The 5 Keys to a Sustainable Volunteer System | Ep 31

Most churches don’t struggle to find volunteers.
They struggle to keep them.

If you want help building the systems your church needs to create a sustainable, life-giving volunteer culture, learn more about joining our RSG Mastermind here: https://www.readysetgrowchurch.com/pricing

In this conversation, Scott, Hunter, and Mark break down the five keys to building a volunteer system that actually works—one that develops people, supports real life, and scales as your church grows.

This isn’t about filling roles.
It’s about building a structure that sustains healthy teams.

Healthy churches don’t just recruit more people.
They build systems where people grow.

Timestamps:
00:00 Why volunteer systems break down
00:55 The burnout cycle most churches miss
01:40 “Lifetime commitment, no appreciation”
02:20 Why volunteers end up leaving
03:00 The real problem: filling roles vs developing people
03:45 The 3 outcomes of a healthy system
04:10 Key #1: Sustainable (why solo roles fail)
05:10 Key #2: Significant (does it actually matter?)
05:30 Key #3: Suitable (gifting + season of life)
07:00 Why seasonal commitments change everything
07:20 Key #4: Satisfying (people should want to serve)
08:00 Key #5: Strengthening (serving should grow people)
08:40 The mindset shift: people are the mission
09:45 How to evaluate your current system

If you have a question or topic you’d like us to tee up on a future episode, email us at hey@readysetgrowchurch.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:11

Hey my friends, today's episode is going to be a little bit different than usual. Uh we recently recorded a brand new five shifts training, and this is part of our new mastermind that we've got, and it's really focused on a few of the specific changes or what we call shifts that you as a leader, your church is going to need to break through some of the most common growth barriers. So instead of just keeping it inside the mastermind, we wanted to pull out a few of those conversations and share them with you here, and that's what you're gonna hear in this conversation to follow. If you want to go a little bit deeper on this, then you can find out more about the mastermind in the description below. All right, let's dive in. All right, so we're talking about volunteerism, and really what we're what we're hitting here is that we want people to be on mission. Sure. It's just investing time, talent, and treasure. And the overall mission is helping lost people get found, found people get discipled. One of the key areas that we're being able to recognize that and help people is the work of the local church. And Ephesians tells us hey, it's part of our role as pastors to equip the saints. Right. And it's not just so that they can do stuff, it's so that the church can mature. And so there's a there's a deeper dive in this later on, but we want to hit a couple things on this, especially when it we're talking about healthy team shift. We want to hit the framework and then we want to hit the characteristics of what a healthy model would look like.

SPEAKER_01 1:33

Yeah, and like you're talking about, we have more inside of our library that you can go in a deeper dive, but we want to get you off on the right foot. Can you talk about like the three-part model to basically have a lot of I like that?

SPEAKER_02 1:45

I want you to hit that, but I was just thinking right here of the whole way this even came about is because we kept having problems in the church with volunteerism, people coming in, people wanting to stay in, people dropping out, burnout, all people.

SPEAKER_00 1:59

It was like churn, burn, and turn. It was like, yeah, oh, there's a new crop, let's get them in. Then we would burn them out, and then we'd turn to the new crop.

SPEAKER_02 2:05

So I told Mark, I said, Mark, you got to go go get some of our key leaders, those who are really in heart and soul with us, and find out, you know, what's the problem, what do we need to do? And you asked them, what did you say?

SPEAKER_00 2:16

Yeah, we just sat around the table and I said, Look, we know we have a problem, but let's just see if we can get a beat on what we think are the characteristics of our current volunteerism model. And I said, just write down five words. Everybody write down five words. So we went around the room and everybody wrote down five words, and there was a lot of good stuff. But I remember that one person, a guy that had been in our church for like 15, 20 years. Yeah, he had been on staff, he was currently volunteering. Nobody was more in, nobody was more on mission. And he said these five words. Lifetime commitment, no appreciation.

SPEAKER_02 2:50

And and that's when when that came out, it was just kind of like, man, I it it wasn't like, man, that's insulting, as much as I think that made some up kind of how it is. It's like people felt like once I get in this job, I'm stuck here, I have to be here, they're counting on me. And the problem with that kind of culture is you start having people who are serving every service or every week, and they're never going to church. So, in order for them to even get healthy, they have to actually not just quit their job in the church, they probably have to quit the church and go somewhere else. That's right.

SPEAKER_00 3:19

And then they probably already quit things that are going on in their in their life and stuff. And so, and then build a framework that's better than helping them.

