The Power of Diversifying Volunteer Teams | Season 5: Episode 3

Ever wondered how a NASCAR risk manager or a post office worker could be the best addition to your ministry team? Buckle up! We’re about to take you on a unique journey about unique volunteers.

We've learned the immense value of diversifying our volunteer teams, drawing from our volunteers' skill sets, backgrounds, and ages, even when they defy the ‘typical’ volunteer image. It's easy to overlook the quiet ones, like the tireless administrative volunteer ensuring birthday postcards are sent out - but trust us, their impact is far-reaching and deeply meaningful to young people.

We'll also delve into the depths of our own biases when recruiting and how they can inadvertently limit the potential of our ministries. We all have our blind spots, but learning to recognize and navigate them is crucial in building a team that can truly take your ministry to the next level.

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Transcript

Brian Lawson: 0:00

Youth Ministry Institute Original Podcast. Welcome to the Making Sense of Ministry podcast, the podcast designed to help you lead well in your ministry, transform lives and impact generations. This is Brian Lawson, back again with Kirsten Knox hey, kirsten.

Kirsten Knox: 0:18

Hey Brian, hey everyone.

Brian Lawson: 0:20

And we're so glad to have you here listening with us today. We are in our season of volunteers, so this whole season on this podcast is all dedicated to the lifespan of a volunteer. So if you did not hear the first couple episodes, I'd encourage you to go back and listen to those, because we're going to build as we move through this season. So, kirsten, in our last episode we released it was a five-minute mentoring episode you talked about recruiting the best and making a list.

Brian Lawson: 0:54

So, here's my question for you, kirsten Do you actually do that, or is it something you just teach that you should do?

Kirsten Knox: 1:03

Well, I would say yes, I actually do it, and have there been years where I did not do it?

Kirsten Knox: 1:09

Yes, so I would say yes and no right and those probably were not my better recruiting years and so I could probably tell a difference. I used to call my A team when I would make a list like who would I want to be on my team if I could have anybody? And then oftentimes I sometimes would make a list of who do I think will be an easy yes and B. That would serve in the youth ministry so. But yes, I would do it. It was hard because I want to say no for people before they say no.

Brian Lawson: 1:40

So you've got your A team is what I heard and then you've got your easy yes team and hopefully you're recruiting more of your A team.

Kirsten Knox: 1:47

I would, yes, I would do that. So I would push me because I would tend to I could develop. It was easier for me to develop a B team than an A team. Yeah, and so making the list made me really focus on the A team and who was the best that I wanted to ask? So for me, it helped me focus in that space when I had a tendency not to at times.

Brian Lawson: 2:08

Yeah, yeah, and we're not going to go into this today, we will go down down the road but could you take a B player and develop them, you know, into a team and I think that's possible. Also, I mean, I think about, like the baseball season. We've been following the Reds all season and they've moved rookies up and back down in the AAA and back and forth all the time, which is probably terrible for the players. However, it's about development and the needs of the team and so their, their goal in triple A is to develop the players for the majors. So, yeah, so it's good to hear you actually do it, because I didn't know if it's something you teach but you don't do. But, yeah, good, that's good to know. So hear that we actually try to do what we, what we're telling you.

Brian Lawson: 2:50

Yes, we don't always do a perfect, but we sure try. True, yeah, so as we, as we're going into this next, this next part of our season on volunteers, I'm wondering what kinds of unique volunteers have you and I had in our ministry? I wonder if we shouldn't share some of that. You know, the ones you don't necessarily think about in youth ministry, like you wouldn't walk down the street and be like that person's definitely a volunteer in youth or kids ministry. There's just no way they volunteer in those ministries, right?

Kirsten Knox: 3:24

Like you are those people. Yeah, brian. So tell us who is one of the unique people that you've had in your ministry that you normally wouldn't have just picked out.

Brian Lawson: 3:33

So I feel like I've had some unique characters. I remember I had a volunteer that had a beard that, like, basically went to the ground, which was always fantastic.

Kirsten Knox: 3:42

And I don't know how he managed that Great conversation starter.

Brian Lawson: 3:44

Yes, absolutely. But one unique volunteer that I think about this gentleman who I believe he was probably in his mid to upper thirties when I first recruited him married, had kids, so nothing unique about that, necessarily, but what was most unique about him was his day job, was he was a risk manager for NASCAR. So number one, his job was cool because he worked for NASCAR. I mean, I don't know a lot about NASCAR, but it sounds cool to say you work there, so he's a risk manager for NASCAR. And so how many people, I wonder, would think a risk manager would work well in youth or kids ministry? Because, let's be honest, how often are we actually like pushing the limits on things?

Kirsten Knox: 4:29

I would be like his job. He had a lot to do in his job if he was that.

