Mobilizing & inspiring volunteers

Lee Stephenson: 00:00:00

Welcome to Unfiltered Podcast. Real conversations about church planting. My name is Lee Stevenson and I have the joy of serving Converge in the church planting movement.

Danny Parmelee: 00:00:19

My name is Danny Parmelee and I oversee church planting for Converge Mid America.

And today we're going to be talking a little bit about volunteering and giving, maybe kind of that next level kind of, you know, beyond just how things start out.

And Lee, you're kind of, you're past that one year mark in your church plant now, so I'd love to even hear just a little bit of your experience, first of all, maybe even just saying where things are at. I mean, usually people that are kind of excited in the beginning, if you've kind of seen that maybe dip down or how you kind of keep people engaged.

Lee Stephenson: 00:00:52

No, I appreciate it. I find in the church plane where both church plants that are done, maybe you found it as well.

The early energy is what keeps you going that first year. Like, I didn't find it too difficult to get people from the launch team to serve and from the launch team to start giving.

The challenge happens when you're about that year mark, and now you have a lot of new people and your launch team hopefully is outnumbered by the number of new people that have come in going, this is my church. But they still just sitting there and like to be comfortable and they're not getting in the trenches. That's exactly kind of where we're at.

When we hit that one year mark, we realized we started running some numbers. Majority of our giving was still coming through launch team members and maybe a few added families.

And yet the size and the scope of our reach and impact was dramatically more than what our finances were keeping up with at that point. And then only 10% of our regular attending attenders were actually serving on a regular basis.

The statistic is about 40% is what you want to aim for, for health and making sure all the infrastructure and the foundation and programming can run and operate the way that they were meant to. It's going to take about that. And so we were dramatically behind where we needed to be in the grand scheme of things. But that's normal.

And I think that's what I want church planners to understand.

Like, that is fairly normal as you move beyond that launch phase of a church and you're having to transition your people from launch team to now, what does it mean for us to be an actual church? And I think you've got a couple things that come to my mind is you've got to create the opportunity You've got to share the vision.

And there's two ways to share the vision. Like, you can focus on need or. Or you can focus on the opportunity and greater impact.

I would encourage any listener, you know, if you're in that moment, like, don't go with the need. The challenge is if you only focus on the need, the need will always be there.

And you may get people, you know, serving for just a moment to fill that immediate need, but eventually you wear your people out because the need never actually gets dealt with. And it's like, yeah, this is a normal part. Every fall he has his need and we just.

Danny Parmelee: 00:03:10

So you're saying they shouldn't be begging for children's ministry workers and just say, man, we're just so low. And if you love Jesus and you love children, you would at least sign up for this next month.

Lee Stephenson: 00:03:23

Exactly, exactly.

And, you know, this just even two Sundays ago, we had this conversation with our church, and I just asked our church, I said, we're at the point in the life of our church where we've. We got to where we were because of the initial group of people that stepped up. And then I just told the storyline of our church.

I talked about starting in our living room and how many people we had and we prayed and we dreamed about this church that would impact our community. And then I showed a picture of the group the Sunday before we actually had our grand opening.

And I said, you know, that 30 people grew to this, you know, 75 or what it was of people that were committed before they even knew any of this would exist or that many of you would even walk into this room. And lions have been changed. And now we baptize this amount of people.

And I tell you what, those 70 people are running hard, and they've been running incredibly hard, and they've been carrying a torch into the dark world with really a sense of the unknown. And here we're at a point in the. The moment of our church where they're not going to stop running.

Danny Parmelee: 00:04:28

Yeah.

Lee Stephenson: 00:04:29

But they are dipping their torch to us going, would you light your torch and follow me?

Danny Parmelee: 00:04:33

Yeah, I'd love to. I'd love to hear about that. So do you hear? Well, a couple different things.

So often we hear original launch team, by year and a half, two years, some of those people tend to drift.

Lee Stephenson: 00:04:45

Or leave either because, yeah, about 50%.

Danny Parmelee: 00:04:47

You know, so have you experienced some of that? And then the ones that have stayed, what do they. When they hear the 10, are they ex. You know, like.

Well, yep, we're the core, we're the committed or it's like, man, I, I am a little tired and I do, I, I want to not create this consumeristic church where there's just a few people doing all of the work.

Lee Stephenson: 00:05:11

Yeah, I, I think you got to prime the pump with them ahead of time and help them understand, like reiterate, celebrate. Thank you guys. We wouldn't be where we are without you. And every weekend you're serving, people's lives are being changed and I don't want you.

