I was going to make this part 3, but this all really ties together too much, so let’s just talk about it now. What about oversight? Too often I think of “oversight” with a negative flavor; the person overseeing is the one who either a) gets to be the disciplinarian when things go poorly or b) has to take the blame when things go poorly. No fun either way. But if oversight doesn’t kick in until things go poorly then we are failing.

So back to those evaluations where people said the Sunday morning service was good. I think one of the key reasons the Sunday morning service was good, and got better, was that we held weekly meetings on Mondays to critique and review. As a staff we sat down for an hour and discussed the music, the sermon, the rest of the service. What was good? What was bad? What could be done better for next time? Those meetings were good learning times for all of us. I can’t think of a single time, though, that we did that kind of evaluation for any of the other ministries I’ve been involved in at the church.

Why don’t we do oversight? First, I think it’s the negative connotation. We don’t want to be the bad cop who’s offering criticism when something is done poorly. Now sure, it’s more comfortable not to offer criticism, but we don’t usually shy away from it. Why do we shy away from it in church ministry?

1. We’re afraid of losing volunteers. If the gal who runs the overhead projector or the guy who greets at the west door get criticized for doing a poor job, they may just decide that it’s not worth it at all. Then we may be out a couple of volunteers… and isn’t having someone that does a hit-or-miss job better than not having anyone? There are a couple responses to this one: first, teaching and shepherding of our people to have them understand the importance of service; second, making sure that we talk to folks regularly, so we have opportunities to praise them for doing an excellent job… which makes the sting of constructive criticism easier to take later on.

2. We feel guilty for overworking our volunteers It’s the old 80-20 rule, right? 80 percent of the work gets done by 20 percent of the people. In some churches it’s probably more like a 90-10 rule. So when one of those 10 percent, a faithful, hard-working volunteer, is doing a poor job in a ministry, we hesitate to mention it because, you know, they’re already doing too much already, but we really need somebody to do this, and, well, they’re busy, and it’s hard to get it all done… so let’s cut them some slack. I am one of those 10 percent people. Even today I have responsibilities that I am doing poorly because I have too many things on my plate.

So what’s the response to this one? First, don’t overload your people. If somebody’s volunteered for too many things, tell them so. Then help them to prioritize so they can do a few things really well. Then get some of those 90 percent people to fill the gaps. If there’s no one to fill in, leave a hole there for a while.

3. We feel guilty because we haven’t trained well I’m as guilty of this as anyone. To my silly engineering mind, most of these tasks are “easy”, so I tend to let them go with just a little bit of training. “Here, it’s just Powerpoint. Turn on the projector, use the remote to flip the slides, turn it off when the songs are done.” To most people, things aren’t that obvious. The best solution for some of these tasks is apprenticeship - get a new volunteer to work with an old, experienced volunteer for a while to learn the ropes. In times when that’s just not possible, set up a time to work with the new volunteer and train them until they’re comfortable with the task. Don’t just throw them into it on a Sunday morning and leave them hanging. I’m ashamed to say I’ve done it before… and I’m sure I’m not the only one.

Active oversight

So here’s my call for active oversight of for every volunteer in every ministry going on in the church. Maybe a weekly meeting is infeasible, but a conversation or phone call every couple of weeks would work. As a leader, ask these questions:

  • How do you think it’s been going? Good? Bad?
  • Have there been any times that you felt unprepared or out of your depth?
  • Is there anything I can do to help you do even better next time?
  • How are things going in your life otherwise?

As a leader, be prepared to offer some feedback, too:

  • How you actually think it went.
  • Suggestions for improvement.
  • Encouragement to continue well, and a reminder of why we’re all serving.

It is not the responsibility of the pastor to talk to all the volunteers every week, either - this oversight responsibility should delegate down. Let the nursery coordinator be the one that contacts the nursery volunteers on a regular basis. Let the head technical person keep in active touch with the folks who run sound and video every week. Then let the elder overseeing the nursery ministry talk to the ministry coordinator, etc. Flow things up. If everyone gets in the practice of talking to their two or three on a regular basis, everyone stays on the same page, and improvements get made. Just keep in mind the end goal: effective, well-done ministry, in service of God’s people, and for God’s glory.

The rest of this series: