by Carey Nieuwhof: Wherever I talk to leaders, they tell me one of the their top challenges is finding enough people for their teams, particularly volunteers.

Then—usually within minutes—they tell me an even bigger challenge is to find the right people—people who can lead, inspire, mobilize and accomplish things, and that they don’t have nearly enough young leaders ready to move the mission forward and reach the next generation. (If it’s helpful to you, here are some keys to working with and leading Millennials.)

Regardless of age, though, this is a challenge in staffing that cuts across every demographic, and it’s an even bigger challenge for churches and organizations that use volunteers.

Churches will almost always have 50-100 times as many volunteers as you do staff. And, by definition, you can’t incentivize volunteers with attractive salaries and benefits.

For all those reasons and more, most churches struggle to get enough volunteers, and almost all churches struggle to find the right volunteers. And everyone leading teams struggles to get great people.

And here’s what’s at stake. Your church or organization will never grow unless you master the art of leadership development.

Why? Because your church will only grow as large as your team enables it. Perpetually small teams create perpetually small churches. But grow your team, and you open the path to growing your church.

The question is, how do you do that?

Despite all the talk over the last few years about developing a leadership pipeline, most leaders are struggling to figure out how to do it.

So today, let me show you a simple short cut I’ve found to stacking your pipeline with the best new volunteers and team members.

Here we go.

Perpetually small teams create perpetually small churches. But grow your team, and you open the path to growing your church.Click To Tweet

There Are Two Kinds of Team Members

So let’s start with a simple reality. There are essentially two kinds of people: leaders and doers.

Leaders gladly rise to a challenge and can take others with them.

Doers, on the other hand, prefer to do what you tell them and little more.

Effective organizations build teams of leaders, not just teams of doers.

Effective churches build teams of leaders, not just teams of doers.Click To Tweet

So many leaders told me they felt like they have a volunteer core of doers and hardly any leaders. Or at least if there are leaders present, they can’t seem to find them.

Why is it so important to make this shift from doers to leaders?

Because doing doesn’t scale. Leadership does.

If you really want to reach the full potential of your mission, developing a culture of leadership will take you there in a sustainable way.

You will always need doers, but you’ll also need a solid group of leaders in place to lead and manage the doers.

Which raises a big question: How can you tell if a potential team member is a leader or a doer?

Here are 5 ways to tell whether the volunteer you’re looking at is truly a leader, not just a doer.

Doing doesn’t scale. Leading does.Click To Tweet

1. Check To See If They Have Followers

Simply put, leaders have followers. Doers, not so much.

Look beyond your church or organization to see whether a new volunteer functions like a leader in the community or more like a doer.

Sure, they’re not leading at your church, but if they’re really a leader I promise you they’re leading somewhere. A leader might be running a shift at the local coffee shop and doing it well.

Or your new volunteer may be a mom who is pretty much running her neighborhood—the play groups, the book clubs. She’s a leader.

Maybe your new volunteer is a young adult running a small business or a music studio.

Or, let’s say they’re still in school, true leaders will already be volunteering as president of a club or leading trips or teams or doing something meaningful that they don’t have to do.

Bottom line: look for people who are already leading something somewhere. You can spot a leader because they’re already leading and they already have people following them.

If they’re leading well in their life and they believe in your mission, there’s a good chance that they are going to lead well on your team.

Leaders have followers. Doers don’t.Click To Tweet

2. Study Their Influence

The simplest definition of leadership I know is from John Maxwell: leadership is influence.

Influence doesn’t depend on position. You don’t have to be at the top of an org chart to have influence. In fact, if the only influence you have comes from your title, you’re not a leader.

If the only influence you have comes from your title, you’re not a leader.Click To Tweet

Conversely, there are interns who cultivate tremendous influence in organizations because they’re so great at what they do and have figured out how to lead others.

Watch for the influence people have both in your church (everyone listens when she talks) and in the community.

It’s a sign they may be a leader, not a doer.

Conversely, people who don’t naturally cultivate influence won’t necessarily gain any influence just because you put them in charge.

People who don’t naturally cultivate influence won’t gain any just because you put them in charge.Click To Tweet

3. See If They Make Things Happen

Doers respond to what’s happening. Leaders make things happen.

