The Volunteer Bridge: A Practical Approach for Moving People from Sitting to Serving
By Angela Yee
Do you remember the last time you had more than enough volunteers to fully equip each ministry of your church? Me either. In my years volunteering and working in church ministry, I have never had a time (or met another pastor or church leader who did) when every volunteer role was filled and we didn’t need more volunteers. There seems to be a perpetual need for people to serve in children’s ministry, youth ministry, as small group leaders, and just about every ministry a church does. Cultivating a rhythm for recruiting and discipling volunteers can be a daunting task on top of all the other things on the plate of a pastor or ministry leader. The Volunteer Bridge: A Practical Approach for Moving People from Sitting to Serving, by Covenant pastor Angela Yee, provides a practical framework to develop a strategy around volunteer mobilization that seeks to engage even the most disengaged churchgoer.
The goal of the volunteer bridge is to enable all people to use the gifts God has given them, fulfilling their God-given potential through serving others. While the book has a lot of terms to unpack and define, it is helpful and practical. Readers are given an overview of each step in the process of building a volunteer bridge before it is broken down in detail with stories, diagrams, processing questions, and opportunities to consider how to implement it in your own context. Yee strongly argues for developing a volunteer mobilization team model to oversee the volunteer process but also shares additional models for churches where the team model may not be realistic.
The volunteer bridge is the process by which very inactive people (VIPs) are moved from the shore of sitting to the land of serving. Yee is intentional about communicating the biblical foundation for serving in the first chapter. As leaders devote time and energy to discipling churchgoers, it is critical to continuously communicate the “why” behind what we do. This aids in building church culture and developing systems that spark inspiration in complacent laypeople.
Surprisingly, not everyone is excited to referee a junior high Nerf battle. I know I have had times of desperation when I resorted to begging and bribing people to help fill roles, just looking for a warm body to show up. Yet begging and bribing rarely resulted in successfully recruiting a volunteer who caught the ministry vision and continued to serve alongside me. Having a strategy for recruiting, developing, and training volunteers doesn’t mean we will suddenly have more than enough people serving. Having a strategy does mean there is intentional planning to foster growth.
This book is filled with Yee’s personal ministry examples, both the good and the not-so-good, of volunteer cultures and strategies. Whether you need a refresher in your volunteer recruitment strategies or need to build a strategy for the first time, this book will walk leaders through every piece to consider along the way.
