At Willow Creek Community Church, founding pastor Bill Hybels tends to think of increasing the number of volunteers the same way he thinks about increasing the number of unbelievers in his pews. Just as one would not cold call an unbeliever to attend a church or become a Christian, we should not attempt to cold call people into volunteer work. Rather, as with evangelism strategy, current volunteers and staff members should leverage their relationships with people, casting an exciting vision for ministry with those whom they already know in the church, and then they should invite these prospective volunteers to make a small commitment, like simply attending an outreach event to see how it all works. This one-to-one marketing approach (which, as you can tell, is similar in some ways to employee referral programs) is admittedly a bit labor intensive, but it recruits many people into long-term service who would not have been there but for the patient leading of a friend.
Once a new volunteer is on board, says Warren, don't spend a lot of time in “pre-service training.” Get them involved in meaningful ministry before their enthusiasm wanes. Drucker agrees, encouraging ministry leaders to assess the strengths of volunteers and place them accordingly, but then to assign each one a mentor (usually a current volunteer) for on-the-job training. This not only improves the competence of new volunteers, it assists with retention of long-term volunteers as well: “The most effective way to motivate and hold veterans is to recognize their expertise and use them to train newcomers.”
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