Summary: People need to have a strong YES in four areas to become a volunteer on your team: character, chemistry, competence, and circumstances. If a volunteer is missing any one of these four items, they may not be a good fit right now or maybe ever.
What qualifications should someone have in order to become a volunteer on your team? Potential people need to have a strong YES in four areas: character, chemistry, competence and circumstances. If a volunteer is missing any one of these four items - character, chemistry, competence, or circumstances - they may not be a good fit right now or maybe ever.
If a volunteer is lacking biblical character, they should not be on your team. If a volunteer doesn’t have team chemistry or they don’t click with how you do things, they should not be on your team. If a volunteer lacks competence or skills in an area they should not be on your team. But there is one remaining area. You see, a volunteer may have strong character, a wonderful chemistry with the team and be highly competent. However, there is still one factor that might preclude them from serving right now: Their current life circumstances.
Volunteers need a strong yes in each of these four areas: character, chemistry, competence and circumstances. I want to touch on each of these areas in brief.
#1 - Character. Or, in reality, a lack of biblical character. This would include Issues of sin. There are things in people’s lives that are simply not in line with God’s word that should preclude them from serving SO they can spend energy addressing those issues.
#2 - Chemistry. This includes issues of disagreement, disunity or destructive differences of opinion. People have differing views on HOW we should do ministry.
#3 - Competence. Or, in reality, a lack of competence in a particular area. This is the idea of misplaced gifting. You might have the right person in the wrong seat.
#4 - Circumstances. This is simply a challenging life stage. Listen, life is cyclical and has its normal ebbs and flows. There are times where the best of volunteers has things arise in their life and it is just the best idea to not serve for a season.
As you move forward as a leader, begin to consider four gates through which every volunteer should pass in order to be on your team: character, chemistry, competence and circumstances. Be sure to check out LeadVolunteers.com as your one-stop-shop to help you recruit, train and retain volunteers.