Latest / Church Staff Book Club / Your Volunteers Need More... They Need Significance
Transcript
- Jonathan Malm: that even the small interactions carry eternal weight. Hey, welcome back to the Church Staff Book Club. My name is Jonathan Maul. I'm Jason Young. We are now finishing our first book, the first season, I guess, of this podcast, talking about the comeback effect. We went through nine chapters. Now we're at the last one. So we've already decided what ⁓ book two is going to be. We can announce that at the end of the episode. But today's episode is about reach for significance. ⁓ I reviewed the chapter this morning, I Jason did too, and the idea is that this should be more than just doing things. It should be more than just us welcoming people, us fulfilling the task. Yeah, we talk about the idea of the feeling for the guest matters more, but really the idea is the feeling for you, the feeling for the greeter, the feeling for the usher, for the parking lot team. You should feel significant in your role. You should feel significant in what you're doing for other people. What would you say about that, Jason? I agree with you a hundred percent. Let me make a statement and then I'm going tell you a failure of where I did not do this well. whole, this whole book we've talked about creating experiences. We advocate for them. We love them. We wrote a book about them, but I think what you just said is absolutely critical. That is a piece. And we're shaping moments that matter. And you say, well, aren't the saying the same thing. But I think what we're talking about is like the inner part of you, right? We're talking about the inner part of your volunteers that these moments that you're shaping them through serving and volunteer opportunities really means a lot to them. So church hospitality isn't there to be impressive. It's really about being meaningful and what it does inside of a volunteer. Let me tell you a story. Years ago, when I first started working in Church World, I didn't know why I was doing anything wrong. But later I looked back and thought, oh, I definitely did it wrong. So I'm driven. you know, few love Clifton Strengths Finders, like Achiever is like right there for me. And so when I first started working out, working in Church, I was about to say working out in Church World, I'm like, no, it didn't work out much, but working in Church World. I was so driven, I was so focused on getting things done. I was so focused on creating these experiences that I made a really tragic mistake and the mistake was this. Then in essence, I hate to even use this phrase, but I was using volunteers to get things done. Whatever I thought should be done, they were, they helped me do that. you to use. Yeah. Instead of thinking like, this is an opportunity to develop them, invest in them, give them opportunities to love and grow and contribute. I was seeing them more of, they were helping me achieve what I wanted to do. does that also, do they do that? Yes. It shouldn't be like the all-consuming priority. It was for me in the beginning of working on church staff. As I got older, I realized what I was doing. And it's probably more of a conviction thing that Lord's like, Hey, I'm, I'm trusting you with them to steward them and invest in them. And so for me, it was a perspective and a priority shift that you're right. what you just said. We're not just showing up to do stuff. We're not just having people on our teams to help us do stuff. And in this final chapter of the comeback effect, we're talking about something bigger. We're talking about meaning. We're chasing excellence for the applause from a guest, but We're helping people understand what significance in their roles and just as a person looks like. Yeah, I think there is this temptation in, especially in growing churches to identify a go-getter, to identify a driver, someone who like, man, that guy is, or that girl is just killing it in what they do. They get things done. And so we attract those types of people to leadership. And it can veal instead of what we maybe should be doing is attracting pastoral voices. ⁓ And like you said, we need both. It's not one or the other. shouldn't just have pastoral people that are just like hanging out and like, Hey, how's it going? ⁓ yeah, we'll get to that later. You know, let's talk about your soul, right? Like it needs to be both. But if the pastoral component is not there, if that I'm trying to grow a volunteer, not grow a team, not grow a church, then yeah, we're going to They're gonna make people feel like ⁓ cogs in a machine, right? They're gonna feel interchangeable. They're gonna feel worn down. They're going to feel mechanical. And consequently, because we're talking about hospitality with this book, it does affect the guest. though they're doing all the right things, how people feel about themselves impacts how guests feel when they walk into a church. Yeah, and look, I'll admit there's this tension of you know, wanting to be polished, wanting to present well, wanting to be excellent. Like that should be, and we have to be reminded that there's this aspect of impact and significance that we're talking about for the guests, but also for the people, you know, on your team, whether it's staff or volunteers. And I don't know about anybody watching or listening right now, but if we're not careful, sometimes we can... Overlook the very people that are helping us to deliver the experience and focusing on the people who are receiving the experience forgetting That the people who first received the experience are the people Delivering the experience to the guest our volunteer doesn't mean you're no longer a guest like yeah Yeah, I think that's part of the tension. I remember a story I had a volunteer on my team and He, in fact, I think, I think the story's in the book. If not, it should have been, but I remember he came to me and he was making a decision between a related to a job. And it was a job that was, yeah. Okay. So was more money. was a ⁓ elevated position. But