How to Do Digital Ministry with Limited Volunteers

Digital Ministry IS Ministry

If you want to talk about how to do digital ministry with limited volunteers, you need to consider how to do any type of ministry with limited volunteers.

Effective ministry with limited volunteers requires that you provide purpose to the work, maintain a healthy environment, be clear about your needs, share behind-the-scenes, re-think the need for a volunteer, and set goals.

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Provide Purpose

With any type of work or volunteering, there needs to be some sort of intrinsic motivator, some sort of “why” for the task at hand.

There may be some tasks in your community that are extremely gratifying for people, because they can tangibly see the “why.” They see the way their prayer comforts the person in front of them when they volunteer as a prayer partner. They feel the importance of volunteering to hand out food at a food kitchen.

But what about when you need someone to create some slides for worship? Or take out the trash at the end of the week? Or figure out how to make an Instagram Reel?

Passion for any project always starts with purpose. 

Your people want to be part of something. This is where your mission comes into play.

Connect every task that needs to be completed with your mission. It should be where everything starts and ends. 

We do this with every meeting we have at Digivangelism – it is something we picked up from the book “Death By Meeting by Patrick Lencioni,” which we reviewed here.

Starting with your mission and recognizing how the task at hand connects to it brings meaning and importance to even the most menial tasks.

Don’t believe the lie that people don’t want to help and don’t hesitate to share how the needs of your community connect to your mission. 

Boldly provide people the opportunity to be part of something bigger than themselves. They can always say no.

Maintain a Healthy Volunteer Environment

If you are hoping people will give away their precious time for your ministry, you need to make the volunteer environment that you are inviting them into a healthy one.

It needs to be clear that any new volunteers aren’t signing up for life.

It needs to be clear that they can take a break, participate as little or often as they’d like, or just try it without any commitment.

It needs to be abundantly clear that your volunteers are appreciated. You can show this by thanking them and investing in them as critical roles in your community’s functioning.

Another way you can establish a healthy environment for volunteers is by being candid with the situation they are walking into. If you need help, ask for help. Don’t try to guilt them into volunteering or drop confusing hints. Be clear about the needs and what is being done to fill them.

Be Clear About Needs

Speaking of being clear… 

Communicating that there is a need isn’t the only way to be clear about the need itself. 

You, as a leader in your community, likely know all of the details of what you are asking from the person in front of you. They are likely not as fortunate to understand all the inner workings of every aspect of what goes on behind the scenes.

This can be intimidating to people. 

Asking someone to make slides for worship might seem like a designer’s task, of which anyone without those skills would feel severely underqualified for. 

Asking someone to “take out the trash” every week might sound easy enough to you, but what other questions pop up for them? How much trash? Do I need to supply trash bags? Is there recycling? Do the trash cans need to be moved? Is it a specific day every week? Am I responsible for cleaning the trash cans if they’re messy?

Even if the task is a complicated one, be clear about what is needed, recognizing that the request itself might seem larger than you think to the person receiving it.

Finally, do what you can to add a time allotment to the volunteer position.

Instead of asking someone to make Instagram Reels for your ministry, can you ask them to make one per week for one month?

If they agree to take out the trash, can you limit it to the next three months only? It’s often easier to commit to something for a few weeks or months rather than an open-ended ask. 

If they want to continue serving in this way – great! Designate a new check-in time in the future and let them serve however they feel led. If not, figure out a new plan and thank them for sticking with it.

Share Behind-the-Scenes

One way you can reinforce what is involved in a task is by sharing behind-the-scenes tidbits… and sharing them often.

This could be in videos that you film and share on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, or wherever your people are spending time online.

This could also be photos or blog posts or spoken testimonies.

Sharing clearly what people are doing behind-the-scenes helps others to understand what is involved in the task at hand and how they might be able to fit into it.

Re-Think the Need for a Volunteer

There are some options with this:

• Pay Someone
• Start paying some of them… even contract
• Work-study/internship 
• Or make it more manageable – once a month

Set Goals

• Set GOALS – know what you need/want
• What are we working toward?

Now what?

Well, before you run off to tell someone your next big idea for how to handle the “volunteer crisis” in your community, here’s an important reminder: there is only so much you can do.

You cannot make people appear out of thin air.

You cannot force people to serve (and you really shouldn’t try to).

How to train new volunteers

• Develop processes. Develop systems
• For recruiting, for making it happen, and progressing people forward
• Don Miller  – “if you confuse, you’ll lose”