Increasing the Impact of the Serving Experience on Volunteers with Rachel Long

Welcome back to another episode of the unSeminary podcast. Today we have Rachel Long back on the podcast. She’s one of the executive pastors at Emmanuel Church, a multisite church in Indiana.

Today Rachel is talking with us about building healthy volunteer teams within our churches.

* Take a step back and evaluate. // Back at the end of 2018, even before COVID, the staff at Emmanuel started to notice that the church had shifted from a serving culture to a consumer culture which was more focused on what the church could do for you. The staff knew this consumerism was the symptom of a bigger problem and so began to examine the themselves. What they found is the staff had become very siloed and volunteers were possessively claimed by staff members. Even leadership noticed that their language became more about filling spots on volunteer teams, and they realized they had slowly faded completely off vision. The staff needed to take a step back and determine where they’d gone off track and how to make sure their volunteer teams (known as Impact Teams) aligned with the church’s vision.* Build a system that is a better fit. // Emmanuel began by looking at larger churches to see examples of how they could add some structure to their teams. After experimenting with a modified version of Growth Track from Church of the Highlands, Rachel and her teammate, Leah, began to build a system that would be custom-fit for Emmanuel. They developed six pillars which defined what a healthy Impact Team would look like, with the main goal being seeing people that have come to Christ then grow in Christ. This goal now aligned with Emmanuel’s vision and mission.* Six pillars of a healthy team. // The six pillars Rachel and Leah developed are 1) Systematic Staff and Volunteer Training – things like lunch-and-learns, vision nights and even job descriptions for volunteer positions. 2) Appreciation – regular thank yous, infusing appreciation into team nights, and taking note of what would be a meaningful thank-you to individual volunteers. 3) Impact Week – a time where volunteer teams across all campuses come and serve during one week, all together. 4) Impact Team Night – an event six times a year where the campus pastor gets to preach to his or her campus and really infuse the vision of serving there. 5) Volunteer Onboarding and Data – has to do with making sure the staff’s data is correct because good data matters. 6) Vision and Branding – things such as branded t-shirts, using the Impact Teams logo, and communicating with language such as “serving opportunities” rather than “filling spots”.* Showing appreciation. // Embracing more appreciation was a huge game-changer for Emmanuel and included not only new processes, but also funding their appreciation. They started with systematic thank-you note-writing and helped the staff to understand what a great thank-you note looks like. Staff learned to call out and applaud really specific instances where a volunteer had an impact in small or big ways. Emmanuel also gathers all of their volunteers in one place to celebrate them with a themed party and gifts. And one of the new things they are starting is recognizing and celebrating the serving anniversaries of each of their volunteers. * Impact Team Night. // Adding Impact Team Nights every other month has been pivotal to the growth and success of Emmanuel’s volunteer teams. These nights are held at each campus and include a time of worship, some snacks and have a fun theme of some king. After worship there is vision casting which is done by either the campus pastor, the lead pastor, or a panel of campus staff. Then new Impact Team members will go to Impact 101 to start the onboarding process while existing team members will go to their specific areas of service for special trainin...