what was so interesting is what was keeping him from making that decision or the tension that he felt, if you will. And it was. that literal volunteer opportunity on our team that he would not be able to do that if he took this other job. And that's one of those moments of, this volunteer role for this volunteer is very meaningful. It has created significance so much so that he is using it as a filter to make a job decision. that he could have an elevated position and more money and he chose to stay because he really saw his volunteer role as something more than just I show up and do things. But in essence, it was this calling, this moment of meaningful significance for him. And so I just thought, wow, like that's what we're talking about. It's not just doing something well for him and for many others. I could tell you other stories like that. That was an element of significance and he made a decision around it. So I just thought, you know, for me like, ⁓ okay, Jason, be reminded that's what we're talking about here. Yeah, I think it's such an important thing because I think whenever you're talking about people who lead volunteers, have, they mostly have one perspective of volunteers. It is that they are canceling at the last minute. It's like pulling teeth to get them to do what we need them to do. They feel unmotivated. They would rather hang out with their friends. We have all this perspective of volunteers, right? But then I remember I met this guy. He went to work for a church, but this guy had like designed some of the former Superbowl logos. He was like a highly sought after designer and creative artist. And he took a massive pay cut to work at a church because he wanted the significance that came from working. Like he'd experienced all the success. He'd experienced all the money that he could get and it was leaving him feeling empty. And he went to work at a church instead because he wanted that significance. And that's what we have to see our volunteers as is they are giving up time. They're giving up a portion of their Sunday, a portion of their week, time that they could sit with their family, whatever it is that they're giving up, right? They're giving that up for significance. And if we see them as... I have to pull, pull, pull to get all I can from you instead of, wow, this is a beautiful gem of an individual that God has given me. I need to make sure that they're learning to feel significant, that they're growing in their relationship with Jesus, that they're all of these things that a pastor should be doing, right? That's so important. And I think we so often, because our skewed perspective on volunteers, we don't do that. All right, so let ask you question. You hinted at this. What do you think it looks like when a volunteer understands the significance of their role and how does that translate into how they treat a guest? It is most often seen, I would say, whenever someone walks in like they own the place, in a good way. have some volunteers that walk in like, I've been on this team for 20 years. You can't tell me what to do, right? Like they own the place. But then there are other people that walk in like they own the place like, ⁓ my gosh, like what's happening there? That's not my job, but I'm gonna try to figure out what's going on there. Cause that's, something is not right. Or, hey, you need to join my team and it's my team. It's not necessarily like my leader's team, right? It's a sense of ownership. Like this is my team. And because I feel so significant, because I feel like I'm growing, because I feel like I'm connected to a family, which is what we're so often trying to do on a Sunday morning or through church, that they feel like this is mine and I wanna include you in, I'm going to host you. Again, not even just like welcoming guests, but like you need to join my team because this is the best team there is. like, almost like you need to join my family, right? Like it's like whenever, you know, whenever you have teenagers and they have like a really healthy home, they're like, hey, come to my house. When they have a really healthy home, they say, hey, can I go to your house? Like I don't wanna. Right? Like, so if I'm feeling significant, if I'm feeling like, ⁓ this is good, I wanna invite people into my house, into my team. That's what I would say. Yeah. So let me ask you a follow-up question. If somebody's listening or watching right now, they lead, you know, a team, how can that leader remind their team that the smallest of interactions carry And I this is going be a cliche phrase, we're talking about significance. How does that leader remind their team that even the small interactions carry eternal weight? think a lot of it comes down to living for the celebration of things. You know, we talk about four ways in the book to start helping people see more significance. ⁓ They are be personal, empower team members, hold them accountable, and we can talk about that later, but celebrate significance over results. So often, we are trying to, and we've talked about this in previous episodes, we're trying to survive Sunday. We're trying to make sure everyone does their job, everything is done, service is over. Okay, we're done. And we forget that that's just the finish of the job. Now we have to like, in any job, right? You have the closing team, right? The team that sets things up, that tears things down, cleans, gets ready for the next Sunday, right? I think for volunteerism, the closing team should be... revving people up, hyping people up. So often we hype people up before the service, but man, what happened in our service? What actually, you know, did someone get saved that Jim said hello to for the first time? They were a first time guest. Jim, I saw Jim spend, you know, 10 minutes with them, just making them feel at home, feeling comfortable. They got saved. If we can connect those things, those seemingly, like you said, insignificant things that they're doing to what happened in the grand scheme of things. that's