And so you got to set it up so they don't forget why they're serving in the first place. And it is easy to do when you get tired. Then I think beyond that, you challenge them to find and recruit the next person to come serve with.

Danny Parmelee: 00:05:37

That's great.

Lee Stephenson: 00:05:38

And because the reality is that word of mouth, that personal relationship is the thing that will get people in the door. And so I always am constantly asking them, like, who's one or two people in your connection?

Maybe you've, you've gotten to know them in the last two months because they're dropping their kid off in your classroom every week and you really like them. Why not engage them? And about what?

Maybe they could give a day, a month or a Sunday, you know, an hour a month to serve in the children's classroom with you during that time period or guest services or what, you know, worship team, all that. Those people tend to stick. Yes, we, we've had some natural attrition which you're going to have.

Life happens, you know, people move, relationships change. People realize that's not quite the church I thought it was going to be.

You know, I think for instance, we had one of our top givers that came in probably about the six month mark and got all in. We're serving, we're engaged. That just left the church.

And the reasoning was we, we didn't realize you were a church, that we're going to reach non Christians. And we went, I don't know how you could have missed that because that's all we talk about. And they said, well, is it going to change?

No, that's never going to change. And they literally, we want a church that's just going to focus on Christians. I said, that's fine, that's not us.

And it was a real eye opening for them in that moment.

And we had to be at the place where like, are you going to compromise your vision to keep my number two giver in the life of the church or is it okay to be able to Say, hey, go bless another church. We appreciate the six months that you gave us.

Danny Parmelee: 00:07:17

You should have convinced them you can go somewhere else, but if you could just send your tithes back.

Lee Stephenson: 00:07:20

I tried, I tried, but they weren't at that point ready to dive in there. But, you know, when you challenge your people, you create that moment. You. You're hoping to mobilize them.

If you mobilize them and you inspire them, you. You've got to have that next step right away. And that's, that's where I find a lot of guys fall short.

Like, most church planters aren't short on inspiration, but it's then making sure that next step and that the next step is very, very easy for them to take.

Danny Parmelee: 00:07:52

Can you give an example? Like, what, what do you mean?

Lee Stephenson: 00:07:54

Yeah. So when I had this conversation with our church and talked to them about, hey, light the torch, come follow us, and here's.

Here's what it means to partner. So I labeled three things.

One is just pray, Be a prayer partner, Pray for our staff, pray for our leadership, pray for God's wisdom and great opportunity to continue to reach our community. Said number two, be a volunteer. Partner with us in volunteering. And then what we did is next step was when you exit.

Today we have tables set up for the key areas of being able to serve in our life, of our ministry. They also had a card that coordinated each one of those tables that gave them a little bit of information. And then we.

We found the person that was kind of like the face of that area ministry, where they would realize, oh, yeah, I. I see that person every Sunday when I come in.

I didn't realize your guest services, okay, and, and then we just challenge them, like, stop by every table and just get to know somebody and pray about it. Figure out a spot for you to be able to just serve.

And then we're keeping those tables out for two more weeks after that, and we'll reiterate and engage it. Week one, we had over 50 people sign up to volunteer for the first time. That's great.

And the excitement of it, like, we actually shut the service down 10 minutes early. Didn't do a closing song and that kind of stuff. So we gave people time and we told them, your children are fine.

Don't worry, don't go get your kids right now. You've got 10 minutes just to sit and engage and talk and find a good spot.

I can't tell you how many people I had walking out going, pastor, pastor, pastor, I'm going to serve on the Guest services or I'm going to serve on the worship team. And they were just excited to have an opportunity to be a part of what we were doing on our mission.

Danny Parmelee: 00:09:42

That's really great. I want to chime in here so that people hear this again because I think this is really, really important.

You made it a part of the service and even the actual sign up as part of the service by taking something else away in comparison to if you're interested in serving, come back at 3:00 exactly. We'll give you free pizza. Okay. I don't need to come back, you know. Yeah, crappy pizza that you have to drive back.

So you actually made it part of the service and you have the initial vision, excitement that can translate right into that time and for all if they came to church and most people have their plans afterwards, okay, and then I'm going to stop at Home Depot and then I'm going to do this and then I'm going over to Aunt Whatever's house. So it's like you've already said, man, we already know we've got you from this time to this time. So I'm going to put it right into there.

So I just think that that's huge. I want everyone to kind of hear and not saying that that's the only way that you can do it.

But anytime you're asking people to stay longer from what's already in their expectation, in their schedule and definitely the whole coming back thing is also difficult. The other thing I'd say too is that you set it up in the hall with a kind of non threatening booth style in comparison.