Brian Lawson: 4:33

Yeah, and I wondered how many people in ministry would really want somebody on their team who's gonna be like are you sure you really wanna do that? Maybe that's not the wisest thing. Perhaps we should dial this back a little bit.

Kirsten Knox: 4:42

We usually like the others. Yes, yes, so true.

Brian Lawson: 4:47

So he's not the person you would initially think would be a volunteer, but he became a really great asset because there were times where he would gently question, respectfully, kind of push and back and say, hey, are we sure that this is the best row? What if we looked at it this way? And sometimes we agree with him and sometimes we didn't agree with him, but we appreciated his voice in the conversation. But he also was a fantastic small group leader and is still doing it today, years later. Not the typical volunteer you would think of, but a fantastic one, the 18.

Kirsten Knox: 5:24

Did he know? Was that like a formal role that he had, or did he just naturally lean into that?

Brian Lawson: 5:30

You mean like kind of pushing back against us.

Kirsten Knox: 5:32

Yeah, like it was something you talked to him about, like here's what I would really like for you to like do, and this would be helpful. Or did it just naturally happen?

Brian Lawson: 5:40

I did not ask him because he was a risk manager. In fact, I was hesitant to ask him because of that, so I did not tell him ahead of time. But he just brought it with him, right, like it's his training, it's his career, it's what he does, so he brings part of who he is with him into the conversation. So he wasn't asked, he just offered it and I'm glad he did. I'm glad he did.

Kirsten Knox: 6:04

Yeah, that's some things you stumble onto, that there's some real goodness that you didn't really think through right Like intentional, but then just happened. I always say, for me I have to almost have it the other way as someone who pushes limits, because I tend to really have a low tolerance for risk when I'm, you know, in charge of other people's kids. So I intentionally put someone on my team who's going to push it a little bit and be like, hey, this is okay, because I tend not to do that as much.

Brian Lawson: 6:30

Yeah, yeah, I think I'm probably middle of the road, but I had some people on my team who were absolutely push it to the limit, and so he was the other side, so you're right, yeah, yeah, created all those voices. Yeah, working together, yes, and you know, if you have a good culture where everybody can hear one another, that that's helpful too. And where disagreement is okay because it pushes us to be better, and the best that we can be so.

Brian Lawson: 6:55

so it was good. But how about you, kirsten? And did you think back on your time? What unique volunteer or volunteers have you had in your ministries that you've served?

Kirsten Knox: 7:05

Yes, I had this one lady.

Kirsten Knox: 7:06

She worked at the post office and she had she had lost her college age son a few years back in an accident and got to the place where she really wanted to help with students but knew she wasn't that emotionally in a space really to interact with them one on one.

Kirsten Knox: 7:22

But she's like I work at the post office I don't know if that can help you and I was like, well, I always want to do these birthday postcards and send out to students. You know, the week of their birthday and it's one other admin tasks in the midst of everything else kind of falls through the cracks. So we have, we created the system at the end of each month she would give me a stack of postcards that she had already addressed and she would put up in the right corner the date their birthday and I would write them a personalized note and then hand them back to her and then she would mail them throughout the month when it was time for their birthday. So students got this birthday card postcard for me with a personalized note and I didn't have to do anything but once a month sit down and be able to write them out. But I remember her saying to me I work at the post office, can that be helpful? And I was like yes, it can.

Kirsten Knox: 8:10

Yes, this can be helpful. So it was. I, you know, stumbled onto her and it was a unique and she never really interacted with students but also got to play a powerful role in their life and speak, encouragement and celebrate them. And they they will never know her name, most of them and yet she played a critical role for them. So I always felt like I was like wow.

Brian Lawson: 8:32

And I would have never.

Kirsten Knox: 8:33

she came to me and asked, so that was great.

Brian Lawson: 8:36

So I love that she made so, mel, those cards. I have a similar situation right now where I have a volunteer who prepares the cards and puts the names and the date in the top corner, just like you described, where you put the stamp. A question for Kirsten, and I hate to admit this, I have still forgotten to mail them.

Brian Lawson: 8:54

Like I have. I have finished them, closed them up, even put the stamp on them, and then left them on my desk over the weekend and forgot. So more than once cards have been late because of me. Has it happened? Did you ever do this?

Kirsten Knox: 9:07

Well, she would do all that, so I didn't even have to mail them.

Brian Lawson: 9:10

She would mail them.

Kirsten Knox: 9:11

So I would hand them back to her and she would mail them on the right day, like to get there a couple days, or else, brian, if she didn't do that, I would have, because I I'm like I would tend to be late on that, so that was like you got on time.

