Treat your volunteers like employees

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Before I worked in a church in a creative capacity I volunteered in one.  For many years when I was a teenager and in college I spent countless hours running technical equipment, shooting and editing videos and designing web sites.  I got to use my gifts to glorify God and do something I loved and would help me later in life.  One of the many things I enjoyed when heavily volunteering my time at various churches was the opportunity to be taken seriously.  I enjoyed opportunities to be trusted with a lot and to be counted on.

Today my primary job is creating videos for a church. Often times I have volunteers that want to help and partner with what I am doing.  I have found that if I treat them as if they are one of the team and expect a lot from them, they get excited. In some cases I request for volunteers to come in during the week and put in 5-10 hours and treat the work like a job/internship.  Some of these volunteers actually agree to working for free in order to gain experience and contribute to the church.   This works both for our benefit and theirs and increases a volunteer culture that is about training up and sending out volunteers in every area of the church including the arts.

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