where you start seeing significance. And yeah, you know, okay, would they have gotten saved without Jim's interaction? Potentially, but he broke down a barrier that maybe let them finally hear him God. And that's what you say, you we don't do this to manipulate, right? Like so often the joke is we always say, we get to do this. Remember we get to do this guys. And it's like, you're trying to like, you're trying to, you know, you're trying to breathe life into a dead horse, right? Like whenever you resort to that as your only high point, but really. find the significance and you can't manipulate with this. You can't manufacture significance. You have to really mine, okay, what is the threat of significance that's happening here? And just point that out to people. Yeah, that's really good. Cause there is a temptation and maybe it's just me, but there's this temptation to aim for smooth, like smooth operations, smooth experience. And there's nothing wrong with that. But if we're not careful, At the same time that we aim for smooth, we could miss the sacred. And I think about some of the examples that you just gave, like if it's smooth that we're doing it right, but we're missing moments of like, I see you, Jonathan. I'm giving you an unhurried moment. I'm very patient with you. You you feel like that person is like, man, I'm the only person that exists. And so I love what you said. Now think about this sacred moment. And I'm like, okay, well, how do we help our teams do that? Like, are there ways to help them think? again, watching, listening, you know this stuff. And I think sometimes it's just about reminders. And I have to do this for myself. I lead a team at my church. I'm a volunteer there and I lead a team and it's, I don't know, we don't know. what someone walked in carrying. And so when we begin to think about that, it's like, okay, that makes it more human. And when we think about, we don't know how long it took them to come. How long did they drive? How long was the decision-making process? Did they start on Tuesday and try to talk themselves out of it and made a decision five minutes before they walked out the door? Did they have to get, you know, just themselves ready or three kids ready or? Did they have a spouse that was like, don't want to get, you we don't know what it took. And then I think about, we don't know what one kind moment could mean to them. Kind could be listening, kind could be the tone we use, kind could be, you know, helping them with next steps, kind could be, you know, a lot of different things. And maybe the biggest thing of all for me when I think about the sacred moment, that really gives a volunteer significance, but it gives the guest significance, is in the vehicle of hospitality, it could be someone's first experience of grace. And so what seems very routine to the volunteer maybe, or routine to you, church staffer, on the receiving end, it could be someone's first experience of grace, of someone in front of them. And so, You know, we can't underestimate how powerful and significant hospitality is. And again, we often talk in roles of like ushers and greeters, but when you're a small group leader, you demonstrate hospitality. When you're in kid's ministry, you know, and you are sitting there maybe holding a baby or changing diapers, like you're demonstrating hospitality to that child and to the parent. When you're, you know, working in student ministry, even though you feel like mass chaos, you're demonstrating hospitality. If you work with senior adults, you're demonstrating hospitality. If you're in a choir, you're demonstrating hospitality. And so really it's a culture of it and it's sacred work. And as church staff, how do we help our volunteers feel significant in it so that they can help guests feel significant when they show up and experience? our church for the first or third or 10th time. It doesn't matter. It's just, we are consistent in the experience, if that makes sense. ⁓ yeah. What a cool concept. It reminds me of that quote. I think it's St. Augustine and my dad hates this quote for a good reason. It's shout out to dad. It's preach the gospel at all times and if necessary use words, right? And his idea is like, okay, We'll never preach, we'll never use words to preach the gospel. We'll just live the life that's right. Like, okay, that's why he hates the quote. But what you're saying is that the idea that the way that I welcome people can be preaching the gospel. can be, I remember I had this revelation. I was a worship leader. I feel like the tech was like limiting worship. So I stepped back to the tech booth to let someone else take over the worship. And I started leading worship through tech, through running sound, through doing slides, through lights. All of these things that we had, right? And I started getting this vision of I can lead worship even though my voice is not coming through the sound system. You're saying you can preach the gospel even though you're not on stage preaching. You can demonstrate grace. You can demonstrate forgiveness. You can demonstrate all these things. I love that idea because it totally makes sense. Like it's what we should do. And I think that's maybe a way that we can frame, and we should have put this in the book. a way that we can frame what your job is in hospitality as a greeter, as a nusher, as a parking lot team member, as holding a pop sign, whatever you're doing. The idea that you, your small action is preaching the gospel to someone for the first time, is preaching that mercy, that welcome, that forgiveness, that hospitality, because that is part of the gospel, right? You're able to preach through your actions. I really love that idea. But first, let's shout out a sponsor because we got to do that and I always forget to do that, but Church hospitality, guest care, first impressions. These are phrases whereas church leaders are very familiar with. Sometimes through the grind of daily tasks and prepping for Sunday every week, we lose the heart of hospitality. Guest