Speaker 1Welcome to the Unstuck Church Podcast. I'm Sean Bublitz, Managing Director here at the Unstuck Group. And before we jump in today, I want to just take a second and set up the series we're launching because I think that framing it up right from the outset is really going to help us. Most churches we work with are dealing with two frustrations at the same time. First, they don't have enough volunteers. And then when it's time to hire, they can't find capable leaders, often because those leaders were never really developed in the first place. And here's the thing. Those two problems, I think, are actually the same problem. When you're not intentionally developing your volunteer leaders, you're not just short on help for ministry. You're also cutting off your best pipeline for future staff. So in this series, we're going to walk through a practical, repeatable pathway for building leadership capacity at your church. I want to introduce my co-host for this series. I want to take a second and tell you about our podcast, the Unstuck Church Podcast. I'm Sean Bublitz, Managing Director here at the Unstuck Church Podcast, sponsored for the series, The Church Lawyers. Let's be honest, most pastors would rather preach 10 sermons than talk to one lawyer. But here's the good news. The church lawyers actually speak your language. This law firm has served thousands of churches of all sizes and denominations throughout the country. They handle everything from church bylaws and employment issues to real estate transitions. They don't have any judgment when they work with you. They won't approach this with legal jargon, just practical, sound legal advice. So you can check out their useful resources and affordable membership options at thechurchlawyers.com. All right, let me bring in my co-host for this series, Jonathan Smith. We've had Jonathan as a guest before on the podcast, but Jonathan is the lead pastor of One Church TO in Toronto, Ontario. And Jonathan's also an Unstuck consultant. Jonathan, thanks for jumping in and hosting this series with me. Before we get too far, I want you to just take a second, tell our listeners a little bit about your church, because I love to hear about the work that you guys are doing in one of the most unique cities in the world, Toronto, Ontario.
Speaker 2Well, Sean, thanks for having me back. And I'm excited to do this series with you. This is subject matter we think a lot about, we ruminate a lot on, and we work a lot at. So I'm hoping we can bring something to the conversation that'll be helpful. And as you mentioned, I'm the lead pastor of One Church TO in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. And it's a church of about 75 nationalities, five generations, and it's in one of the most diverse cities on the planet. In fact, 50% of Toronto was born in another nation. And that means that ministry in Toronto is unique, but complicated. And I think one of the things that makes Toronto unique, and I think some people are going to identify with this because I think it's happening with increasing rhythms in North America in general, but we are a culture where we don't have a default Christian culture to draw from. So nobody's coming to our church because grandma came to this church. So we have to be intentional about everything. If we're going to build a volunteer bench or a leadership pipeline, it has to be done intentionally. And that's what excites me about the conversation we're going to have over the next three weeks is, in our context, if we don't develop leaders, they don't come. And there's no inherited pipeline. And as I mentioned, I think in North America, increasingly, this is becoming a reality. I just think Toronto got there faster. So I'm excited about the conversation we're going to have together.
