Ministry Energy Reboot

By Renee Ruchotzke

a female appearing human washing dishes in a church kitchen.

The New Year can be a time to take stock of our lives and make adjustments to old habits, or set new goals in the form of New Year’s Resolutions. It’s hard enough to do this as individuals – it’s even harder to do as congregations. We may take time at the beginning of the year for goal setting, but we don’t always take time to evaluate how things are going and make adjustments mid-year. January board or committee meetings are a great time to do this! One thing we don’t often do is take the time and energy to examine and evaluate if “the way we have always done things,” (i.e. our congregational habits) are still serving us.

During the past few years, “staff/volunteer burnout” has been one of the biggest concerns in our congregations. As a very active member of my home congregation (as well as being UUA staff), I experience many of the same joys and frustrations of congregational life that you may be experiencing. I see lots of things that we do that make the work and experience of our volunteers and staff harder and even demoralizing. As a former engineer, I am always looking for ways to identify problem areas and make suggestions for improvement.

Here are a few things any congregation can do to help “reboot” their volunteer/staff experience:

Foster Teams, Don’t Assign Tasks

People come to church to connect, to find meaning, and to make a difference in the world. Try to get away from individuals solo volunteering, especially when the task is interconnected with other parts of congregational life.

When you have a group of people working together (preferrable alongside some social interactions such as potlucks) they are more likely to bounce ideas off each other, feel a sense of stewardship, and a sense of accountability to the task as well as the wider mission. They also can get a better sense of the big picture and consider how their decisions may impact other ministries.

Locate Decision-Making as Close to the Work as Possible

One of the biggest frustrations for volunteers is to not be given decision-making authority for the things that impact what they are responsible for. A favorite example was a budget decision in my congregation to replace our coffee urns with a Bunn® machine that makes a pot at time – with the thought that it would waste less coffee. The problem was the volunteers had to spend their coffee hour time monitoring the coffee pots/carafes and missed out on the fun social part so it became harder to get volunteers.

Give each team the ability to make their own decisions:

Budget

Once the budget is set, a team should be able to spend it without further need for approval.

Space & Equipment

The team who is responsible for greeting and welcoming people on Sunday mornings should be able to set up the entryway to help with the flow of people. The teams who use the kitchen should have shared input about how to set up the space. Membership software decisions that impact multiple groups should include everyone’s input. And so on….

Let Volunteer Teams Set Their Own Boundaries

Many of our congregations have inherited a top-down way of thinking when interacting with committees and/or teams. A typical pattern is that the board or other top leadership group writes the policies, procedures, volunteer job descriptions, and/or “charges” to a committee or team, then the documents end up feeling disconnected to the work, vague, or even too detailed to the point of micromanaging.

Instead, “trust the people” who are doing the work (as adrienne maree brown suggests) to articulate the particularities of their role and work. Encourage them to draft their own policy/job description/charge themselves, and then send it to the board for approval. (Pro tip: Don’t nitpick when approving them!)

Curate Communications

Sharing the information a volunteer needs to do their job is one of the most important ways for a leader or volunteer to feel trusted and empowered.

But we live in an age of information overload. It can make a huge difference to your leaders and volunteers to have information curated so that they get with information they need without wading through unnecessary information.

Curate Newsletters for Your Audience

Most newsletters or weekly e-blasts contain everything that is happening in the church, which can make it hard for your leaders and volunteers to notice the really important information that pertains to them.

Most newsletter platforms enable you to have different mailing lists, so you could send out a separate, less fancy newsletter to leaders and active volunteers that includes the geeky church business stuff and messages from the minister - messages that are important only to them. Being on this list could be seen as a perk of being active.

Church Website as “Reference Desk”

Along with hosting the church calendar and upcoming events, the church website should contain “member pages” on the church website for important information such as the church calendar, webpages with volunteer information and sign-up links, bylaws, policies, and other non-confidential information.

Use Shared Documents for Planning (e.g. Google Workspace, Slack, etc.)

Creating, using, and sharing planning documents using an online, real-time communication method can be a real game-changer for volunteers. For example, having a spreadsheet for worship planning that includes information that all of your Sunday Morning volunteers might need (including greeters and your tech team) can help everyone be more prepared.


Trusting and empowering our volunteers help make our churches joy-filled and meaningful!