Best Practices for Staff and Strategic Volunteers

This week I was talking with one of our FEIC pastors about best practices so I thought it would be good for us to remind ourselves of some principles related to job descriptions for staff and strategic volunteers.

Whether you’re a new church plant or an established church, we all work to develop high-capacity teams. It’s important that everyone understands each persons role and responsibilities so that they are not working on top of each other or that ministry begins to bottleneck.

One best practice is to take time once a year to review written job descriptions then go over them with your staff and strategic volunteers. One of the ways we do this in Vienna is by communicating four things:

This is the overall vision – everyone must understand what we’re working together to accomplish. Our vision must be portable and clear.

This is your part – everyone needs to clearly understand the role they play and how that role relates to other members of the team.

This is why your part is important – team members naturally will become discouraged or distracted if they do not understand why their part is important to all of us being successful.

We’re going to hold you accountable – we’ve all heard the saying, “you can only expect what you inspect.” Paid staff and especially strategic volunteers need to be held accountable to their job description. We want to flatten leadership to empower others but accountability is the key to a healthy team.

Best practices remind us of our missional purpose as international churches.

Perry Noble reminds us…

“When the local church is working right, there is nothing more powerful and breathtaking in the world. It’s the place where lost people are found, where found people grow to love Jesus more, where addicts are set free, where the excluded are included, where the hopeless find hope, where marriages are restored, where forgiveness is extended and where God gets the glory for it all!!”

We’re here for you and praying you have a powerful weekend!

Larry