Speaker 1Jonathan, that's exactly why I thought you'd be such a great fit to help me co-host this series because of your experience. And I love just the really practical work that you guys are doing at One Church TO. And even as I think about developing leaders, you know this, there's a number of churches that we work with that are multi-site churches. And a lot of those churches are actually looking for opportunities to develop their campus pastors. That's another unique position within the church. And before we get into that, I want to talk a little bit about the campus pastor cohort that we're launching this fall. It's the first time that we've ever done this specifically for campus pastors. But we're starting it this fall. It's a year-long cohort. And we're inviting campus pastors from multi-site churches of all sizes to join us for conversations around how they can lead their campus better, how they can fulfill their role as a campus pastor in a really unique seat within the church, where sometimes they may feel like they're sitting in the first chair or sometimes the second chair and trying to discern how do I fill that role best. So we start with a two-day gathering in beautiful Phoenix, Arizona that is September 28th through the 30th. So if you're listening to this podcast and you have campus pastors or you are a campus pastor, would like to learn more about that, you can go to theunstuckgroup.com to learn more about the cohort launching this fall. All right. So let's get in to the content and really just, I want to start with attention first. Jonathan, most churches feel the pain of being short on volunteers. I talk to churches all the time. That's one of the headline issues for them, especially if they're in this season of experiencing growth right now. They are doing more with less people. In all churches, both healthy and stuck, it typically takes new people a while to start serving in the church. So you end up going back to the same pool of people to find more help. Our most recent Unstuck Church report, we found that 50% of their adults and students engaged in serving, which is actually up from the year before, but it's still not hitting our recommended benchmark of 50% to 55% engaged in serving. Add to that the fact that we found that churches only had one volunteer leader for every 17 people in average attendance. The benchmark for healthy churches is one for every 10. And so now we don't have enough volunteers and we don't have enough volunteer leaders engaged in serving. And some of these churches I've seen actually have one volunteer leader for every five people in attendance. So there's a big gap there. The other gap that honestly is usually a blind spot for a lot of leaders is that they don't have a clear way to look at their volunteers and identify who has the capacity to lead and then actually do something to develop them. So what ends up happening is the same people, again, we're back to that same pool, get tapped for everything. They get asked to do more, lead more, cover more. And eventually those people, they're not going to be able to do that. They're not going to be able to do that. They're will burn out or they'll just quietly stop serving consistently or sometimes serving at all. Meanwhile, many church leaders are scratching their head wondering why God only seems to send gifted leaders to some of the other churches and their community, but they lack a clear understanding of the evidences of leadership capacity or a process to develop people once they identify them as a leader. So Jonathan, you lead a church. You work with churches pretty regularly as well. How do you see it?
Speaker 2Well, to be fair to the pastors that are listening, Sundays come with shocking regularity, don't they? And when you're immersed in running the church, you're often consumed with what is immediate and urgent, maybe not what is important like what we're talking about here. Recruiting a volunteer bench and maybe even developing a leadership pipeline feels like a luxury in those states and when you find yourself at that phonetic pace. And I think sometimes. What happens is, as you mentioned, we either overstaff because it's a quick, easy solution to be honest and we begin to put staff members in roles that maybe volunteer leaders could easily do or we overuse volunteers, as you mentioned, people we've already developed in the past and they get tapped on the shoulder over and over and honestly, just because it's easier. But the more. I've just come to believe the more I've poked around, I've seen what we've done, I've seen where we've been at in past states. I think we don't. I think we don't have a recruiting problem in churches, I think we have a noticing problem. Churches have potential leaders already in the seats in front of them on Sundays. I think though, most teams have outsourced their noticing to systems. And what I mean by that is, I think we've developed really good recruiting mechanisms. We've built in sign up forums and we have serve fairs and connect cards, different ways to on-ramp people into maybe serving opportunities. And that might identify willingness. But I think we've developed a really good recruiting mechanism. We've identify willingness, but it can't identify capacity. And those are two different things. And I don't think any of us as pastors are ignoring this because we don't care. I think inherently there's something deeper happening. I think that developing leaders is slow and intentional, and most of us are wired for fast and immediate. And I don't think it's even personality. I think it's the nature of ministry, Sunday, Sunday, Sunday. And so fast and immediate. And so our dopamine hits happen when we preach, when we running event that goes great, or maybe when someone's being baptized. But the idea of developing a bench and developing leaders over the course of 18 months, it doesn't have those same hits. I think I've come to think of developing leaders a lot like Eugene Peterson talks about developing disciples, that it's the long obedience in the same direction. The problem is our calendars don't reward that usually. I know you love sports. I love sports. I'm right in the middle of the Stanley Cup run right now. And it's exciting to watch that. But even if you're not a hockey fan, because I know you're a hockey fan, I am too, you might be from the southern states, baseball or football, there's two ways to build a team. You can build through the draft or you can build through free agency. And free agency is so tempting because it has a fast forward button in it. But it's so expensive, it doesn't always work out. And every leader knows and every general manager knows that building through the draft is better. But I think it has two conflicting fuels. If you're going to build through the draft, it requires risk and patience. And I think developing a leadership bench and developing a leadership pipeline requires really risk. You're going to take risks on people, maybe that previously were occupied by staffing roles and patience. You have to create a culture where people can make mistakes and it's going to take time to grow them, intentionally building into them. That's good. I think the temptation to press fast forward. And that fast and immediate side of us is working against the long-term outcome of building something slowly and intentionally that I think will free up the church in the long run.
