4 Ways to Develop Volunteers Post-Covid

I love looking at stats. They help to show what’s trending positively or negatively and will help me adjust things in my personal or work life. Recently I saw two stats stood out to me about Ministry.

1. According to Barna, over 80% of pastors have recently said they prefer lay initiatives (volunteer driven) to new church programs. But fewer than 10% of pastors feel their church is good at developing new leaders.
2. Church attendance is down. These are stats even before COVID happened.

These are two very important stats and go hand in hand together. For instance, because Churches are raising less volunteers, people are serving less. Because of that, I believe that they are serving less, they are less inclined to stay connected to a Church, thus causing reduced church attendance.

Church attendance is down and pastors feel that their Churches are not good at developing leaders these days. So how do Churches develop volunteers post-Covid? Here are 4 ways.

1. Individually reconnect with those you’ve lost. One of the easiest ways to recruit and develop volunteers is to reconnect with those volunteers that stopped volunteering. Give them a call, set up an in person meeting, or at least email them and see how they are doing and if they would be interested in coming back to volunteer. People want to be connected and if they stopped volunteering over Covid, maybe they will want to be back if you just reconnect and ask them.
2. Set up a Volunteer Gathering. This is a bigger group gathering. In the point above, it’s more individualized. This one is to get all the volunteers, those who are currently serving and those who have disconnected. Get them together, celebrate them and cast vision for what is possible now at the Church post-Covid. Hopefully they will love being in a community again and want to serve more.
3. Think creatively. Online Volunteer options are great for people. With covid we great our Online Service Chat Host team and they continue to serve now. Think beyond the traditional volunteers roles and think creatively to meet more online or phygital roles in this post-Covid world. There are a lot of different tech roles people can be serving in today. Here are 5 of them.
4. Get the word out! People may not be volunteering because they don’t know the options you have. Post on social media, have someone share on stage, do a ministry fair, do a video, incorporate it in to a sermon series. There are lots of options you can do to recruit and develop volunteers. Like the point above, just think outside the box a little and be creative.

Volunteers are a vital part of the Church. It is no coincidence that there is lower Church attendance and there is a lack of developing volunteers. If we, as ministry leaders, are not connecting with people and letting them know of the variety of different options out there, then we will continue to have a lack of lay/volunteer leaders. As we are coming out of the pandemic fog we’ve been in, choose to be intentional about developing leaders. The more volunteers we have serving, the more people we can be reaching with the life changing message of Jesus. Develop volunteers today.

What do you think  What have been some ways you developed leaders post-covid? Share your thoughts below or on social media using #ymsidekick when you share. We’d love to know what you are excited about doing. 

Do you want to learn digital tools to help expand your reach in ministry? Join the Digital Bootcamp Facebook Group where you can learn and grow with other ministers.