Recruiting Is a Team Sport

Yesterday as I awaited a flight, another passenger’s t-shirt caught my attention.

The slogan probably defined the company where he worked. It read, “Recruiting is a team sport.” Those few words described one of the pillars of the last two churches I pastored.

Why the last two and not the first? Because I’m a slow learner.

We learned that department heads should seldom function as recruiters. In fact, the recruitment of volunteers and disciplemakers is a team function.

For us, it worked like this…

We attempted to break every “job” in our churches into four parts. They ranked from the most to the least difficult.

If one person was absent or moved on, everyone else moved one step up the ladder.

For instance, the lesson presenter would lead a children’s church group. They were aided by a person helping children with a craft. Next came an individual positioned to buddy up to a disruptive child with the assumption that class disruption results from a problem at home. Finally, there was the person whose task was to hand out cookies and juice. You can see the progression from a simple task to one of complexity.

Suppose the lesson presenter moved away or was sick at home. In that case, everyone would move to the next more difficult role while inviting one of their friends to distribute the food and drink.

We found it easier to fill our teams when recruiting four people than when we asked one or two people to carry the load. Recruitment was easier too.

Getting a friend to deal with cookies and fruit juice is not hard. Once they get involved, they usually enjoy the experience enough to stick around.

All this made recruitment easier because we only invited people to do relatively easy things and because recruitment as a task belonged to the entire team.

Children’s Church aside, this concept worked at nearly every position in our church. It even helped us grow as people who get involved in running anything usually stick around longer than mere spectators.