Speaker 1Yeah. I love a good sports analogy, Jonathan. Yeah, I know you do. I think you nailed it with that one.
Speaker 2Me too. Go Habs, go.
Speaker 1Yeah, Jonathan, I think you've kind of touched on what part of what makes this so frustrating for pastors. It's not that they don't care about developing leaders or building out their bench. Most everybody does. It's just that they don't care about developing leaders. It's just that they're so buried in that week-to-week that the volunteer bench strategically doesn't make it onto the agenda. And here's what it costs them in the long term. If you can't develop your bench and identify and develop volunteers into volunteer leaders, you'll never have a strong internal pipeline for staff. And I talk to a lot of churches right now who are having a difficult time identifying staff. The people who make the best hires are almost always the people who have already been developed, who've proven they can. And they're internal candidates. They're people who already bought into the mission of your church. I heard somebody say recently they defined leadership as getting people to do what you're convinced has to be done. And that's not just a staff skill. That's a volunteer skill. And churches that figure out early have a completely different hiring conversation than churches that don't. Jonathan, before we move on to solution, anything else that you would add?
Speaker 2I just love that quote. And I love where you're driving the conversation. Because I think this is where most of us as pastors live. Like, I like that quote part where you just said where it leads to a completely different hiring conversation. I think it's kind of reclaiming the art and really the mission of a pastor to equip people to do the work of the ministry. Years ago, we started because we had a problem in this area in our church. And on their role descriptions that every staff member, the first line says an equipped first mentality. And that has been a game changer for us. Yeah, I love that. Yeah, because the other thing I'd add is the consequence of not doing this is that we end up recruiting with such urgency all the time. Just urgency to fill holes. Right. And what we end up doing, I think we don't mean to, but we're developing the wrong muscles in our church. The congregation hears the staff does ministry and the volunteers fill the holes. And once that happens, you begin to build a culture in your church where it's not the people doing the work of the ministry. And it's even not them seeing themselves as leaders in the church. I think that's where that staff sprawl happens. And a lot of the churches we work with that are stuck are often overstaffed. You know, I did a little calculation before I came on this podcast, knowing we were going to talk about this. And 75% of our staff team comes from our volunteer benches. Oh, wow. They were developed from our actual volunteer pool into a leadership pipeline. And the benefit is. It's kind of what you talked about, ready-made DNA. They have our DNA. They have our ministry philosophy. And we have had a chance to inspect their leadership chops because we've been around them. They've been around us for years. So the leadership potential in hiring is so great when you develop that volunteer bench and a leadership pipeline.
Speaker 1I love that, Jonathan. That is fantastic. All right. So let's talk about what to actually do about this. Because the good news is that this isn't an impossible task and you're doing it in your church, Jonathan. It is. Even though sometimes it can feel like it. And there's a pretty clear starting point and it begins with getting honest about where you actually are. You know, we talk all the time about planning, solutions, always starts with assessment. So the first thing I'd encourage any church to do is just audit your volunteer bench. Not a feelings or gut-based assessment, but look at the actual numbers. What percentage of your adults and students are serving at least once a month? The benchmark we use here at the Unstuck Group is 50/50. Most churches we work with right now are well below that. And if you don't know your number, that I think is the first problem to solve. And while ministry, you know, it's not about numbers, the numbers help us make decisions and provide more evidence to where we're healthy and where we're not. They go beyond just that gut feeling or intuition, which I think is so important. Then in addition to that percentage, you'll also want to look at your volunteer leader ratio. Meaning? How many volunteer leaders do you have? How many people do you have in average attendance in your church? And before you ask, I know this question is coming, a volunteer leader is anyone who leads a group of two or more people. That includes your serving team leaders, small group leaders, kids ministry, student group leaders. If they have influence over other people, they're in a leadership position, whether they're a leader or not, whether they actually have those giftings or not. A healthy ratio is about one leader for every 10 attendees at your church. We see a lot of churches actually operating around one for every 20 attendees, sometimes even worse than that. At that ratio, your leaders aren't developing anyone. They're just pointing volunteers in the right direction and then surviving. The span of care is just too big. So before you can build anything, you need a clear picture of your starting point. Jonathan, what would you add to that?