Doers can take direction and execute someone else’s vision, but they will require energy and follow-up that a leader doesn’t require.

A leader is a catalyst— creating change, momentum, and progress. You want to build your teams around people who make things happen.

Doers respond to what’s happening. Leaders make things happen.Click To Tweet

4. Watch How They Respond to Responsibility

Leaders love responsibility. Doers get overwhelmed by it.

Often church leaders are hesitant to give volunteers real responsibility and authority. We’re worried they’ll think it’s too much, because, after all, we tell ourselves, ‘they’re just a volunteer.’

But paradoxically, true leaders are energized by responsibility. They love a challenge.

You’ll find a leader constantly asking, “What else can I do?” Even better, a leader will proactively pursue more responsibility.

To be fair, jumping into responsibility and challenge can be a sign of dysfunctional behavior. Usually, it’s not. But occasionally, it is. Here are 6 signs that will tell you whether the eager volunteer you’re talking to is toxic.

Still, healthy leaders rise to the occasion. It’s the way God made them.

Leaders love responsibility. Doers get overwhelmed by it.Click To Tweet

5. Give Them a Challenge

Finally, leaders love a challenge. Doers don’t.

In the same way doers get overwhelmed by responsibility, they find a challenge to be too much.

When you have a big vision for something new and you cast that vision to a leader, true leaders will be energized and excited.

They’ll even add their own ideas and begin envisioning whom they’ll invite along with them.

Leaders with big gifting love big challenges. So give people a significant challenge and see who steps up (and who doesn’t). That will show you where the leaders are.

Leaders with big gifting love big challenges.Click To Tweet

By the way, even though this post is primarily about finding volunteers, these 5 criteria also work beautifully for staff hires.

More On Finding and Deploying the Best Leaders to Help Your Church Grow

What most leaders don’t realize is that the barrier to growth in churches isn’t always spiritual. I mean some times, for sure it is.

But I see so many leaders who love God, love people, are faithful, attract some new worshippers, but never seem to grow. What’s up with that?

Well, pop open the hood and you soon realize their problem isn’t spiritual, it’s structural.

The bottom line is you need to structure bigger to grow bigger.

I devote two sessions of my Breaking 200 Without Breaking You Course to the issue of identifying and developing volunteer leaders in your church, an essential step in moving past the 200 attendance barrier.

This course has now helped over 1000 churches tackle their growth barriers, helping them grow break the 100, 200, 300 and even in some cases, 500 or 1000 attendance barrier by helping them clear the structural barriers that stood in the way of their growth.

You can see a list of all the subjects I cover in the eight session course here. You can take the course personally as a senior leader, but each course comes with 12 licenses so you can actually go through it with your team and board, which is the best way to make progress.

My heart behind the course is to help every church work through the changes you need to make to experience sustained growth well beyond the 200 attendance mark.

So – whether your church has an attendance of 50, 150, 250 (or any size up to 1000), the principles will help you gain the insight you need to break the barrier more than 85% of churches can’t break.

Plus, there’s a 30 day money back guarantee. You have nothing to lose, and everything to gain by tackling the barriers you’re facing.

Click here to get instant access.

What Helps You?

What helps you tell whether a volunteer is a leader or a doer?

Scroll down and leave a comment!

The post How To Stack Your Leadership Pipeline With The Best Volunteers and Team Members appeared first on CareyNieuwhof.com.

Source: How To Stack Your Leadership Pipeline With The Best Volunteers and Team Members

The post How To Stack Your Leadership Pipeline With The Best Volunteers and Team Members appeared first on Passion for Planting.

by Carey Nieuwhof: So…what’s the difference between a growing church and a declining church?

Well there are many, but one of the biggest differences I see is the attitude of the leaders.

The leaders of growing churches almost always share a common attitude.

So do the leaders of declining churches.

And the attitude has a huge influence over the results each church sees.

Attitude may or may not be everything, but it’s close.

Here are 5 attitude differences I see again and again in growing churches and declining churches.

1. We Can v. We Can’t

Perhaps the biggest differences I see between growing churches and declining churches is the attitude around what’s possible.

