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Why Your Volunteers Keep Disappearing (And What Their Time Is Really Worth) · The Healthy Church Staff Podcast

• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: She used to be your most reliable children's ministry college, but she never missed a Sunday.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: Always showed up early, brought her own supply, bought her own supplies, and then three weeks ago, she just stopped.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: No resignation, no explanation, just silence.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: You texted her twice and she replied, sorry, just super busy right now.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: And you moved on because what else can you do?
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: Here's probably what you need to know though.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: Her time was worth$36 an hour, and you treated it like it was free.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: We've talked about this a little bit on the podcast before in the past few weeks, but we're going to talk about it again today because I think it's really important we're talking about the value of volunteers.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: Hi there.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: My name's Todd Rhodes.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: I am one of the co-founders over chemistry staffing.com, and I'm also your host here on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast every weekday.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, as we get started today, we just opened up our healthy church staff assessment.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: I'd love to have you go over and take that if you would.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely free, but it would really help me out and appreciate it as a listener from this podcast.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: Just go over to churchstaffassessment.com.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: This all goes back, and like I said, we've talked about this once before.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: The value of a volunteer, this comes from something I read over at Ministry Watch not too long ago.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: The value of a volunteer per hour in the United States for 2025 was$36.14.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: That's not the feel-good number, that's the actual economic value.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I want you to think about that with your core volunteer team for a second.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: You've got 15 volunteers giving four hours a month.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: That's over$2,000 in value every single month.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: We talk about staffing costs and how much it costs to hire staff, but you've got unpaid staff that are really the backbone of your church's operation and volunteers.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: And we need to make sure that we take care of them.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: So when someone ghosts your ministry, you're not just scrambling to fill a spot.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: You're actually losing someone who isn't was investing real measurable value into the mission.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: But there's a problem that a lot of church staff don't see because we tell ourselves that, hey, she said she got busy, she probably got busy.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: Or we tell ourselves maybe their life season changed.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: Or they just weren't really, I love this one, they just really weren't all that committed.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: But most of the time, they've left because we've burned them out.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: We've asked them to serve without training them.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: We've changed their assignment three times in two months.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: We canceled on them at the last minute repeatedly.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: We never said thank you.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: We only texted when we were in desperate need of them to show up to fill somebody's else that said that they couldn't make it.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: And we treated their$36 an hour time like it was just disposable, and we wondered why they disappeared.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I know you're not trying to burn people out, and I know most of you are understaffed, you're overwhelmed, you're just trying to keep the weekend from falling apart, right?
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: But if we keep treating volunteer time like it's free, we're gonna keep losing people.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: So what do we do instead?
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: I've got a few things here that I think might be helpful for you.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: We need to honor the investment that volunteers make, first of all, by stop treating volunteers like unpaid staff.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: They didn't sign up to fill every gap in your org chart.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: They signed up for a specific role, so make sure that you keep them there.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: That's number one.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: Number two, build systems that protect their time, not consume it.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: If you're texting volunteers at 10 o'clock at night, asking if they can serve tomorrow, you don't have a staffing problem or a volunteer problem.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: You've got a systems problem.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: And then number three, say it like you mean it.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: Not just a blanket thank you.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to say it like you mean it.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: Name exactly what you're thankful for.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: Text them personally, not a group text.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: Write them a note.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: You'd never forget to pay a 36 hour uh$36 an hour employee, right?
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: You wouldn't forget to pay them if they were on your payroll.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: So don't forget to honor a$36 an hour volunteer.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: Number four, ask them for some investment.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: Ask them what's working, ask them what's not.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: Most volunteers who leave never told you that they were even frustrated, but they probably were.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: Create space for some honest feedback in your volunteer systems before they ghost you.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: Here's what's wild though, I think.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: Most church staff don't realize that really a big part of their job is volunteer coordination.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: You think your work youth, your job is uh youth pastor or worship leader, worship pastor, but half of your job is actually recruiting and training and retaining volunteers.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: And most of us were never really trained well on how to do that.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: We just inherited broken systems and we're trying to make them survive.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: We're trying to figure out how we're going to have enough person people there to run lights and sound and be on the worship team and watch the nursery.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: But if you can figure out volunteer retention, you'll unlock capacity that you didn't even know you had.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: You'll stop scrambling every weekend, you'll build a team that actually sticks around, and you'll create a culture where people feel honored, not used.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: So here's your bottom line for today.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: When you honor a volunteer's time like it's actually worth what it is, and that right now is$36 an hour.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: When you start to honor that volunteer's time, you'll stop losing them like they're worthless.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: That's it for today.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to remember as you leave here today, your volunteers are not ghosts.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: They're people with real lives and real capacity limits.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: So treat their time like the gift it is.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: And most of the time, you'll keep them happy and they'll keep giving it.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for listening.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: If this helped, I hoped you will share this with another church leader who maybe needs to hear it.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: And again, you can reach out to me anytime, podcast at chemistry staffing.com.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I'd love for you to head over to Church Staff Assessment right now, churchstaffassessment.com and take that free Church Staff Health Assessment.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: All right, that's it for today.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: We'll be right back here tomorrow on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: Have a break.