SPEAKER_02 3:27

But I think the key on this too is it was because our framework sometimes was we need people in these positions, and we we were just trying to shove people in there the best we can. And I think the problem is we weren't thinking about helping people discover their calling, their gifting, all of this, and then help them to find that place of purpose to fill it. It was more of like, we need your help, get in here, instead of we want to help you find your place.

SPEAKER_01 3:51

Yeah, and so the this is what uh really painted the picture of the three outcomes of what kind of model we wanted. We wanted something that was duplicatable because we're here to make disciples. Exactly. We wanted something that was scalable. So as we continue to grow bigger, it doesn't break. Right, right.

SPEAKER_00 4:07

And then you don't want to have to recreate the whole thing over. You want it to be scalable.

SPEAKER_01 4:11

Could this uh balloon up and actually still hold, right? And the last thing was is it testable? Like have calendarized feedback loops to understand where people are at because we don't want to go uh a year or two years or three years and then have people say those are the five words again.

SPEAKER_00 4:28

We were inviting them into the process of we always want to be on the hook for this being a healthy volunteerism model.

SPEAKER_02 4:35

So I love what you did because we went from the five words that were negative to okay, what five words do we want the culture to be? And that's how we came up with the five S model.

SPEAKER_01 4:45

Okay, so I'm gonna say the word, and then if somebody's hearing this for the first time, can you guys explain what that means? Okay. So the first one is the first S, and there's really five S's here, okay? Because you're a pastor and you have to make it catchy.

SPEAKER_00 4:58

You gotta do alliteration, you gotta do it.

SPEAKER_01 5:00

And so the first one is sustainable. What does sustainable mean?

SPEAKER_00 5:03

Yeah, I think for sustainability, it has to be done in teams. It can't be solo because you don't want a person to uh have a role that becomes their personhood. And we always want to be about making disciples, and so part of that sustainability is I need to be recruiting and training the my own people that are coming in, invite friends and family to be on this journey. And the key thing for sustainability, you mentioned this a minute ago, it actually has to fit in my normal life for this season.

SPEAKER_02 5:30

Yeah. Like we want them to go to church and be in service and be able to worship the Lord and serve.

SPEAKER_01 5:37

We want them to be able to be with the serving in the nursery, haven't been to church in eight months. Right, right.

SPEAKER_02 5:42

We don't want that.

SPEAKER_00 5:43

That's not sustainable.

SPEAKER_01 5:44

Next one is significant.

SPEAKER_00 5:45

Can you explain significant? Yeah, this is an interesting one because it has to have value not only for me. Because there are people that will come to your church or that in your church go, hey, we need to start this volunteer as a ministry or we need to do this uh particular thing. And it may or may not have value. You know, basket weaving in certain cultures is a tremendous value. In our culture, it was not. And so it has to have value not only for me, but it also has to be something that's valuable to the people we're serving here. Right.

SPEAKER_01 6:14

In the eyes of the person doing it.

SPEAKER_00 6:15

That's exactly right.

SPEAKER_01 6:16

And so, in that, um, what we want to go to next is suitable. Is it suitable for me and my lifestyle right now? Can you explain that?

SPEAKER_02 6:24

Yeah, that's like does it fit your gift setting? Does it fit your personality? Because some people are more extroverted, some people are more introverted. In the season of life. Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 6:34

I think that's the unlock that sometimes we'll miss a lot of times. And this is where if you have a healthy volunteer as a model, every single volunteer has to have someone who is responsible for them.

SPEAKER_01 6:47

Yeah, I mean, even inside of this, Mark, let's just say that me and Mark are as close as we can be on uh giftings and what we like. But here's a huge difference between me and Mark. I have a two-year-old and a four-year-old, and you are an empty nester. Very different seasons of life.

SPEAKER_00 7:05

It changes everything, but you know what's funny about church people is they'll say yes to things sometimes out of guilt, or they'll recognize the need. They want to be loyal. And if I don't personally know your season of life as a leader, I don't know what you're going through, and I'm not close enough to you. What'll happen is I'll ask you to say yes, you'll say yes. But if I'm not aware of that two-year-old and four-year-old and what you guys are navigating through, you'll actually hurt yourself. You could hurt your marriage, you could hurt your relationships with your family if I'm not close enough to understand your season of life.

SPEAKER_02 7:47

It was like, hey, can you serve this fall? We would look at this season from this or this year, you know, school year. Yeah. And then you re-up for the next year.