Growing churches believe they can.

Declining churches believe they can’t.

They’re both right.

…

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Source: 5 Significant Attitude Differences Between Churches That Grow and Churches That Don’t

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by Carey Nieuwhof: I recently surveyed 1400 small and mid-sized church pastors to find out what they struggle with most as their church grows.

They overwhelmingly identified developing leaders as their top challenge.

Don’t get me wrong, there were many more issues (I address the big eight in my new course, Breaking 200 Without Breaking You, which releases September 19th. You can sign up for the course waitlist here.)

That said, identifying and developing leaders was the most significant barrier pastors felt in moving their church past the 200 attendance barrier, a barrier 85% of all churches never pass.

And, of course, leadership development means you need to master the more sophisticated art of volunteer development. Every growing church recruits volunteers at least 50-100 times as often as they hire staff.

Every growing church recruits volunteers at least 50-100 times as often as they hire staff.Click To Tweet

There Are Two Kinds of Volunteers

There are essentially two kinds of volunteers: leaders and doers.

Leaders gladly rise to a challenge and can take others with them. Doers, on the other hand, prefer to do what you tell them and little more.

Effective churches build teams of leaders, not just teams of doers.

Effective churches build teams of leaders, not just teams of doers.Click To Tweet

So many church leaders told me they felt like they have a volunteer core of doers and hardly any leaders. Or at least if there are leaders present, they can’t seem to find them.

Why is it so important to make this shift from doers to leaders?

Because doing doesn’t scale. Leadership does.

If you really want to reach the full potential of your mission, developing a culture of leadership will take you there in a sustainable way.

You will always need doers, but you’ll also need a solid group of leaders in place to lead and manage the doers.

Which raises a big question: How can you tell if a new volunteer is a leader or a doer?

Here are 5 ways to tell whether the volunteer you’re looking at is truly a leader, not just a doer.

Doing doesn’t scale. Leading does.Click To Tweet

1. Look To See If They Have Followers

Simply put, leaders have followers. Doers, not so much.

Look beyond your church to see whether a new volunteer functions like a leader in the community or more like a doer.

Maybe they’re not leading at your church, but they’re leading somewhere. A leader might be running a shift at the local coffee shop and doing it well.

Or your new volunteer may be a mom who is pretty much running her neighborhood—the play groups, the book clubs. She’s a leader.

Maybe your new volunteer is a young adult running a small business or a music studio.

Bottom line, if in some context somewhere, they’re leading something, already, they’re probably a leader and they already have people following them.

If they’re leading well in their life and they believe in your mission, there’s a good chance that they are going to lead well in your church.

Leaders have followers. Doers don’t.Click To Tweet

2. Study Their Influence

The simplest definition of leadership I know is from John Maxwell: leadership is influence.

Influence doesn’t depend on position. You don’t have to be at the top of an org chart to have influence. In fact, if the only influence you have comes from your title, you’re not a leader.

If the only influence you have comes from your title, you’re not a leader.Click To Tweet

Conversely, there are interns who cultivate tremendous influence in organizations because they’re so great at what they do and have figured out how to lead others.

Watch for the influence people have both in your church (everyone listens when she talks) and in the community.

It’s a sign they may be a leader, not a doer.

Conversely, people who don’t naturally cultivate influence won’t necessarily gain any influence just because you put them in charge.

People who don’t naturally cultivate influence won’t gain any just because you put them in charge.Click To Tweet

3. See If They Make Things Happen

Doers respond to what’s happening. Leaders make things happen.

Doers can take direction and execute someone else’s vision, but they will require energy and follow-up that a leader doesn’t require.

A leader is a catalyst— creating change, momentum, and progress. You want to build your teams around people who make things happen.

Doers respond to what’s happening. Leaders make things happen.Click To Tweet

4. Watch How They Respond to Responsibility

Leaders love responsibility. Doers get overwhelmed by it.

Often church leaders are hesitant to give volunteers real responsibility and authority. We’re worried they’ll think it’s too much, because, after all, we tell ourselves, ‘they’re just a volunteer.’

But paradoxically, true leaders are energized by responsibility. They love a challenge.

