Flip the Script on Volunteer Scheduling

For some, this post is going to be a popular as barbecue at a bar mitzvah. As natural as cowboy boots at a ballet recital. Or as comfortable as a porcupine pillow.

In other words, this isn’t going to elicit a ton of fan mail because it’s just so dadgum opposite of how we tend to think.

In conversations with church leaders, one of the primary questions that pops up centers around scheduling volunteers: what are our rules? What software do we use? How do we track it?

And those questions are important. Those are good conversations to have.

But for us, there’s an overriding philosophy that drives all the questions, and that’s our attend one, serve one practice: every single week volunteers fully attend a service, and fully serve at a service.

But this philosophy requires that we start with an assumption that’s different from most. In a lot of volunteer teams, the volunteer tells you when they’ll show up. But in an “attend one, serve one” team, the volunteer has to tell you when they’re opting out.

It’s the same volunteer. The same team. But a vastly different mindset. And that mindset often changes the nature of the team.

Here are the primary differences between one mindset and the other:

In an “I’ll tell you when I’m available” mindset:

• Leaders send out a blank spreadsheet at the start of the month and ask people to fill it in.
• Leaders have to remind, beg, cajole, and threaten people to get the slots to fill up.
• Leaders are constantly playing a game of Tetris on the schedule…except there are precious few blocks to fill the board.
• Leaders spend most of their week trudging through the administrative task of scheduling.
• Volunteers start with the posture of convenience: “When does this best fit into my schedule?”

In an “I’ll let you know when I’ll be out” mindset:

• Leaders start with a full roster. Every single week.
• Leaders toss out occasional reminders about vacation blackout dates.
• Leaders can spot roster gaps and make tactical adjustments.
• Leaders’ weeks are suddenly much freer, allowing them to focus on relationships with volunteers.
• Volunteers start with the posture of commitment: “This role is important to me and to those I serve.”

What I’ve found through the years – and this is highly anecdotal, mind you – is that when a volunteer tells you when they’re available, you might get one Sunday a month that they show up. But when they have to tell you when they’re unavailable, you might get one Sunday a month when they take off.

Now, is this easy? Not at all. If you’re leading from the first mindset, there’ll be backlash if you try to make this change.

A story: years ago I had a Guest Services Director who was leading from the first mindset. He was on his way out with one of our church planting teams, and I was going to assume leadership of his team for a brief time until we were able to backfill his role.

I recommended that we switch scheduling from one mindset to the other. He said, “I don’t think people are going to like that.” I replied, “Oh, people are gonna hate it. They’ve been strolling in whenever they feel like it, and the empty roster proves it.”

We were both right: even with a couple of months notice about the new change, almost half of his volunteer team quit. They didn’t like our philosophy, our rationale, our mindset…and I think they may have said something disparaging about our moms on the way out.

But the remaining half … wait for it … loved the change. They felt like it made sense. They knew that, for the most part, their weekly team was their weekly team. They didn’t have to wonder who was going to show up, if they were going to have to work four roles on one day, etc.

I tell you that story because I want to stress that changing your mindset will not be easy.

…but things that are worth it rarely are.

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