Inside Track November 2004

A CHAT WITH OUR MEMBERS

Southeast Christian Church, in Louisville, Kentucky, has an amazing story. Some churches stay smaller over the years, and some churches start and take off like a flash—and you wonder if they will have staying power. Southeast Christian is a church that has shown consistent growth year after year for 40 years! That kind of growth brings a lot of transitions, so we had a chat with Stacie Gitschier, Southeast’s Director of Volunteer Services, about how they continue to keep people plugged into ministry.

Inside Track: Stacie, I think a lot of Church Volunteer Central’s members might struggle a bit with envy of your position. Your church is large enough to put you on staff, and I think the perception is that—with so many members—recruiting isn’t an issue for you.

Stacie Gitschier: Well, I came into the church as a volunteer. I have the gift of service, and this has always been important to me. I feel like it’s a blessing to serve. If I had all the money in the world, I would be a professional volunteer.

IT: With the continual growth at Southeast, have you had to change the way you do volunteer ministry?

SG: We’re completely revamping the philosophy of our volunteer ministry. It’s a pretty new ministry; we’ve only had this ministry for the past three years. We’ve had volunteerism in the past, of course, but it’s been ministry-driven versus gift-driven.

IT: So how has the new philosophy affected the way you do things?

SG: Instead of each ministry going for the volunteers it needs as it needs them, we’ve developed a churchwide attitude that service is an expected part of every believer’s life. We have an expectation of our membership that they will spend one hour in worship, one hour in Bible study, and one hour in service every week.

IT: How do you make such a cultural change?

SG: We now make that expectation clear to people in the new member process. We show videos and have testimonials during worship so people keep seeing and hearing the great things that are happening as people serve.

We want to make it easy for people to get plugged in to serving. That’s why this department was put together. So we do a four-week Wednesday night thing called Building You. Then twice a year we have a large-group Discovering Your Direction workshop.

Our goal is for people to serve in an area where they’re gifted. If you’re in your gifted area that you’re passionate about, the burnout factor isn’t going to be there. I think a lot of times people volunteer out of guilt or some other wrong motivation, and my goal is for that not to be. Now, there are times when we volunteer out of obedience, even if it’s not our passion. But the long-term goal is serving in areas where we’re passionate and gifted. That’s why in our Discover Your Direction program we take people through their MAPS. That’s their Motivations, Abilities, Personality, and Spiritual Gifts.

IT: What resources do you use for that program?

SG: We developed our own spiritual gifts thing that’s probably a lot like everyone else’s. We use Florence Littauer’s Personality Profile.

IT: What happens after they’ve completed that? How do you guide people to the right ministry?

SG: We use our Web site for that. If you go to the volunteer section of our Web site (www.southeastchristian.org/volunteer_home.cfm) you see a list of our ministry opportunities. This lets a person browse and see what might sound like something they’d be interested in.

But we take it a step further to try and match ministry with gifts. Once people have completed their MAPS, they can go to the Web site (www.southeastchristian.org/volunteer_maps.cfm) and find positions that fit them. For each personality type and spiritual gift, we have a list of the ministries that need help in that direction. When they select their gift, they’re taken to opportunities to use that gift. They can find details about each of those opportunities, find the one they’d like to explore, and enter their information to be contacted directly by the leader. (Editor’s Note: This is an incredible tool, and I encourage all of our members to take a moment and see Southeast’s Web site.) Of course, then we do some screening. We do background checks on all of our volunteers. We have a full-time person that we keep busy just doing background checks with new volunteers.

My next goal is to take our MAPS curriculum and get it on the Web somehow. There are some things that they can do at home. We want them to come to the class, but sometimes it’s easier for people who aren’t wired for a classroom to do things online.

IT: Was making such a large change difficult internally? The ministry leaders were used to doing their own thing.

SG: When I first came in, I felt like I needed to build a healthy team that loves and respects each other. That was my first goal. The second was to build relationships with the ministries. I sat down with every ministry leader and told them how we could support them, and got their feedback. I think that at times they weren’t sure what we were there for. “We’ve been doing volunteers for a long time…How can you help me?” So going through that helped us build credibility and relationships.

My attitude is to say yes to everything. Then when you absolutely have to say no, you’ve built the credibility that people know you just can’t do it.

We’ve got a lot of long-time staff people; our turnover isn’t as great as some places. So you want to build a history with them and be creative in how you help them. And don’t just say you’re going to do something; make sure you do it. If you know you can’t do it, say no. You’ve got to build that credibility.

We need to help the ministries individually. Some ministries might not be providing the TLC to take care of their volunteers; others aren’t training them as well as they should be. There isn’t one big thing we focus on—it’s really different from ministry to ministry. My role is to get in there and help them be successful.

IT: Thanks, Stacie. I think our members will really be encouraged by the fact that even after 40 years a church can make big changes that revolutionize their volunteer ministry.

SG: I feel awfully passionate about what we’re doing here and accomplishing. I think it’s what Jesus wants from his church.