Brian Lawson: 9:23

birthday cards because of her. That's the best. And then, when I realized I'm late once or twice, I've actually haven't even written them yet. So all right, hey, I just want to extend your birthday a little bit.

Kirsten Knox: 9:33

So here's a late card so you can celebrate longer. That's right. I'm like let me spend this, oh that.

Brian Lawson: 9:40

I'm a failure. Yes, oh, that's great. I love that volunteer and the fact that she's never known and yet does it Doesn't that say something that she is. Yeah, she knows that people probably won't realize she was doing that, and yet she does it anyways.

Kirsten Knox: 9:56

Yeah, and I would have kids take a picture of the birthday card and text it and thank me, right, like thanks for my card, and I was like you're welcome and I had. You know I play. I wrote the note but it happened not because of me, it happened because of her.

Brian Lawson: 10:10

Yeah, which, in truth, is the best of any group ever is when the team is working together collectively. And there's not this concern about, well, who's the face and who's getting credit, but it's a word of movement together. But it takes a strong, I think a strong person who's willing to be in that place that she was in, and I imagine it probably comes out of the tragedy she experienced as well.

Kirsten Knox: 10:37

Yes, and for her son, youth Group was a powerful experience. So she wanted to give back into that space and I had to be intentional about telling her about how much it meant Like that was closing the loop for her, that sometimes I probably could have been better at being able to say, hey, I got this text message or different things. I know that she also felt like she was a part of their story in a powerful way. But, yeah, I was like the gifts you know he stumbled onto that goodness, I had no idea. She said I worked at a post office.

Brian Lawson: 11:05

That's the best. Oh, I would love to hear. I would love to hear, like, from our listeners, like, what, what odd thing. Has somebody come and said, hey, I do this is a job. Is this useful? Like I'm sure there's some really odd, odd ones out there. I would love to hear about it.

Brian Lawson: 11:23

Even landing your dream ministry role or engaging with a community of other youth and children's ministers as you learn practical tools and enriching insights together. Whether you are looking for your next ministry job or you are looking for ways to grow your skills as a leader, we have opportunities for you. Head over to YM Institutecom to learn more. And now back to the episode. I think we're kind of leaning into something that hopefully, hopefully, our listeners kind of are hearing is that there needs to be variety. You need to have this uniqueness about your team and about the people. So, like you talked about your A team and person you know and made the list in that last podcast episode and today we're kind of leaning into the variety of that list and how important it is to have a significance in the diversity of your team in a lot of different ways.

Kirsten Knox: 12:29

Yes, and I think what was helpful to me is, along the way, I was able to recognize that I'm drawn and I think most of us were drawn to things that are familiar. So, therefore, what I tended to do was recruit people that were like me, who felt familiar to me, because that was an easier ask. And then recognizing hey, that's why I'm doing that how can you build a team of people that are different than you? So one thing that I would do is look at, I would think in my head, here are the qualities I think I bring right and here are the gaps. And how do I find people have these qualities, that have these gaps, to be able to do that? But being able to recruit people who of different ages, different stations in life, different personalities, yeah, I think that's a challenge. At least, it was a challenge for me, because I tended to be drawn to people who were more like me.

Brian Lawson: 13:18

Yeah, not only people who are more like us, but just think the young, youth or kids ministry leader, maybe fresh out of college or in their mid-20s, even late 20s, and working with people who are older than you and recruiting them and asking them to be on your team and asking to put them in a place where you're going to train them is intimidating and uncomfortable.

Brian Lawson: 13:45

And so I think a lot of young, younger people in ministry don't recruit as variety that they could, simply because of intimidation factor, and so they don't want to recruit somebody who's much older or a different stage of life than them, because who am I to tell you how to lead a kids ministry when you have kids? And I don't Right.

Brian Lawson: 14:06

If not only do I not have kids, but I'm not even in the age range of my mind to have kids. So depending on your I guess your mindset as to where you are in your life and what you hope, but but still I think that there's an intimidation factor there. So there's a lot of reasons. Either we're just we recruit people we're comfortable with, who are like us, we recruit people who are in the age range that makes us feel comfortable, or maybe even we recruit all people who are yes, people who are always going to be like yes, whatever you want, yes, yes, yes.

Brian Lawson: 14:35

And that's not good either and that's not healthy. No, okay, yep, okay, okay. Then there's the other side too. I wonder if there's something in us at times that keeps us from recruiting people because of bias and there's a lot of, you know. Without going too far into this, there's a lot of reasons why that could be. A lot of bias could exist. I mean, I even just think of one of our former Youth Ministry Institute students whose entire Youth Ministry volunteer team was adults who were of the older age range, who most would never consider recruiting, and yet that was her entire Youth Ministry volunteer team and she did well with that.

