LIBERTY UNIVERSITY JOHN W. RAWLINGS SCHOOL OF DIVINITY
Discuss 5 Good Questions to Assess Your Volunteer Teams
CLED 700
A Paper Submitted to
the Faculty of the School of Divinity
in Candidacy for the Degree of
Doctor of Ministry Department of Christian Leadership and Church Ministries
By
Henry Edwin Shikuku
Lynchburg, Virginia
10/2022
5 Good Questions to Assess Your Volunteer Teams
If your church’s staff and key leaders have been impacted by the realities of the past couple
of years, your volunteers have been affected too. Be careful not to be so consumed with the
pressure to raise the number of volunteers that you don’t take time to raise the level of esprit
de corps. When the esprit de corps of your volunteer teams declines, this results in volunteers
who are dutifully faithful but at heart-level absent. The outcome is a decline in both fruit and
joy. As you assess your volunteer teams, consider these five questions to ensure your teams are
healthy, productive, and enjoy serving.
1. Do your volunteer teams serve more from obligation or on mission?
It may surprise you, but many good volunteers serve out of a sense of obligation and,
occasionally, even guilt rather than a passion to be on mission for Christ. How are your teams
doing? When you are short on volunteers, it can be challenging to get out in front enough to
lead and recruit by vision rather than by need, but vision is so important for healthy teams. Yes,
there is a need in both cases, but one carries a hint of desperation, and the other carries the
momentum of Kingdom progress.
Always start with the leader of the team.
How are they doing?
What is their motivation?
Do they need your coaching, encouragement, or training?
The leader always has a direct and immediate impact on the team.
Are your teams passionate about the vision? Do they sense their purpose in the bigger
mission of God?
Mature Christians carry a sense of responsibility to serve, but that’s different from feeling
“obligated.” Instead, being on mission carries purpose, meaning, and the knowledge that they
are partnering with God.
2. Do your volunteer teams serve according to function or lifestyle?
Function is about what a volunteer does; lifestyle is more about who they are.
It’s OK for a volunteer to start out serving according to their function, meaning the specific
tasks they need to do. Their enthusiasm, in the beginning, brings passion to their ministry. But if
they continue to serve merely by function, their passion soon fades.
Serving as a lifestyle, rather than function, is a more natural process that flows out of who
a person is, how God wired and gifted them, and the outcome is more fruit and joy. This
requires more in-depth training than just for their tasks, including a biblical understanding of
Ephesians 4:11–13, especially verse 12: “to equip his [God’s] people for works of service, so
that the body of Christ may be built up.” (See also Romans 12:4–8 and I Corinthian’s 12:4-20.)
Further, if you desire serving as a lifestyle to be part of your culture, the leaders must first
model it.
3. Do your volunteer teams serve by the checklist or engage their imagination?
Please don’t misunderstand; I so appreciate a volunteer who knows their list of
responsibilities and makes sure they happen, but there is so much more. And the more is the
fun part! When a volunteer serves beyond the basics by engaging their imagination to serve in
creative ways that make a deep and profound impact, the result is often life changing.
A volunteer’s basic checklist of responsibilities is typically five to seven really good and
important things, but the secret sauce is always in the second mile; it’s in the “above and
beyond.”
The essential list covers what is expected; the above and beyond comes from imagination
in the moment, often prompted by the Holy Spirit.
When training your volunteers, start with the “checklist,” but move quickly to a clear sense
of empowerment to use their common sense, immediate resources, and imagination to not
only meet the need but change a life. Give them examples by telling stories.
4. Do your volunteers serve independently or with great teamwork?
It’s usually easier and faster to do it yourself, to serve independently, but teamwork always
provides a bigger, stronger and more lasting effect. The reason volunteers tend to serve
independently is that great teamwork requires more communication, strategic organization,
and tremendous effort to achieve clarity and alignment. That’s the leader’s job. It’s just easier
and faster to take the ministry description and make it happen on your own, until you hit a
problem; that’s often the first realization that a team is necessary. How are you leading to
create better teams?
Here are some basics to start with.
Establish trust. The foundation of all great teams is trust. Consistency in extending grace
and care is part of this trust.
Embrace clarity of expectations. Make sure every team member knows and accepts their
responsibilities.
Ensure direction and alignment. All team members must know the direction you are
headed in and what a win looks like.
Engage empowerment. Set your volunteers free to use common sense and imagination to
serve above and beyond.
5. Do your volunteer teams perceive serving as inconvenient or fun and love it?
If you sense among your volunteers that serving is inconvenient, it’s important to get to the
root of that as quickly as possible. Something is in your volunteer culture that needs to be
corrected. It’s true that serving is sacrificial and puts others before self, but that doesn’t carry
the heart of inconvenience; serving is often a person’s greatest joy.
Sacrificial serving models the heart of Jesus, and while not always easy that makes it all the
more meaningful. I admit my bias toward serving in churches with amazing cultures where the
volunteers absolutely love what they do, but that also demonstrates that it’s possible at any
church. The process of making ministry fun is counterintuitive because it takes more time.
Adding more minutes to a volunteer’s busy calendar may seem like it makes serving even
more inconvenient. Still, the reality is that the fun, the camaraderie, the connections, and the
relationships are the very things that help a volunteer fall in love with what they do. Adding
more minutes to a volunteer’s busy calendar may seem like it makes serving even more
inconvenient. Still, the reality is that the fun, the camaraderie, the connections, and the
relationships are the very things that help a volunteer fall in love with what they do.
Resources
50 Ways to Multiply Your Church’s Leadership Capacity, a free Lewis Center resources
Coaching Congregations to Reach their Full Potential by Chris Holmes and Doug Powe
5 Disciplines of Teams that Thrive by Ryan T. Hartwig and Warren Bird