Speaker 2Yeah. Numbers are a huge piece of this. I mean, you worked with our church. You helped the first time we went through the unstuck process. Yeah. That's what we did. And if you had asked me then if we had a healthy serving volunteer environment, I would have said yeah. And then when we actually did what you asked us to do, we did the math, I realized my gut feeling in the actual math where they were actually in two different cities altogether. And I think that's something that pastors, we have to own. And it's difficult because I think we deal with anecdotal data all the time. We hear stories of transformation. We talk about and preach. We share vision around stories of transformation. But anecdotal data is not a replacement for actual data that tell the systemic either problem or story or solution that's going on in the background. What I might add though to that audit is a second layer underneath the numbers. Once you know the percentages and the ratio that Sean just talked about, you have to ask yourself about the volunteers you're looking at. And you're really, and we'll probably get into this later, but this idea of some are leaders. Some might be leaders of leaders. Others might be faithful servants. They're just faithful and they're happy to stay where they are. And I think it's important to recognize that there are different categories of volunteers because if you're treating them the same, that's a huge mistake. I think this might be the most expensive part of church ministry. When we confuse willingness again with capacity, willing people who aren't leaders placed in leadership roles, they will quietly cap the number of people who are willing to help them. Yeah. And I think it's important to recognize that there's different categories of volunteers because if you're treating them the same, that's a huge mistake. I think this might be the most expensive part of church ministry when we confuse willingness again with capacity willing people who aren't leaders placed in leadership roles, they will quietly cap the number of people who aren't leaders placed in leadership roles. Yeah. cap the lid on the growth and the vitality of that ministry, often for years to come. That is true. Yeah. Yeah, because in those leadership roles, they're hard to move because they're faithful. Right. These are often just the most faithful people you can meet. They show up, they love Jesus, they love you. And the kindest thing we could have done is have the conversation about capacity before we put them in that place. So getting a read on your numbers and then a read on the volunteer potential, I mean, that's key.
Speaker 1Absolutely. And I know now pastors are asking, well, how do we know their capacity? And that's where we're going in this series. So stay tuned. Once you know your numbers and you have a sense of what those are, the next question a lot of pastors have then is, where do you actually find volunteers worth developing? And I think this is where a lot of churches get stuck. They think recruiting volunteers just is about making announcements from the stage and then helping people sign up. And if you do that, you may have their hands. But that's not a system. The churches that are really building their bench are doing a few things differently. First, they're making the ask personal, direct, one-on-one invitations to serve. That is dramatically more effective than an announcement from the stage. People want to feel specially chosen, not just generically recruited. And this is usually happening out of an effective first-step strategy for people who are newer to the church. If you don't have a good strategy right now, go back and listen to episode 388. We talked about one that's really effective there. The second thing, these churches, they're making sure that there are easy first steps from that first steps environment into serving. The barrier to that initial serving opportunity has to be low. It has to be short-term commitment. It has to have clear expectations and have someone there to support them along the way. You're not asking somebody to own a ministry on day one. You're just asking them to show up and give it a try. And it should not feel like Hotel California either. It should not feel like if I signed up once, I'm stuck here forever. we should have opportunities to find new things that we're interested in and that we're good at. And then the last thing I'd add to that, Jonathan, this is the part that connects directly to a leadership pipeline, is they're paying attention to the wiring of their new volunteers. Like you just mentioned, not every volunteer is a leader. Some of them are just faithful servants. And not every leader is a leader of leaders. But there are signals early on that can tell you who has capacity for more. Things like initiative, attitude, how they interact with the people around them. And we'll talk about that more. But the volunteer pipeline isn't just a development tool. It's also a scouting tool. And we'll actually dive into that more deeply next week. Did I leave anything important out there, Jonathan?