Kirsten Knox: 15:18

Yes, there are these stereotypes of what a volunteer looks like. I think for us sometimes we have to break through that, but also for people in our churches Like they almost self select themselves out because they don't fit the stereotype that they think would be good with working with students and children. So I think also being able to help educate them of being able when you have those conversations, there might be some hesitancy on their side and probably on some level because they've already have some ideas of what that looks like and why they're not good at that. That's why I think, when you're having those conversations, being able to talk about what assets they bring might help them break through some of those stereotypes. But yes, there's a lot of barriers when we think about recruiting.

Brian Lawson: 16:01

We also could be unsure what to do with a person. I mean you had this woman who says I work at the post office. And I mean I could see that there's probably Youth or Children's Ministry leaders who are like I'm not sure what to do with that. How do I incorporate them into it? And so it requires a level of creative thinking, a level of thoughtfulness about how could their gifts be used in the ministry that we're serving and leading. How could you use a risk manager? Do I?

Kirsten Knox: 16:32

really want a risk manager on my team, but perhaps I do.

Brian Lawson: 16:36

Do I want a finance person on my team? Maybe, maybe not, I don't know, depends on if you're turning your seats.

Kirsten Knox: 16:44

That's right when you're like those places also create accountability, and I think if we're not careful, we lean away from that sometimes and that accountability so being able to recruit a variety adds that as well, as we have all kinds of different children and students that need different things from adults, and so that was probably for me, what helped me really go over, like be able to go over that barrier at times of when I went and recruit people who were different. What was like what my students need are people who are different, and so I was willing to push through some uncomfortableness because it was best for students. That, for me, helped me.

Brian Lawson: 17:22

There's absolutely been young people who I could be friendly with and they knew I was going to support them and they knew I would be there and listen and try to help form and shape and guide, and who also don't connect with me as well as they do somebody else, and that is 100% true about every person out there. There are young people who are not going to connect with you as well, and that's part of it.

Kirsten Knox: 17:50

Yes, and I think we have to be able to say that right, it's okay that you don't connect with everyone the same way. So I think sometimes for our ego that's hard, so we don't always just say that we Wait.

Brian Lawson: 18:02

not everybody likes me.

Kirsten Knox: 18:03

What? Like I'm not everyone's favorite person. I'm like, yes, I don't think we say that, but we don't always want to say that out loud. We might know that to ourselves, good that. But you're like, yes, sometimes our own ego gets in the way of being able to recruit different types of people and giving them right. There's freedom in that and we have to confront some stuff in ourselves to be able to recruit well.

Brian Lawson: 18:26

Yeah. So when we say variety, we're talking about personality types. If you're into the Enneagram or whatever those different numbers introverts, extroverts, different career types, genders, ages, backgrounds I mean everything is diverse and wide in many different ways as you could get I think only extends our ability to reach more young people and to help them know of Jesus, in than if we have a limited team and a team that is all sort of the same. So when we say variety, that's kind of what we're looking at everything. And if you have to think long and hard about how to incorporate them into the team because it's a unique situation or a unique career path that they have or there's a unique skill set they've got, I think that's even better and it may lead to something beautiful.

Kirsten Knox: 19:19

I would say the goodness is probably on the other side of thinking through that. What is that? Yeah, yeah being able and we will reach more students. Like you had said, our capacity increases with the more diverse team we have. So, for you know, trying to figure out because recruiting can be uncomfortable what motivates you and using that to help you to be able to look at that.

Brian Lawson: 19:39

Yeah.

Kirsten Knox: 19:39

Of all the different varieties of people, and what a gift that is to your children and your students to be able to do that.

Brian Lawson: 19:45

Yeah, and as we move through this season and we look at the lifespan of a volunteer, we're kind of real into the recruiting side at this point in time. But we'll we'll address like, how do you really, how do you really ask somebody to come into the ministry, how do, how do you do that? And so we'll we'll address that and hopefully that's helpful. But as you're thinking about that, a team, as Kirsten described, that you're putting together maybe look down the names and say is this, is this a list that shows creativity of thought? Is this a list that shows a diverse group with lots of different skills and ages that can speak to lots of different young people? And if not, then maybe there's some other names that that you need to look through and and add or ask other people who they might consider, because maybe they have thoughts that you don't.

Kirsten Knox: 20:31

Yes, I'm going to say make that team would ask people. I think that's one of the best. You don't have to have all the pressure to do that list. Make that list by yourself, create your list and then I'll ask for people's input.

Brian Lawson: 20:41

Yeah, absolutely Okay. Friends, I hope that this has been helpful to you, that you see the significance of looking at a diverse group of volunteers and why that matters, and, as always, I hope we helped you make sense of this thing we call ministry. To learn more how we might guide you towards success in youth or children's ministries, head over to yminstitutecom.