I know there's a lot of stuff with like the growth track and you know where it's like we're going to bring you to this room and you're in this like closed room for 30 minutes, an hour or you don't even say how much time you're going to.

Lee Stephenson: 00:11:14

Be there and you can't get out.

Danny Parmelee: 00:11:15

Can'T get out or you look weird. Where this is kind of like, hey, it's a, it's a fair. You're going by. And you know what? I, whatever I do, I do not want to go by the children's table.

I only want to go by this one or the other person that wants to go to every single booth. Then they kind of have that choice. You're creating this freedom. And so I just, I think we.

Lee Stephenson: 00:11:33

Made sure every like every table looked the same, but we had balloons, we made it look nice and made it look appealing. Made sure very warm people are at all the tables. And then we even incentivized it.

We told people like if you sign up just to engage a conversation about serving in an area, we're going to give you a ticket. And then we're basically doing a drawing out of all the names that did that.

And we just told them like yeah, it's a bribe but none of us are against that either. So make it fun. Yeah, make it fun. And, and, and so people got to walk away with different free items and things of that sort.

Danny Parmelee: 00:12:06

Can I ask, how did you prepare the people at the tables? I know you said you did pick, you wanted to make sure you had your best people there, but how?

Because I know that leaders of teams, sometimes they feel desperate and so they're like no, no please, like I am begging you. So they go right to the begging part. How did you kind of.

Lee Stephenson: 00:12:24

I just told them share their story. Why, why they serve week in and week out what they love about their area and just invite them to just join you in that process.

And adamant like the goal is to get them just experience what it means to serve. And it may not always be in your area of ministry but it may be. You have no idea. This could be a future elder. This could be a future.

This, this, this could be a future pastor, missionary. You just don't know this is a beginning work of what God may be doing in their life. And so invite them in and just have fun with it with, with them.

Be you try not to be somebody else. You don't need to oversell them.

I already took care of inspiring them and, and, but then the biggest thing was the follow up was probably the biggest coaching piece was you have 48 hours to follow up with each person that signs up in your area of interest. And it needs to be personal. I don't mind if you send them an email but you have to have a personal connection within that 48 hours.

Meaning you call them or you text them and you know, base kind of read who they are and what their personalities are. But they need that personal connection point. That was a requirement. Like that was a must. And coaching them through what's the next step.

Invite them to just serve with you so they can see what it looks like, you know, so guest services like hey, why don't you just come to our morning huddle. We have a morning huddle at 8:45. You get to hear a little bit of where we're going with the day and then we'll actually focus in on Guest services.

That's a great opportunity to meet the team and just see a little bit of behind the scenes, all the different aspects of what we do on the guest services team. Very non threatening again. And. But it's building relationship and the relationship is what keeps people serving.

Danny Parmelee: 00:14:10

Yeah, that's great. Now did you see any uptick in giving or is that too early to kind of see or any people said no, I've never actually been.

Lee Stephenson: 00:14:18

Yeah, it's a little early to tell. We had a little bit and we'll see over time. But that, that was the third piece we asked them partner with us was financial, be a financial partner.

And then we just describe what that means. It means if you're giving nothing, we said would you give something?

If you're giving something, would you become a significant giver, meaning become percentage? So you said it and you just have to even walk them through it. That means, hey, maybe 2% of your income you're setting aside.

And then we said, you know, third would be if you're significant, consider becoming a tither. And I defined what it means to be a tither. And I said, hey, let me talk to you.

If you're a tither, what would it look like to go beyond that and become a sacrificial giver?

And I said, I'm not as worried about the amount of money that's coming in as I want to see how many people are participating on our mission and supporting the mission financially. And so we count giving heads and I update them on a quarterly basis. Hey, this is where we were last quarter. Here's where we are this quarter.

And, and we celebrate it when we see an increase in how many people are participating and supporting our financial for us financially in the mission. And, and sometimes you have to even be more prescriptive with your people where you got to kind of read them. I'm going to do that this week.

I'm going to. So I set them up with a broader stroke.

I'm going to get more prescriptive this Sunday and just talk about, hey, what we need is we need 10 families that would increase their giving by $50 a week. Like that's what I mean when I say prescriptive. Yeah. To make up the difference of kind of where we're at, where we, where we need to be. Cool.

Danny Parmelee: 00:15:55

Well, I think we should do maybe a, maybe a whole podcast on just talking about just increasing giving because I think we got a ton of stuff there on the volunteering stuff, very concrete ideas. I think we could do some more with stuff.

Lee Stephenson: 00:16:08

Fantastic friends. It's been fun having real conversations about church world and church planting. This has been the unfiltered podcast. Until next time, keep it real.