4 Steps to Scheduling Your Volunteers
You’re just starting out as a staff pastor, or maybe you’re at a new church with brand new team. You know you need help on Sundays, but how often should they serve? Some people say they should serve every week, others only once a month, and many of your volunteers are wary of how often you’re asking them to serve.
When you’re the leader and the pastor, you have a push and pull. You want to make sure all your positions are filled, but you also don’t want to burn out your volunteers. What is the best way? Does everyone serve with the same frequency? What about if you have multiple services? Multiple days? Or just one? And what about fifth Sundays?
Your volunteer schedule can get complicated quickly. You can spend your days worried that no one will show up, especially if they don’t click confirm on your third reminder email. Over the years, I’ve developed a system that’s easy for me and my volunteers to remember and keeps the stress down to a minimum. Yes, I still have callouts and have to move people around, but when you’re working with unpaid workers that comes with the territory.
1. Keep it simple
I know some churches like to make a new schedule every month. On the last week of the previous month they send out invites to all their volunteers asking when they can serve. Then the volunteers sign up on the days they’re available. If that’s you, more power to you. But for me, I’d be a stress ball every month and worry that I would never get third Sunday staffed.
So, I keep it simple. When I have only one service, I schedule all my volunteers once a month. This way, you only have to find 4 volunteers to fill that one position. As a bonus, your volunteers still get to go to church three weeks of the month. I know that’s easier said than done. This post can help.
When I have more than one service a week, I ask all my volunteers to serve at least two services a month. We also heavily push the philosophy of work one, worship one. With more than one service, volunteers always have the choice of going to service before or after their volunteer schedule.
In one church I served, I had four services. One on Saturday, two on Sunday and another on Wednesday. I still talked about work one, worship one, but I kept the Saturday and Wednesday volunteers on a once-a-month schedule. In my experience, very few people are willing to make a two-day commitment to church, especially on the weekends. Wednesday is often a different type of service with groups or an insider focused service. Many of your volunteers are going to want to be a part of those. I often had a different Wednesday service schedule myself just to accommodate the different kids and volunteers.
2. Create a routine
When I asked my volunteers to serve twice a month, I don’t let them choose which two weeks every month. That overly complicates things. I basically have two teams, first and third Sunday team and second and fourth Sunday team. Whenever I onboard a new volunteer, I explain to them that the job requires them to serve two Sundays a month and ask which two would they like to serve, first and third or second and fourth. This gives them options and keeps my schedule clean. When I’ve used Planning Center Services, I used the templates and built specific services for each team. Then when I add new weeks the volunteers are already assigned. In addition, it makes it way easier for volunteers to plan vacations, days off, and find someone to switch with.
If you only have one service, I suggest you set up a similar routine, but instead of two teams, you have four. Each volunteer knows that they will serve a particular Sunday of the month, regardless of what you’re teaching or what’s happening at the church.
Using this routine, I found I had far less absences and even if the volunteers never opened my reminder emails, they knew when they were on the schedule.
3. What about Fifth Sunday?
Planning for four Sundays a month is all well and good except for that pesky fifth Sunday that rolls around every quarter. I had one volunteer who thought she served every other week instead of first and third Sunday. She was all thrown off when she showed up on the second Sunday and realized we didn’t need her and missed her the week before.
When I first started, I had a specific team that served only on fifth Sundays. Some of them were my best volunteers while for others, it was the only time they served. This worked to an extent, but every third month, I’d have trouble getting all my rooms filled. In addition, some of the fifth Sunday volunteers felt their obligation to serve was fulfilled, but they only served four times a year! We can ask more of them.
At another church, we implemented family Sundays on fifth Sunday and gave all the kids teams the day off. I really enjoyed everyone together and it made scheduling that Sunday a breeze, but we only did it for a year before leadership decided to switch back.
I knew I wasn’t happy with the specific team option, so another kids’ pastor suggested that I rotate my regular volunteers on that fifth Sunday. Here’s what I mean. Most years, there are four fifth Sundays. So, on the first fifth Sunday (that’s March 31, 2024, Easter Sunday) all my first Sunday volunteers serve. Then on the second fifth Sunday, (June 30, 2024) the second Sunday volunteers will serve, and so on. Using this pattern means that the first and fourth Sunday teams have to serve back to back weeks, but it’s only once a year and most of them don’t mind.
There are a few rare years that you have five fifth Sundays in a year. On those years, I lobbied hard for a family service. It’s usually New Years Eve, and in my context, few people come to church on that day anyway resulting in needing fewer volunteers.
4. Allow for versatility
I know I’ve talked about keeping it simple and having a routine for your volunteers, but some jobs and some volunteers don’t fit into that mold. Sometimes volunteers don’t want to or can’t serve twice a month. Or, the job is better suited to serve the entire weekend as opposed to one service. I talked a little bit about this in my post called 5 Steps to Building Your Volunteer Structure for Growth.
If a volunteer can only serve one Sunday a month, then I limit them to what they could do. I keep them in the sound booth, crowd control, or assistant roles. I want the people in the leader positions to know the kids and build relationships. That’s hard to do when you only see them once a month.
Other jobs, however, are well suited to serving throughout all the weekend services, so I only ask them to serve one Sunday but in multiple services. These jobs usually entail the tech booth and check-in. Because I need them to know the service flow and the transition time between services is critical for their role, it’s better to keep them there than switch out teams while also dismissing and accepting new kids.
Allowing for versatility does complicate the teams a bit, but if the volunteer requirements are based on the job instead of the person, it makes scheduling a whole lot easier and keeps your volunteers happily serving for years to come.
Volunteer scheduling can be stressful especially when everyone calls out on Saturday night, but it doesn’t have to be complicated. Find a system that works best for you and stick to it. Some of your current volunteers may not adopt the new system, but as you add new people to your team the people who refuse to change will eventually or quit and then everyone fits.
If you’d like more help with volunteer scheduling or volunteers in general check out these other posts and be sure to pick up my volunteer onboarding tools. Happy scheduling!
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No matter how long a lead team meeting is you need to have an agenda, and pre-service meetings are no different. But what should you talk about in those meetings? How do you make them engaging and enjoyable so that your volunteers are willing to show up 30-45 minutes before the service, just to meet?