Silos… The Unspoken Barrier to Ministry

FTDeliverySvcs — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 04:40:00 GMT

My name is Matthew McMaster and I have been a Delivery Manager at Fellowship Technologies since March of 2004. In that time I have implemented over 100 churches. Some of them have been very sophisticated in how they communicate within their ministries but many of them have a real silo issue. When each ministry functions as its own separate entity with little or no regard for the larger entity (The Local Church) as a whole, you have a group of silos; not a unified team. An example of this would be when the Youth Pastor gets their new students to fill out a first time visitor card. This seemingly ordinary process is really masking a silo issue. When you look closer at the first time visitor card you will notice it is missing some very important information. What are the parent’s names? Do they have any siblings and what are their ages? What is the best way to get in touch with the parents? Do they have a church home? Now the Youth pastor might say, “That information isn’t necessary for me to reach that student.” This is a silo mentality. The Youth Pastor is forgetting that the student is part of a larger entity of the family. Each member of the family is a potential soul needing to be reached. Each member of the family is the target market for other ministries at The Local Church.

Another example of a silo that I have seen involves working with multiple ministries trying to coordinate volunteer activities. There really is a best first time visitor with children process and it involves “Super Greeters” that can escort a family from one classroom to another explaining the check in and pick up processes. These “Super Greeters” naturally come from the Greeting team which is a separate ministry from the children’s ministry. I have heard from the leaders in this ministry on many occasions, “Why do I need to staff Greeters in the Children’s Building? That is their responsibility!” This silo mentality is detrimental to the volunteers as well as potential guests.

There are many other types of silos but I think you get my point. So now you must be wondering, “What do I do to break down those silos?” The answer is deceptively simple… Cross functional Teams. In future blogs, I will discuss two specific cross functional teams but you can have many more. The first is the Fellowship One Champion Team and the second is the Data Integrity Team. In my next entry, I will be discussing how the Champion Team functions.

Matthew McMaster
Delivery Manager
Fellowship Technologies.

Volunteer Central

FTDeliveryTeam — Thu, 18 Jan 2007 19:27:00 GMT

Quite often when I speak with churches about their volunteers I get some very common responses. Some of them are not all bad “we love our volunteers”, “we couldn’t have church without our volunteers support”, or “we try and have a volunteer appreciation dinner once a year to show them how much we appreciate what they do”. Understanding the importance of volunteers to a non profit organization is the key to staying alive.

I am currently attending Fellowship Church. I am what some would say is an occasional volunteer. My wife and I blame our lack of consistent volunteering on the fact that we have 4 children. It takes 2 childcare workers to keep an eye on just our children so we figure it would be a wash to volunteer both at the same time. A weak excuse I know, but one I am sticking to for now. One thing that makes volunteering pleasant, if not down right fun is Volunteer Central at Fellowship Church. The room that Fellowship Church uses is, surprisingly enough, centrally located. It is roughly 20’ by 20’ lined on 2 walls by counter surface similar to a kitchen with cupboards above and below for storage. The wall immediately across the room when you enter is a large screen where services are shown real time or training video’s are displayed. In front of the final wall, which is made up of large picture windows looking out on a courtyard, sits the volunteers who manage volunteer central. Their main goal in life is making sure that everyone that walks into Volunteer Central is taken care of. Imagine a concierge, receptionist, and ticket counter agent all wrapped up in one. If you have a problem they can fix it, if you need yourself and your kids checked in they do it, if you are not sure what you are supposed to do or whom you’re supposed to be working with they can find out. With a few clicks of the radio they can be in touch with the entire church. This might not seem like a challenge but remember Fellowship Church runs 22,000 on the weekend with thousands of volunteers flowing through their hallowed doors. Being the occasional volunteer I get to see them at their best. I work the vacation bible school times as well as the conference they put on at Fellowship Church. This means I know nothing and work 4-6 hours at a time. Between duties such as running a check in station, or emptying trash cans; Volunteer Central is an oasis that refreshes and rejuvenates. I can stop in for a free bottle of water (Fellowship Church went health crazy a few years back and nary a soda can be found) and some kind of nutty fruit snack. There is not much I won’t do for a free bottle of water and some food.

Knowing and loving how Fellowship Church treats their volunteers I have become a Volunteer Central Evangelist. I come to churches with a fire in my belly to bring new and better ways to treat volunteers. But I have to tell you the one thing that drives me as crazy as a pastor that hears “I just don’t think the bible is true” is “we just don’t have the space”. After a bit of prodding and touring the facility I always find the perfect spot. That is when I hear “but the men’s ministry has a bible study in that room during the second service”. Or “but the choir uses that room to warm up in”. To this I steer them back to the first paragraph and ask “how important are your volunteers again?” “How well does the service run with no volunteer support? Why do you treat them like beggars when there is nothing nobler than serving the servers?”

Next week I will be giving some examples and names of churches that have adopted the Volunteer Central approach. Some have even taken and expanded upon the refreshing idea that churches should find a consistent way to give back to volunteers every time they serve.

Delivering Change : Volunteers

Silos… The Unspoken Barrier to Ministry

Volunteer Central