I didn't always work for the church. I consider myself, in many ways, the accidental pastor. I set out to become a high school English teacher who would move into administration. Well, kind of. I didn't really set out to do anything - but that is another story.
But I did land in education and I spent 17 years working with kids or with those who work with kids - as a teacher (public and private), a board member, and a principal.
During this time, I worked mostly with employees, not volunteers. There are advantages to leading employees - they pretty much have to perform in order to receive a pay check. There is an internal, intrinsic motivation to move the organization toward success - "If I don't do my job, I will lose my job." There was also a freedom to lead in that environment because there was a stated agreement - you are being paid to do your job and I am being paid to make sure you are doing it well. If I push you to improve in that environment, it is expected and normal.
When I left education to work for The Journey as the family pastor I found the rules had changed. I didn't have any paid staff. I was it. But the job was so big, I needed almost 200 people to pull it off (the Journey was, at that point, at two campuses and running around four services with childcare). I needed an army of volunteers.
Obviously the problem of recruitment hit my radar first -if I didn't figure out how to recruit, and recruit quickly, the ship was going to sink - and take me with it.
Once I had my people recruited I had to figure out how to train them and motivate them to do more than just show up. I didn't join the church to suddenly start doing second-rate work with children - I wanted to build the highest quality children's program possible.
The second problem that confronted me, then, was that I needed to adjust the locus of motivation. I was asking people to sacrifice time, energy, and creativity to do a job for which they had not been trained and were not being paid.
In fact, my volunteer leadership team put in 20 to 40 hours a week to help me push Journey Kids toward excellence - completely unpaid. How could I ask them to do so much and not compensate them? How could I keep them motivated?
Connected to that I needed to adjust my own attitude - because I discovered that I was developing habits (seemingly innocent - and even "nice and noble" habits) that were undermining my own efforts to solidify my team and motivate them toward greater quality and effort.
The final problem (the one that almost sank me) was how to keep the team up and running once they had been recruited and trained. No one wants to stay on a sinking ship - and no one wants to be sucked into a black hole where they will be used, drained, and then discarded.
So, my plan is to follow this post up with at least three more that explore in brief the things I learned in my three years as family pastor in regard to recruiting and leading a team. I hope the things I share will be of benefit to you.
But I did land in education and I spent 17 years working with kids or with those who work with kids - as a teacher (public and private), a board member, and a principal.
During this time, I worked mostly with employees, not volunteers. There are advantages to leading employees - they pretty much have to perform in order to receive a pay check. There is an internal, intrinsic motivation to move the organization toward success - "If I don't do my job, I will lose my job." There was also a freedom to lead in that environment because there was a stated agreement - you are being paid to do your job and I am being paid to make sure you are doing it well. If I push you to improve in that environment, it is expected and normal.
When I left education to work for The Journey as the family pastor I found the rules had changed. I didn't have any paid staff. I was it. But the job was so big, I needed almost 200 people to pull it off (the Journey was, at that point, at two campuses and running around four services with childcare). I needed an army of volunteers.
Obviously the problem of recruitment hit my radar first -if I didn't figure out how to recruit, and recruit quickly, the ship was going to sink - and take me with it.
Once I had my people recruited I had to figure out how to train them and motivate them to do more than just show up. I didn't join the church to suddenly start doing second-rate work with children - I wanted to build the highest quality children's program possible.
The second problem that confronted me, then, was that I needed to adjust the locus of motivation. I was asking people to sacrifice time, energy, and creativity to do a job for which they had not been trained and were not being paid.
In fact, my volunteer leadership team put in 20 to 40 hours a week to help me push Journey Kids toward excellence - completely unpaid. How could I ask them to do so much and not compensate them? How could I keep them motivated?
Connected to that I needed to adjust my own attitude - because I discovered that I was developing habits (seemingly innocent - and even "nice and noble" habits) that were undermining my own efforts to solidify my team and motivate them toward greater quality and effort.
The final problem (the one that almost sank me) was how to keep the team up and running once they had been recruited and trained. No one wants to stay on a sinking ship - and no one wants to be sucked into a black hole where they will be used, drained, and then discarded.
So, my plan is to follow this post up with at least three more that explore in brief the things I learned in my three years as family pastor in regard to recruiting and leading a team. I hope the things I share will be of benefit to you.
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