Simple Church. And it it's a many of you listening today will know it. And I was asking him, uh, I forget the numbers, so I'll get them wrong. Forgive me, Eric, if I get it wrong. But when he went to the church in Miami, maybe it was 1,500 to 2,000 or something like that. Yeah. And when he left, there were about 8,000.

SPEAKER_01 13:35

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 13:36

And they didn't change preachers.

SPEAKER_01 13:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:38

Like, so that didn't change. The only variable change was Eric. And I'm like, what did you do to grow the church? He said, Oh, that's easy. I said, What do you mean? He said, Anytime I wanted to grow a part of the church, I grew the volunteer base by 25% in that area of the church. Wow. And instantly the growth would come. If you grow the volunteer corps with competent volunteers, you will grow the church. So if you can find volunteers who can recruit, train, and retain volunteers, then you hire them, get them to blow up the volunteer corps. It will blow up the church, which sorry to sound jaded, but will blow up your resources and finances and ability to do other things. It will more than pay for itself.

SPEAKER_01 14:21

Yeah. It'll solve the people problems and you said the other problem, funding. That's right. In a previous episode, you mentioned that. Um I think that's and by the way.

SPEAKER_00 14:32

Oh, but William, I've got someone like that and their spouse sold their company and they're worth millions of dollars, and they don't they don't need my money. They but they'd rather give it to the mission field. Pay them and then tell them to give it to the mission field. Because guess what? They will leave you one day. They will either die or move, or something will happen, and you're gonna have a giant hole that you need filled, and you better have the money for it. Same's true with raises. Yeah. Because so many churches where the pastors, I don't need to take a raise, give it to the building fund, I don't need to take a raise, give it to the mission fund. And I we had this happen one time, pastor didn't take a raise literally for 20 years. Goodness. We came in to do his succession, super lovely guy. He's he's probably gonna have a way nicer place in heaven than I will. But when it came time to set the salary for the new pastor, they were so far out of whack they couldn't afford to make the hire. Yeah, and they had to go cut some things to get the pastor's salary where it should have been to be competitive. Yep. Compensation is not about how much can I get by on. Compensation is about how much would it cost if I had to replace that person?

SPEAKER_01 15:41

That's great. I love that thought. And it kind of goes back to um, you know, when we are deciding to add to a team, sometimes we have to do it because someone leaves a role. And it's not always we're just adding to the number, but sometimes we're adding to replace to get us back to that number. Um, what are what are some of the ways that maybe our leaders who are maybe have a someone on their team who is moving from a volunteer to a staff position? Is there a difference in the way that we're treating that person? Is there a difference in the way that we're leading them? Uh what are what are some what's some advice that we can maybe give to pastors, CEOs even, and nonprofit that when someone is moving from a valued uh volunteer to now, hey, you are on payroll here and there's a different level of expectation. What are some ways that they can handle that transition well?

SPEAKER_00 16:43

Well, I think in a perfect world, there wouldn't be much change.

SPEAKER_01 16:46

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 16:47

So what I mean by that is uh I was arguably the world's worst volunteer recruiter when I was a pastor.

SPEAKER_02 16:52

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 16:52

Okay, I'll give you one example. There are hundreds, but I'll give you one. Okay. So August rolls around, school's gonna start in three weeks, and I look up and we don't have enough volunteer for the kids' ministry. Okay. So the biggest place you need volunteers in a church with with children, right? Yes. Uh the work we do in retirement home churches, not so much an issue. It's a different thing. That's right. But but children's ministry, I look up, they're not enough volunteers. So I stand up and say something really profound like there is no retirement in the Bible. There actually is. That's for the priests, but there is no retirement in the Bible. If you're an older couple, you could volunteer at the children's ministry. Children love having grandparents around. Come one, come all, volunteer, and just issue a cattle call for all ages to come and volunteer. Do you know how many high capacity leaders listen to that and say, that's for me?

SPEAKER_01 17:43

Probably very few, if not none.

SPEAKER_00 17:46

Right. Do you know how many people that you don't want volunteering with your children answer that call? Yeah. I had no filter. I was just come one, come all. And and everybody should be able to volunteer somewhere in their church. Sure. But man, it took me so long to realize William, you are such an idiot. What you need to do is recruit volunteers more thoroughly than staff.

SPEAKER_01 18:10

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 18:11

Firing a volunteer, that's hard. Yep. Firing a volunteer usually means losing families from your church. You mean I'm not even getting paid for this and you won't let me do it. Wow. So the interviewing for volunteers should be at least as rigorous as interviewing for staff, particularly your key volunteers. Yep. Right. And one way you can can uh help with that recruitment, and also a way you can test for a paid volunteer is create a project that needs a volunteer that has a terminal end. Vacation Bible School is a great example. I like it. Or whatever you're calling it now, right? Or a big special event, or Easter, or Christmas, and you've got this job that needs to get done, and you want to put someone in charge of quarterbacking the volunteer team for that and just watch how they do. Okay. Then you've got a key volunteer that you're thinking this might be paid. Maybe find something that's a little bigger initiative, like you're having serve day for your city.