care becomes a checklist rather than discipleship effort. First impressions is an organization committed to helping churches create meaningful connections with guests from the very first visit to long time discipleship. Whether you're looking to sharpen your team skills, build a proven follow-up plan or take your guest experience to the next level. They've got you covered through their first impressions online conference, their live conference, their academy and executive coaching. They equip churches with the strategies, systems and support they need to invite, welcome and connect with their church guests. Learn more at firstimpressions.church. So Jason, I want to talk about holding them accountable. That's something that for a lot of people, know, so someone does something wrong, someone doesn't welcome, doesn't, whatever. We present in the book, and I think this was something that maybe I like, it kind of sparked to my mind for the first time that like holding them accountable helps them see the significance of what they're doing. Can you talk about that? Yeah, there's, so this has tension with it, right? Because what we tell ourselves is because they're volunteers, because they do this for free, because we do this church work, holding them accountable, like we really can't do that. And if you believe that, then you'll obviously behave in the manner that you believe. And so when we think about accountability, it's thinking about when we care enough about the experience, when we care enough about the guest, and when we care enough for the volunteer, we want to be able to be as excellent as possible, not perfect. but as excellent as possible. And so when we think about holding people accountable, here's the thing, it starts back at the beginning, not after they've done an action. So when we think about holding them accountable, we have to think how did we onboard them? How did we train them? What does ongoing development look like? And so, because I can't hold you accountable to something that I haven't. talk to you about or trains you in or getting punished for something I didn't know was a standard is the worst feeling in the world. 100 % because that volunteer is going to walk around thinking, that's the first time you've ever said anything to me and it was like a slap on the hand. I didn't even know that was a thing. that's why. you to be very defensive. 100%. up a defensive nature for the team of again, I'm not going to use my intelligence to do something that's not. That's outside the norm, right? I don't wanna get in trouble again. Yeah, and think, here's one step further. Imagine if you had a team of volunteer leaders that were keeping their volunteers accountable. So you have free volunteers keeping free volunteers accountable. Like that's another layer, right? Yeah. But it is absolutely doable, but it goes back to how you start things. do you start, how do you start onboarding? Do you talk about accountability from the very beginning? Accountability related to yourself as well, right? You're demonstrating what that looks like. Now, what could accountability look like? So let's assume you're paying attention to onboarding and training. And we talk about training like in the first 90 days, development, which is ongoing. So what could accountability look like? Well, it doesn't have to look like it actually sounds. It's not like, hey, Jonathan, I saw you wave with your right hand. We don't do that here, bro. We do, we wave with our left hand. That's right. So if I need to tie your right hand behind your back, I mean, I don't want to do it, but I'll do it. No, I'm being dramatic and silly. doesn't have to be- mention the left hand is the sinister one. The right hand is the godly one. Yeah, that's right. We're talking about this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's this idea that you can tell stories of one at- is whatever it is, is being done well. So it's just, it's reminding people how and what and why we do. So you're talking about it through stories. It can happen in celebration. So you're keeping things accountable, but you're doing it through storytelling. You say, well, let's make it real. What happens when you've got to talk to a person because they did or didn't do something. Talk to me about that. Cause that's the stuff we typically avoid. Do I have a right to do it? Well, It depends on how you look at what you do. If you care enough about the experience, if you care enough about the guest, if you care enough about the volunteer and the team, you'll do it. Let me illustrate it. ⁓ There was a guy, he was a volunteer and he was pretty faithful. Like he was on our guest experience team. He happened to be an usher in this story and he liked ⁓ to be around that he ushered in the area where the senior pastor sat. So you got more looks, you got noticed more, right? Well, one thing I noticed about him is we would always have a ⁓ huddle. And if you don't have one of these before your team goes out, I wanna encourage you to do that. And First Impressions Academy, out to our sponsor. They actually have huddle talks that are available to you that are already written for you. So a great tool. for you to check out there with First Impressions. But in our huddle before, he wasn't showing up, but he was showing up like when the whole team went up there, like he was up there in place, in position. So I started noticing this pattern and so I talked to him and I said, hey, what's up? And he's like, ⁓ man, just, know, this, this, came up all these different excuses. And one day he said, you know, I just can't get out of bed. And we've had this conversation before and I have a relationship with him. If he was, if this was our first shadowing. thing, relationship makes all this possible. Yeah. If you're trying to build a relationship while you're doing accountability, you're late to the game, right? You got to, that's why I'm talking onboarding. Things start way back at the beginning. So I had a relationship with him. So I said, weren't