Speaker 2I think you nailed the three most important aspects of it. Like the personal invitation. I agree. Like the era of recruiting from the pulpit, so to speak, or from the stage. Often you get the wrong people showing up in the wrong environments. But what we've done strategically is when we're trying to recruit leaders into things, ministry staff will tap them on the shoulder. But when it comes to filling out the volunteer bench, we have found the best recruiters are people who are already volunteering. So we really build in the culture that, hey, ask your friends to come and serve with you. They have become our best recruiters into environments to just begin to fill out that volunteer bench, which potentially can lead to that volunteer pipeline. And then as you said, that low barrier first steps. How can I remove as many barriers as possible? Just like James said in Acts 15, how can we make it easy for the Gentiles? How can we make it easy for new people serving to get involved and find a first step into serving opportunities? And we pay as much attention to on-ramps as we do off-ramps. Good. I think we're in a commitment, poor culture and time. And commitment's important. And I think people will stay committed. Much longer than we realize. If they know that there's a built-in off-ramp, like they have a chance, as you mentioned, they're not signing up for their life. They have an opportunity to try other areas, to off-ramp at a strategic point in time. So building that in is important. And then scouting wiring. And one of the ways, especially when you're trying to identify leadership capacity, when we have our eye on someone and we think that there's some capacity, one of the best ways we found to see how much capacity they have as a leader is give them a problem. Leaders love to solve problems. I mean, a modest stakes problem, like I'm not talking about rescuing the church here, but they love these types of problems where you can leave it with them and see who do they recruit? How do they approach it? Do they have a solution? Or are they coming back waiting for instructions? All these things begin to tell us maybe where their lid is. Leaders metabolize ambiguity. So they walk into unclear situations, with unclear outcomes, and they have a way of bringing order to it. That's a great way of discovering, really, capacity. I think, though, it's like your culture that you're building in your church matters. You want a culture where your staff team feel empowered, as well as your volunteers, to step up and lead and offer solutions. So you're creating a solution-oriented culture, and that's fertile soil for leaders to grow.
Speaker 1You just brought another question in. I'm going to ask you a question. I'm going to another thought to mind as you were talking through off-ramps, specifically. I don't think that it's a commitment issue for people and why they want off-ramps. I think it's just hard to tell you, I don't want to do this anymore. I think you're right. It feels unkind, right? Yeah. And when you start to rely on them as a leader in the church, and then they can't do it anymore, maybe it's a life situation that came up, for them to come back to you and feel like they've let you down is really difficult. So sometimes we can actually put people in a difficult emotional place when we don't clearly define the off-ramp. And I think a lot of leaders have a hesitation. Well, we don't want to give them an off-ramp. We need them to keep serving, right? But when they have those opportunities to talk to you and process maybe even things that are going on in their life or reasons why they can't continue to serve in that capacity anymore, I think that's so helpful. So it's actually very kind to them to give them those opportunities.
Speaker 2Yeah, I think it allows you to pastor them. I think they get a chance to re-up, which is really re-engagement, or a chance to, again, find a better place or better seat or acknowledging they're in a different season in life right now.
Speaker 1Yeah, absolutely. All right. So let's try to wrap this up with some really practical steps for church leaders that are listening today. If you're listening right now and you know this is an area you need to zoom in on, here's what I'd recommend to start with. First, get your team in the room, whether that's your senior leadership team, whether that's your staff, whoever owns ministry leadership in your church, this is not a solo project. You need the right people at the table because the goals you're about to set will touch every ministry area in the church. And yes, I said goals because this only moves forward if you put actual numbers to it. Jonathan, you shared a bit of that with your story. So here's how to find your numbers. Take that average adult and student attendance and cut it in half. So the number of adults and students you have, divide by two. That's your 50% serving benchmark. And the number of people who should be actively serving in your church at least once a month. Then take your average attendance and divide that by 10. That's how many volunteer leaders you need to support that serving base at a healthy ratio. So once you've done that math, write those numbers down and then write down where you actually are today. What's the gap look like between those two numbers? That really, that numeric gap, is the work that you have in front of you. These aren't numbers you'll hit next week These aren't numbers you're probably going to hit next month. But if your team is focused, intentional, and working on a real plan a year from now, yeah, these are absolutely reachable goals. The mistake that I see most churches make is they're treating volunteer development like it would be nice to have option, something that they will get to when things slow down. But Jonathan, you know this, things don't slow down, right? So if you're waiting for a better time to make this move and to get your volunteer bench to health, this is it right now. What would you add to that, Jonathan?