SPEAKER_01 19:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:11

Right? And you why don't you run that? But it is not fair for you, Jared, to run this whole thing and not get paid. So I'm not hiring you. I'm just saying, you know, for the next 10 weeks, run this thing, and I want to pay you this amount of money. And if you don't want to take the money, then turn around and give it away. That's fine. But I want to pay you this amount of money because it it's it's a paid job with some expectations. Yep. And and then you can watch them and it's terminal, and you can just walk away at the end of things and say, Yeah, okay, that that was that was great. Thanks so much. And if it needs to be extended into salary, you can have it. So back to your question. In a perfect world, you're so careful in hiring your key volunteers, because it's harder to fire them.

SPEAKER_02 19:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:57

That when it comes time to shift into paid, there's not a lot of difference. In fact, now they're just blessed to be, you know, on the staff and getting paid. There are some psychological differences. Uh you can volunteer to church and not have to see all of the mess that's inside the church. Yep. And there's so many, uh, everybody listening, whether it's a nonprofit or a church, they're like, I had a member and he came and loved the church and he volunteered, and then he joined staff. And once he saw that staff fight and there's politics, or we don't get along, or this goes on, or that, I just, uh, I didn't know church was like that. Yeah. So there is that piece. And when you're interviewing, I'd just be real careful to say there's a lot different volunteering at the sausage factory than working way down inside it. And we're not doing anything illegal and we're not doing anything immoral, but we are humans and we're really messy, and uh, you just need to know that going in. I it's my biggest concern when we hire for here. I'm looking for cultural fit, uh, I'm looking for competence, but my biggest concern is that we bring some poor soul in here and they get like jaded on the church.

SPEAKER_02 21:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:13

Because we get called in to clean up a lot of messes. Oh, this blew up and pastor misbehaved, and we've got we've had to fire him, and now we're gonna and we gotta untangle the knot. William, can you and your team come in and help fix that? Yeah, that happens all the time. And and if I brought somebody in who were not uh, you know, they say thick skinned, yep. If they if I brought somebody who were not thick sold, yeah, they they might they might get damaged, and that's on me. So uh the volunteer to staff thing from a paid and expectations and all that, if you're interviewing your staff the same way you're interviewing volunteers, and frankly, if you're interviewing your volunteers a little more thoroughly, okay, then there shouldn't be a big deal.

SPEAKER_02 21:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:54

Uh, but there may be uh a spiritual impact to coming on staff. That might uh adversely affect your volunteer. So that would be the expectation that I would be focused on trying to uh manage.

SPEAKER_01 22:08

That's great. Well, do you have any lasting, uh last-minute kind of words of advice for some of those who are leading teams and maybe facing this situation currently? Do you have any just last-minute words?

SPEAKER_00 22:21

Yeah, yeah. Well, so the hiring of a volunteer, every time I've done it, it's for m money that wasn't in the budget. Like, how are we gonna pay for that? We don't know. And it wasn't until later that I realized uh a lot of churches are way smarter than I am, and they'll do things like uh they'll budget for like so let's do the 2026 budget. We're gonna look at 2025's revenue and we're gonna shop 10% off it. Yep. And we're gonna operate at 90% of what we brought in last year. Yep. That way you're okay in a downturn, but it also creates a pad.

SPEAKER_02 22:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:53

Right? When in when we were very young, didn't know how things were going, but we're growing 40 and 50% a year, we would just write in the budget. Here's the budget for what we need, and then we're gonna write in the Vander X. Google has a Google X budget. And it's well, what's that for? I'm like, we don't know yet. Yeah. But we want to have margin. Yeah, that's right. Because margin creates the ability to respond to opportunity.

SPEAKER_02 23:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:16

And so if you're if you're a pastor out there, if you're a CEO of a nonprofit, margin will give you the ability to take that volunteer and hire them, and you can just pull it out of that. So I would say uh the the more you can get used to operating on less than you think you're gonna have to, the more margin you have you'll have, and the easier the actual funding of moving that volunteer to a staff will be. Because they are gonna pay for themselves, but it's gonna take a little while. So margin creates the ability to respond to opportunity.

SPEAKER_01 23:49

That's so wise. Wow. Well, thank you so much for listening. We hope that you are able to maybe make that transition a little bit smoother in your team, whether it's adding a volunteer to the team or replacing a team member that is left, you're gonna be able to do it better than ever this year. Thanks again for joining us on the Vanderblumen Leadership Podcast. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. If you're looking for more leadership resources, you can find us at Vanderblumen.com and on socials at Vanderblumen. We'll see you again next week where we continue discussing how to build, run, and keep great teams.