You’ll find a leader constantly asking, “What else can I do?” Even better, a leader will proactively pursue more responsibility.

To be fair, jumping into responsibility and challenge can be a sign of dysfunctional behavior. Usually, it’s not. But occasionally, it is. Here are 6 signs that will tell you whether the eager volunteer you’re talking to is toxic.

Still, healthy leaders rise to the occasion. It’s the way God made them.

Leaders love responsibility. Doers get overwhelmed by it.Click To Tweet

5. Give Them a Challenge

Finally, leaders love a challenge. Doers don’t.

In the same way doers get overwhelmed by responsibility, they find a challenge to be too much.

When you have a big vision for something new and you cast that vision to a leader, true leaders will be energized and excited.

They’ll even add their own ideas and begin envisioning whom they’ll invite along with them.

Leaders with significant gifting love significant challenges. So give people a big challenge and see who steps up (and who doesn’t). That will show you where the leaders are.

Leaders with significant gifting love significant challenges.Click To Tweet

More on Leadership Development as a Key To Growing Your Church

I devote two sessions of my new Breaking 200 Without Breaking You Course to the issue of identifying and developing volunteer leaders in your church, an essential step in moving past the 200 attendance barrier.

You can see a list of all the subjects I cover in the eight session course here. You can take the course personally as a senior leader, but each course comes with 12 licenses so you can actually go through it with your team and board, which is the best way to make progress.

My heart behind the course is to help every church work through the changes you need to make to experience sustained growth well beyond the 200 attendance mark.

So – whether your church is 50, 150 or 250 in attendance, the principles will help you gain the insight you need to break the barrier more than 85% of churches can’t break.

Join the wait list today and you’ll get some free bonuses, plus you’ll be among the first to gain access to the course when it goes live.

What Helps You?

What helps you tell whether a volunteer is a leader or a doer?

Scroll down and leave a comment!

The post How to Tell if A New Volunteer is Truly a Leader (Or Simply a Doer) appeared first on Carey Nieuwhof.

Source: How to Tell if A New Volunteer is Truly a Leader (Or Simply a Doer)

The post How to Tell if A New Volunteer is Truly a Leader (Or Simply a Doer) appeared first on Passion for Planting.

by Carey Nieuwhof: While social media and even traditional media are still preoccupied with mega churches and multi-site churches, the reality is that most churches in North America are quite small.

The Barna Group pegs the average Protestant church size in America at 89 adults. Only 2% of churches have over 1000 adults attending.

According to Carl George and Warren Bird, fully 85% of all Protestant churches in North America never break the 200 attendance mark.

Please understand, there’s nothing wrong with being a small church. I just know that almost every small church leader I speak to wants his or her church to  grow.

I get that. That’s the mission of the church. Every single day, I want our church to become more effective in reaching one more person with the hope that’s in Christ.

So why is it that most churches never break the 200 attendance mark?

It’s not:

Desire. Most leaders I know want their church to reach more people.

A lack of prayer. Many small church leaders are incredibly faithful in prayer.

Love. Some of the people in smaller churches love people as authentically as anyone I know.

Facility. Growth can start in the most unlikely places.

Let’s just assume you have a solid mission, theology, and heart to reach people.

Surprisingly, the main reasons churches never pass the 200 attendance mark aren’t spiritual, they’re structural.

The main reasons churches never pass the 200 attendance mark aren’t spiritual, they’re structural.Click To Tweet

I published an earlier version of this post several years ago. It appears to have struck a nerve.

The post has been shared over 40,000 times on social media and read by over a quarter million leaders. You can read the original post here and you’ll see how my thinking started on this issue.

When I saw the response to this post continue over the years, I drilled a little deeper, reflected more systematically on my only learnings in leading a church from 6 in attendance to over 1200 attenders today and did more research.

In addition, I surveyed 1400 small and mid-sized church pastors on what they struggled with as they tried to break the 200 mark. While I think all the points in the original post are still helpful, you’ll also see new factors that emerged from my reflection and research that I outline below.

