5 Steps to Building Your Volunteer Structure for Growth

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

I recently saw a post on a Facebook group asking how many volunteers they need for 30-40 kids. It was really a question about ratios, which are very important, but having the correct room ratio may not be enough when thinking about the right number of volunteers.

I’ve written about this before, but when I first started in kidmin, you could have called my Sunday morning service the David Reneau show. I led worship, told the Bible story, managed check-in and sound, pretty much every element of the service I had a hand in or was running it.

I had a few volunteers relegated to crowd control, but not many more because, why? I was doing all of it, why did I need more people to sit with kids and keep behavior under control.

I was running the ministry in what is called a maintenance structure. I needed to set up the ministry for growth. If I wanted to take the ministry to the next level, then I needed the structure to support it.

One tool you’ll need before we get started is a flowchart. This chart shows the hierarchy of responsibilities and what positions you need to fill. Leave me a comment below with your email, and I’ll send you a sample one.

Here are five steps to build your volunteer structure for growth.

1. Find the jobs

The first step is to figure out all the positions you could possibly need in a service. For example, in a typical youth or children’s ministry service, you have

• Check-in
• Sound/lights
• Games
• Worship
• Screen graphics
• Large group presentation
• Small groups

And about 100 other things. Each one of these jobs needs workers with certain skills and passions. You can have cross over but very few people will have the ability or the availability to do all of these in one service.

2. Plan one service

After you’ve figured out all the jobs, figure out how many people you need for each one in a typical service.

The people you need for jobs like sound/lights or large group presentation don’t really grow as your attendance grows in one service, but small groups and check-in can grow exponentially.

I suggest no more than 10 kids in a small group, so you need at least four workers for a service that has 40 kids. But if you have 400 kids in a service, you’ll need 40(!) small group leaders. You can see how this can become a lot.

3. Plan for more services

Now that you’ve figured out how many people you need for one service don’t sit back and relax because you’re not done.

Your volunteers are going to want and should go to church. And by church, I mean Big Church… for adults. If your services are held at the same time as adult services, you’re going to have to make space for your workers to attend them.

And once you do that, your required volunteers just multiplied.

My current church only has one service, so as much as I would love for my volunteers to serve every week, I know that that’s not healthy or practical. So, we put a limit on the maximum number of times a volunteer can serve in a month to three times. Most people serve once or twice a month.

If your church is blessed with multiple services, you can have jobs where your volunteers “work one, worship one,” but the multiplication principle still stands. Let me show you what I mean.

To keep the math simple, let’s say you have two services where everyone serves in one service a week.

Your required numbers just doubled. Where you needed 4 small group leaders, now you need 8. Where you needed 1 check-in person now you need 2. Where you needed 2 worship leaders, now you need 4. You get the idea.

In practice, however, I’ve found that volunteers willing to “work one, worship one” are few and far between. Most people aren’t willing to give more than twice a month, and that’s ok. Instead of working against the grain make some accommodations and adjust.  You can always ask them to serve more later. 

4. Accommodate for different schedules

Making accommodations just made your job a whole lot more complicated, but it's doable.

To keep it easy, I do three things.

1. On my flowchart, I list every position for every service I need regardless of whether I have a volunteer for that position.
2. I ask every volunteer to serve every other week as their able.
3. I write the name of a person in every box based on their availability. My name might be repeated several times.

Once I’ve done this, I can see all the positions that need to be filled. This is now my recruitment strategy.

To prepare for growth, don’t just list the jobs you need now. What would happen if your pastor told you your church was opening another service? or another campus? Or imagine that your ministry doubled in the next year. How many volunteers would you need then? You should put those positions on your flow chart as well and start recruiting.

You may end up with way too many volunteers, but in my experience, God will only send you the amount of people you can handle. You won’t have too many volunteers for long.

5. Add more leaders

One position that’s often overlooked in the volunteer structure is mid-level leaders. When I was at my last church, I had 40 volunteers just in Elementary. I knew their names and what they did, but it was really hard to pastor them. I needed other leaders to help carry the load.

When I read my Bible, I find Jesus only discipled 12, I don’t think I can do better.

This is where mid-level managers come in. Some people call them team leaders or lieutenants or coaches. Whatever you call them, they’re helping you pastor your volunteers.

This usually happened first with small group leaders because I needed so many of them. I would elevate a high capacity small group leader to oversee the training, assimilation, and overall care of all the small group leaders in their service.

Once they got to the point of leading more than 12 people, I’d find another person to help them lead and share the load.

Bonus point: Not every job needs the same volunteer structure.

As I continued to grow my volunteer base, I discovered that many of the large group positions did much better when they served in every service for the weekend. Because of this, I’d ask them to serve only once or twice a month. This structure allowed them to attend the adult service when they were off and be really prepared when they were on.

If you lead multiples services, you know that some presentations are better than others. I found that when I had my presenters serve over the weekend, they were able to take what they learned in previous services and apply it to the next one.

Also, my tech team was far more prepared because I was only preparing one team before all the craziness began as opposed to trying to prep an all new team in between services.

This structure made my flowchart more complicated but had a much higher quality of life for my volunteers.

Building your volunteer structure for growth is key if you want to reach the next level. It helps you be prepared for when a volunteer takes a step back or you need to expand to more services or campuses. It’ll also have a healthier and vibrant ministry with people serving in their God-given roles with a purpose. You’ll find turnover to be lower and over all morale to be higher.

It’s worth the time and energy to make a plan and work it. I hope it helps

If you’d like a sample flowchart, leave me a comment with your email and I’d be happy to send it your way.