SPEAKER_00 7:57

Well, that feedback loop that we talked about, that that means three times a year, we're getting feedback from you. Hey, how's this season working for you? Because we would actually have all of our volunteer, uh, all of our volunteers.

SPEAKER_01 8:08

Could we run it back for another season, or what adjustments would we need to make?

SPEAKER_00 8:11

That's exactly right.

SPEAKER_01 8:12

All right, next one is satisfying. And we called this the James Brown principle. What does this mean?

SPEAKER_00 8:16

I remember when Paula said, Hey, what about satisfying? What if every volunteerism opportunity was satisfying? She goes, It's kind of like James Brown. I feel good and I knew that I would. And I remember jumping up and going, that's it. Gosh.

SPEAKER_02 8:28

Yeah, they're getting in their car, coming to church, and instead of going, like, oh man, I'm on the schedule this week. It's like, hey, I get to serve this week. I get to, man, I cannot wait to do what I'm supposed to do. I know this is gonna be good.

SPEAKER_00 8:43

And then when they finished and they're walking out the door, they're going, Golly, I knew it was gonna be like that. Yeah, I think that's really key.

SPEAKER_01 8:49

All right, last one is strengthening.

SPEAKER_00 8:51

Yeah. This is another one of those unlocks. If we're on the hook for making disciples, our model is to help people grow, then their volunteerism opportunity should characterize that they in this season, whatever that season was, they grew in their relationship with God, they grew in their relationship with people, the people around them, and they grew in their skill set.

SPEAKER_02 9:11

Yeah. How many people have worked with this that they've said, man, I love serving here? It I learned things from you guys on leadership or management or function or relational skills or equipping skills that I use at the office now. I just did a presentation of hardware. 100%. All of that is strengthening. So, in other words, it's like this. The mindset that I had young in ministry was God's given me a vision and a calling, and that I'm gonna get as many volunteers as I can to function in such a way. I need you all to do this so we can fulfill my vision as if they were machinery to accomplish my vision until God confronted me and said, Hey, that is not what I've called you to do. I haven't given you a vision to complete, to use people to make it happen. I've given you a vision that's really about helping those people discover their gifting, their calling, and their what I've given them to do and to help them to be strengthened by being positioned to do it.

SPEAKER_00 10:08

So he moved you from the mindset of people are machinery to fulfill mission. No, people are the mission. They actually are the mission.

SPEAKER_01 10:17

Okay, so let's go over this one more time: the 5S model. Instead of the five words of lifetime commitment, no appreciation, the five words that we would love to go after is sustainable, it's significant, it's suitable, it's satisfying, and it's strengthening. And maybe there's people here that are listening to this and they're like, okay, I want that. How do I put this into action? What would you say is the activation for you?

SPEAKER_00 10:41

Well, I think the very first thing is you want to assess your current reality against those five S's. And you could do that by just writing the words down, and then with you and the team just going, okay, uh, if it's red, is it a yellow? Is it a green? A green would mean that this is definitely a characteristic of what we do. People would say this about it. That's right. Uh yellow would be, hey, sometimes true, but we actually have some work to do. Yeah. Or red would be, no, we're actually hearing a lot different than this particular characteristic.

SPEAKER_01 11:11

And do you think that you could probably break this down by even department, or is it like a one-in-all grade?

SPEAKER_00 11:17

Yeah, I think first of all, let's start, let's start at the overall, kind of the overall field. That's what we did. And then we recognized there were three or four departments that were pretty red, and we found one that was super green, and we actually took what we were seeing and that things they were doing and transposed it over to the other departments.

SPEAKER_01 11:35

So I'd start generally and then I'd start diving into each. Okay, Dad, give us a final word on this of encouragement of okay, this is not defined our culture, but I want it to be. Uh, what was a final thought here?

SPEAKER_02 11:47

Well, I think the what comes to my mind right now is how many people might be listening to this. And as a pastor, you're going, like, I want us to have a good culture. I want us to have a great dream team feeling where everybody goes, like, man, I'm part of the team. I want to have that momentum. I love it when I go to other churches and see it in them, and it makes me jealous because they're just all, man, I love this place. And yet our people feel drained or lack of. Listen, you won't become something because you hope to become it. You will become it because you've defined what you want to become. Evaluate the distance and the gap between who you are now and what you want to become. Make that known to everybody and say, let's work together to become that. I think that's why the five words became so important to us because it became a clear picture of definition of who we wanted to become and who we were determined to evaluate ourselves against.