Leader's Insight: Recruiting Without Guilt

Three years ago, I realized our church had a problem, so I invited the senior staff to join me in a conference room. “Here’s the new reality as I see it,” I said, standing in front of a flip chart. I drew a line ascending from left to right. “This line I’ll call spiritual opportunity. Never in the history of Willow Creek have we known an era of greater spiritual opportunity.”

Then I drew another line from the same starting point, but level from left to right. “This, however, is our resource line. It’s flatter than it’s been in a decade.”

“Resources have never been this tight,” I admitted. “We have to figure out how to minister in a way that brings God glory even in this new reality.”

Soon our leadership team found itself trying to figure out how to live out the challenge of Ephesians 4:11-12 in our current reality, by doubling our volunteer team. I asked a couple staff members what they would do to double volunteer numbers in their particular sub-ministries. Their response? Silence.

Then I pointed to a staff member, “You, what comes to your mind? Where would you start if you wanted to add ten volunteers to your ministry?”

That person responded, “Well, uh, I’d probably wander around our lobby and talk to someone I didn’t know.”

I said, “Yeah, okay we could do that. But let’s keep going. Anybody else got an idea?”

Silence.

Finally someone asked, “What would you do, Bill?”

So I made a comparison. “In evangelism, why don’t we just wander around the community and ask people to follow Christ?”

“Because we have more credibility if we have already established a relationship with a person,” someone responded.

“It’s the same thing with volunteer acquisition,” I said. “You have a much higher likelihood of moving someone into service if they know you and trust you.

“I think every one of us knows at least five people who love God and the church but for some reason don’t serve. We ought to develop candidate pools from people we know who fit that description.” People nodded their heads in agreement.

“Then what would you do?” I asked.

One person said, “I’d call them and try to draft them.”

I said, “Wow. Would you really? You’d make a cold call and just say, ‘Hey, I’d like to recruit you. Will you sign up?'”

“Well, Bill, what would you do?”

“I’d invite that person out for a cup of coffee,” I said, “and get reacquainted a bit. Then I’d say, ‘Hey, Fred, you know I work in the Promiseland ministry. The 90 minutes I spend with kids in Promiseland each weekend are the best 90 minutes of my week.’

“Then I’d have every word of the next part carefully planned: ‘Fred, we need some extra helpers in Promiseland. I don’t know if this is something you’d be interested in. But would you be willing to come with me one time to see what God is doing in Promiseland?'”

Telling Fred about the weekly experience in Promiseland casts a positive vision of children’s ministry.

Asking Fred for a one-time visit lowers the fear that he might get permanently roped into something before he even understands what he’s doing.

No arm-twisting. Just a powerful vision and an open invitation

Guilt is not an option

At one point, I was invited to address a group of recently hired staff. Most of them I hadn’t yet met, so rather than presenting a prepared talk, I went from person to person and listened to their stories, then fielded questions.

All was going well until a guy in the back row asked, “Bill, do you ever feel guilty when you challenge volunteers? Do you ever feel guilty about laying heavy ministry burdens on already-busy people?”

My first thought was, Who hired him? His question proved to me that he and I were on opposite ends of the ministry philosophy spectrum.

Then I said, “My young friend, you’re obviously new here at Willow. So let me describe the people you’re going to meet at our church in the coming month.”

“You’re going to meet some wonderful people who stand at drill presses every day, ten hours a day, five or six days a week. When they go home at night, they are not feeling wildly fulfilled from all the joy and meaning they experienced standing at their drill press. For them, the drill press doesn’t deliver a lot of purpose to their lives.”

Then I said, “We have been given the unspeakable privilege of inviting people like I just described into what might be the only involvement in their lives that makes them feel like an instrument in the hands of the Almighty, that gives them the thrill of knowing that the Creator God has used them to touch a human life.”

I looked at the guy who had prompted my diatribe. “So in answer to your question, no, I never feel guilty inviting people to become volunteers in our church. Never. In fact, I get letters on a regular basis from veteran volunteers thanking me for inviting them to serve, some of them decades ago. If ever I am tempted to feel guilty, letters like that remind me how desperately people long to play a role in the redemptive work of God.”

Bill Hybels is the senior pastor of Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Illinois. This column is adapted from “The Y Factor,” Leadership Journal, Winter 2003.

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