down in our, our meet, our huddle, our meeting again. He's like, man, Jesus, just, bro, I just can't, you know, get out of bed. And then I, played a little bit and I'm like, do you get out of bed and go to work? He's like, yeah. I said, do you ever just like call in like, cause you can't get out of bed. He's like, no. I'm like, but you do here? He's like, yeah, yeah. I'm like, no man. And then I used our values that we started talking about in the onboarding process, right? And you, you've talked about those in a previous episode. And I highlighted a value that we talk about as a team. And I asked him if not showing up to our meeting demonstrated that value. And he said, no, it doesn't. So the accountability, and I said, what have we talked about before? If you chose not to come to the huddle that couldn't volunteer. And I said, that's right. So today you're not volunteering. And man, it was like a, punched him in the face. And he's like, what? And I said, we've talked about this before. Again, you don't want to like just drop a bomb on somebody. So again, we've had conversations, I've tilled the soil, which is important. And I said, but I want you to attend the church service today. So hop in there, attend it, but you're not going to volunteer. I've already put something in somebody in your area that they'll take care of all that. It wasn't like contentious or anything, but he felt it. And guess what? From that day forward, he didn't miss our huddle. He didn't miss a meeting. And so it was one of those moments of accountability and I had to follow through. Did I want to? Did it feel good? No, it didn't feel good. Yeah. Yeah. And, and guess what? Word passed, not in a negative way, but in a way that said that Okay, we take this seriously and it benefited the team because the team noticed he didn't show up and was he getting away with it? And they realized, okay, Jason cares about the whole team enough to talk to that one guy because it impacts the team. Because here's the thing, on that particular day, there were specific things we talked about in the huddle that affected the experience. And if you weren't there, you wouldn't know what to do and you were going to impact. what the team did and the experience for the guest. We're not having that. And so that's an example of what accountability could look like. But I want to go back just to reiterate, you start talking about this during onboarding. You talk about it in training. You talk about it in ongoing development. You talk about it in storytelling and celebrating. So people realize that you have in the moment coaching, right? You know, hey, Jonathan, one thing that you do really well is X. One thing I want us to, pay attention to as a team is why. And you talk about those things. So you're always looking at different approaches, but sometimes you just have to keep, you just have to have a one-on-one conversation to keep people accountable. I know I've used a lot of words. Let me give you a worst case scenario. Jason, what if they cause a problem after you do that? Yeah. Yeah. What if they do? In fact, I've had a good number of volunteers do that. They put stuff on social media. They quit. They leave the church. I've had to fire volunteers, which that might be a whole episode in and of itself. And so like these things do happen, but What I come back to is during the process of how these things happen, it's not like we just did this overnight, unless it was something that is so significant that we have to, but we've had these conversations. We're talking about this stuff. And remember this, you're responsible for pastoring and shepherding the whole team and not sacrificing the wholeness and the health of a team for one or two people that are jacking it up. But the hard part is if they leave, if they talk smack about you, if you end up having to fire them because they refuse. And I've had to do all of those things, not fun, but you got to care for the whole team and the whole experience and And three months from now, that's not going to matter. Like eventually those comments go away, right? I mean, think going back to some practical ideas, I think the accountability, the personal accountability thing you touched on, I think that's one tool you can say is, hey, I have to take responsibility. I didn't train you properly whenever you're onboarded. So this was a mistake that was made, but that's my mistake. This is what we do and said, that's one really good way. But yeah, then how does this affect the team? When I was leading worship, if someone didn't show up to rehearsal, I'd say, hey, you're going to, the band is struggling because you weren't here. So we're not gonna have you play this Sunday. Even if we didn't, that meant we didn't have an electric guitar player or some key member. I'd be willing to sacrifice a Sunday for the team so that the team would get stronger through it. I think that's so vital, but hey, this was a really good episode. This was the last of the book. We put together a, well, Jason put together a toolbox, a toolkit to help you really take everything from the comeback effect and make it easy to actually implement at your church. So that is available at churchstaffbookclub.com. You can download that, use it with your team. ⁓ It's pretty cool stuff. It'll really help you. Again, whether you've read the book or whether you haven't read the book, it'll help you really implement this stuff. Next book we're going through, Jason. The Emotionally Healthy Leader. Excited. We both polled our audiences to see which book was most exciting. This one won far and away. Hands down. Everyone wanted it. That's right. If you wanna buy the book for, it's not one we wrote, so this'll be it. new territory of us talking about someone else's book. if you want to buy the book, so next week you're ready to jump in with us and kind of follow along. You can do that or again, just tune in and see what we have to say about the book and hopefully we'll all learn better together. But we will see you next week.