I turned my findings into a new online course that’s releasing on September 19th, 2017 called Breaking 200 Without Breaking You. You can join the waitlist here to be first in on the release and get some exclusive bonuses. This post is a snapshot of the issues I cover in the course.

Breaking 200 Without Breaking You is designed to take senior pastors, their teams and boards through the top 8 barriers church leaders face when trying to reach their community.

So, here are the top 8 reasons churches who want to grow never end up breaking the 200 barrier.

1. Small churches are structured to stay small

You know why most churches still don’t push past the 200 mark in attendance?

They organize, behave, lead and manage like a small organization.

The main reason churches don’t grow past 200 attenders isn’t spiritual, it’s structural.

The main reason churches don’t grow past 200 attenders isn’t spiritual, it’s structural. Click To Tweet

Think about it.

There’s a world of difference between how you organize a corner store and how you organize a larger supermarket.

In a corner store, Mom and Pop run everything. Want to talk to the CEO? She’s stocking shelves. Want to see the Director of Marketing? He’s at the cash register.

Mom and Pop do everything, and they organize their business to stay small. Which is fine if you’re Mom and Pop and don’t want to grow.

But you can’t run a supermarket that way. You organize differently. You govern differently. There’s a produce manager, and people who only stock shelves. There’s a floor manager, shift manager, general manager and so much more.

A bigger vision requires a bigger structure. A bigger church requires a bigger structure. Simply put, you need to structure bigger to grow bigger.

If you want your church to reach more people, structure bigger to grow bigger. Click To Tweet

2. The Pastor Does Everything

In any small church, the idea that the pastor does everything probably sounds familiar. The expectations on the pastor are significant.

He or she is supposed to prepare a message, lead the Bible study, show up early to set up chairs, organize the next event, make hospital visits, recruit volunteers, AND make sure to care for themselves well enough that they don’t burn out.

The list of activities is as comprehensive as anything and everything the church does.

Whether you’re in a mainline denomination or in a church plant that meets in a school, there is a predominant bias in small churches toward the pastor doing everything.

There are so many problems with this approach, but let’s start with two.

First, it doesn’t scale. If everything that gets done depends on one person, your church won’t grow beyond the ability of a single person. For most of us, that means 200 is the upper limit.

Expecting the pastor to do everything simply doesn’t scale.Click To Tweet

Second, if the pastor does everything, it’s a complete denial of how God designed the church to work. It’s just insanely backward from the church’s God-given design.

God gifts his people, not just the pastor, for works of ministry. The church should organize like it.

Finally, this is why breaking the 200 barrier breaks so many leaders. They just can’t get it all done. Many pastors are already maxed out, and think “If reaching more people means working more hours, I just can’t.”

Fortunately, it doesn’t.

Reaching more people doesn’t mean you have to work more hours.Click To Tweet

3. The pastor is the primary caregiver

Of all the things that pastor does, pastoral care is often the one congregations most love and expect. And it’s killing churches.

In this post, I outline more about how pastoral care stunts the growth of so many churches.

Honestly, if you just push past this one issue, you will have made a ton of progress. When the pastor has to visit every sick person, do every wedding, funeral and make regular house calls, he or she becomes incapable of doing other things. That model just doesn’t scale.

If you’re good at pastoral care, you’ll grow the church to 200 people and then disappoint people when you can’t get to every event anymore. Or you’ll just burn out. It creates false expectations and so many people get hurt in the process.

The best book I know on the subject has just been re-released with a new, updated edition. The answer, by the way, is to teach people to care for each other in groups.

98% of pastoral care is having someone who cares. It doesn’t have to be the pastor. In this course, I show you how to make that transition in a way that helps your church care for each other while the senior pastor gets freed up to lead and teach.

98% of pastoral care is having someone who cares. It doesn’t have to be the pastor. Click To Tweet

4. You Don’t Have the Right People

In my survey of 1400 pastors, finding and developing the right leaders emerged as the key problem leaders felt.

Not only are pastors exhausted trying to do it all, so are the handful of volunteers that have stepped up. To make matters worse, many pastors don’t think they have the right volunteers. Most church leaders have enough nice people, they just need more capable people.

Most church leaders have enough nice people, they just need more capable people .Click To Tweet

So how do you get the right people?