Speaker 2I might add, assign a champion for this. Assign a serving volunteer champion in your organization. We have a guy named Dan Javerin on our staff team, and he champions serving throughout our organization. It's not all he does, but he meets with teams. He makes sure that the barriers are low, makes sure our systems are working and that teams are using it to help. On-ramp new people to serve. And I love how you highlight it, goal setting. We've been in a season where we've been identifying just how many volunteers we need for every role that we presently have and the ones we're hoping will emerge over the coming year. And like this year alone, we realized we wanted a hundred new volunteers in our ecosystem. So not repeat volunteers, because we only allow people to serve in two areas in the church, for managing their own health and the rhythms of life. And we want them around for a long time. But we wanted a hundred new volunteers. And so Dan went around to each of the teams and saw how many would they own of that goal. And then what were their strategies to recruit people into those goals? And he helped them with that. And that was a fantastic way to catalyze it. In fact, the team of their own gumption, they put in their staff canteen like a chart with 100 on it. And everyone that recruits somebody into any area, because they're no longer recruiting into their area. Any area gets rewarded. I don't know what they're doing. Some sort of prize system. They gamified it on the staff front. And yeah, it's been so motivating for them. So they're recruiting. NextGen is recruiting into facilities team. Facilities team is recruiting into our worship team. Whoever they come across who wants to serve. We also have a way on our website where you can identify maybe how you're gifted and where you'd like to serve. And those are great tools to help people find their place. But serving is a great way to help people find their place. And serving has become our number one metric at OneChurchTO. That's awesome. It's the only one we can measure that has a trickle-down effect. If people serve at our church, they're more likely to give. They're more likely to have evolved in community groups. Those other metrics don't necessarily lead to serving. Serving has something about you have heart and energy into the church that you love. And that has a trickle-down effect. So it's become critically important for us.
Speaker 1I want to say thanks for helping me kick off this series. The wisdom you've brought, your experience and your leadership at OneChurchTO is so helpful in this. And just even what you finished with there, that's where I want to land the conversation today. Because we've been talking about volunteers and leadership development. And I know for some leaders that can start to feel like just another initiative to manage another set of goals to hit or another thing on their already full plate. But here's what the data of what you were just saying tells us about the people who serve at the church. Horizon Stewardship actually did this research and found that people engaged in serving ministries gave three and a half times more than the people who only attended once or twice a month. Barna's research also shows that Christians who give the most are also consistently the ones serving the most. And then Lifeway supports all of this with their research. They make the case that you simply can't grow into spiritual maturity without following Jesus and serving. And so we know this is a lot about discipleship, not just about giving your time, but in growing your spiritual formation. And here's the one thing that might surprise listeners. When people serve together, they form bonds that make them feel like they belong. And people who feel like they belong invite others to be a part of it. They don't drift away, right? So volunteering isn't just good for your weekend operations. It produces more generous givers, more spiritually mature disciples, and more connected members who actually stick around your church and bring their friends with them. The volunteer bench is not a logistics problem. It's a discipleship opportunity. So thank you so much for joining us for this podcast. If this podcast has been helpful for you, love it if you would consider leaving us a review on your preferred podcasting platform. And if you're listening to this podcast and you're thinking, this is an area our church really needs some help in, but I don't know where to start, reach out to us to begin a conversation. We help churches expedite solutions to ministry problems to lead to greater success. You can start a conversation with us at theunstuckgroup.com. And here's what's true. You've got people sitting in your seats right now with more capacity than you know. Next week, we're going to talk about how to find them.
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