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What Am I Supposed To Do?
One church's solution to volunteers' confusion.
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The next day I checked the steering committee's job description and discovered our responsibility is to develop a total budget. Having something in writing settled the question. Another benefit: If two committees are stepping on each other's toes, job descriptions can settle the dispute without offending individuals. As one member of our volunteerism committee noted, "job descriptions are a subtle way of controlling overlap." Introducing the ideaHow do you present the idea of job descriptions to others in your church? The vocational make-up of the congregation might have an effect on acceptance. My church has a large percentage of university administrators and school personnel in its leadership. On the positive side, many of these people are accustomed to operating with job descriptions. On the other hand, some want their church volunteer time to be free of paperwork; these people have more than enough bureaucracy at their workplace. So they made sure (often by complaints!) that the job descriptions never became top priority. Regardless of the church's make-up, however, it's important to have the backing of the minister and, if possible, the ruling lay body. Our church got started by sending several members to a workshop on mobilizing volunteers. I recommend sending a cadre of delegates. Frequently one delegate attends a meeting, has a great experience, comes back, and gives a three-minute report. Everyone says, in effect, "Sounds fine; thank you," and moves on to other business. But because we'd sent several delegates, we had a whole group ready to improve volunteerism in our church, and developing job descriptions was one method. Another way to introduce job descriptions would be to develop one with a new committee starting a project. If the person in charge leads the committee through the writing of a job description and keeps referring to it when people ask, "Who does that?" and "When should I have this ready?" the group can serve as a model. Writing the descriptionsWe learned early that it's not enough to say to committee chairpersons, "Write a job description for your work." A few may oblige, but most tend to put that assignment at the bottom of their agendas. If I have a choice between planning a mission fair that's two weeks away and writing how to set one up, unless I'm a highly structured person who always makes lists first, I will opt for action, not procedural exercises. So we scheduled a meeting in which the only item of business was explaining the purpose of job descriptions and writing them. In that gathering we first gave the rationale: "We will be better able to match people with particular jobs because we will know what each job entails," and "It will be easier for you to find volunteers." Second, we reminded people of the problems that occur when one person retires from a volunteer role and another takes over. Often the outgoing person is so accustomed to the procedures that he or she forgets to tell the new person many basic details. That argument hit home, because almost everyone in the group had been in the situation of trying to do a new job without adequate orientation. |             |
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