The workhorse of any church is the volunteer. In fact, some of the largest churches have thousands of them. As a result, many pastors find themselves asking two questions: “How do we get more volunteers?” and “How can we keep the ones we have?”

I just finished reading Volunteers That Stick by Jim Wideman. Jim oversees the children’s ministry at Church on the Move (Tulsa, OK) which serves over 75 classes for kids each week with the help of more than 900 volunteers. He has harnessed his experience into a comprehensive resource on getting volunteers, keeping them for years of service, and every facet of volunteer management in between. A few nuggets from the book are:

• If you want to volunteers to stick around, you’ve got to create a culture where people like to hang out.
• Slick volunteer recruitment won’t make a bit of difference if once people sign up they don’t like how you do business.
• As a ministry leader, your role is to equip the volunteers in your area to do ministry effectively. You’re to be a coach - not to do all the ministry yourself.
• Your biggest temptation - and it will be your biggest problem if you give in - is to take people who are willing to serve but who haven’t been given the right abilities to work with kids.
• How long someone sticks as a volunteer, and how much that person grows, has a lot to do with you.
• If you get someone into a job where he or she is unhappy and a bad fit, it chases away people who would do a better job. Nobody wins - not you, the volunteers, or the kids you want to serve.
• You can’t pour all kinds of attention on incoming volunteers and then ignore them after they’re signed up. That communicates your ministry is all about getting new volunteers not keeping old ones.
• Training keeps your sharp people sharp.
• Train top people not just for the job they have now. Train them for the next job they want in your ministry.
• People want to see that their leader is fired up - and practicing what he or she preaches.
• When you explain, things can be fuzzy. When you demonstrate, they’re clear. You must model what you want done.
• Job descriptions save you from asking the wrong people to take a job. And it saves the wrong people from accepting those jobs.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg. The book extensively discusses a variety of topics including interviews and safety issues, and the back has sample forms and resources for you to photocopy. It is a good read for anyone looking to improve their church’s volunteer programs.