The truth is, great people don’t randomly assemble. They are attracted by clear and compelling missions like the mission of the church. They are challenged, nurtured, and inspired by skillful, humble, passionate leaders who have devoted their lives to a cause greater than themselves.

The reason your people aren’t like the people of the churches you admire is because you haven’t led them there yet.

Growing churches don’t buy great leaders, they build them.

Growing churches don’t buy great leaders, they build them.Click To Tweet

5. Too Many Doers, Not Enough Leaders

A second problem the 1400 pastors I surveyed identified is that as their church grows, they end up with teams of doers, not teams of leaders.

That’s a huge barrier.

Leaders lead other people; doers only lead themselves.

Leaders don’t mind having a team of people to manage. Doers would rather worry about themselves and their specific assignment.

If you only have teams of doers, your church will struggle to grow.

Leaders lead other people; doers only lead themselves.Click To Tweet

6. The Team is Not Aligned

Another reason 200 is such a big barrier is because once you get hundreds of people in an organization, you end up with chaos unless you have a great plan.

When our church was between 200 and 400 in attendance, I found myself waking up at night wondering, “How do I keep all these well-intentioned people from accidentally running the mission of the church off course? How do I convey what is so clear in my head — the mission, vision, strategy, and values of our church—to everyone else in a way that’s clear to them?”

Those questions (and the fear associated with them) are focused around one key leadership issue: alignment. Alignment is getting a team of people committed to a common mission, vision, and set of values. It’s the hard work of making what’s clear to you clear to your team.

Alignment is so critical because if you don’t do it, it’s like releasing the stallions from the barn. They’ll run wild and in every direction. That’s why some leaders fear empowering leaders: they fear those leaders will run the church in various directions.

An unaligned church will struggle to grow, and if even if it does, it carries within it all the seeds for implosion.

Alignment is the hard work of making what’s clear to you clear to your team. Click To Tweet

7. Micro-management

If you need permission every time you need to buy paper towels or repaint an office, you have a governance issue.

Most boards who micromanage do so because that’s where most people simply default. You need a board who guards the mission and vision and empowers the team to accomplish it and then gets out of the way.

Most small churches are led by congregations who want a say in everything or a board that does.

Here’s what’s true: committees kill vision.

Committees kill vision.Click To Tweet

Individuals are almost always more courageous than groups. And the more people you seek to please up front, the less inspiring your idea will become.

When everyone wants to have a say, very little gets done.

Governance is a silent killer for most churches trying to grow.

When everyone wants to have a say, very little gets done. Click To Tweet

8. The Leaders Make Too Many Excuses

All too often when I’m interacting with church leaders, I hear the same excuses over and over—reasons that something won’t work or that another idea can’t be done.

Leaders complain that their building is too small or too big, their location isn’t ideal, they don’t have the right team, they haven’t got enough money, or that their context is different.

Here’s what’s true: you can make excuses or you can make progress, but you can’t make both.

You can make excuses or you can make progress, but you can’t make both.Click To Tweet

In fact, the leaders who make the most progress make the fewest excuses. And the leaders who make the most excuses make the least progress.

The leaders who make the most excuses make the least progress.Click To Tweet

Let’s Solve This Together

I address all eight issues directly in the Breaking 200 Without Breaking You Course and provide strategies on how to tackle each of them as a leader and as a leadership team.

My heart behind the course is to help every church work through the changes you need to make to experience sustained growth well beyond the 200 attendance mark.

So whether your church is 50, 150 or 250 in attendance, the principles will help you gain the insight you need to break the barrier more than 85% of churches can’t break.

Join the wait list today and you’ll get some free bonuses, plus you’ll be among the first to gain access to the course when it goes live.

What Have You Seen?

In the meantime, what have you seen that helps churches push past attendance barriers? Scroll down and leave a comment!

The post The Top 8 Reasons Most Churches Never Break the 200 Attendance Mark appeared first on Carey Nieuwhof.

Source: The Top 8 Reasons Most Churches Never Break the 200 Attendance Mark

The post The Top 8 Reasons Most Churches Never Break the 200 Attendance Mark appeared first on Passion for Planting.