As we continue rolling out our volunteer leadership pipeline, one question keeps coming up:
How many places can one person serve, and how many places can they lead?
Those are two different things.
Serving in multiple areas can be healthy. It allows people to use their gifts, build relationships, and discover where they are strongest.
But leadership requires greater focus.
Serve Broadly. Lead Narrowly.
One of the easiest things to do in ministry is to identify someone who is faithful, capable, and willing, and keep giving them more.
Before long, several departments may be thinking, “They would make a great Team Leader for us.”
But if several ministries develop the same person into leadership, we are not necessarily multiplying leaders. We may simply be creating one very busy leader with several titles.
The goal of the pipeline is not to use our strongest people everywhere.
It is to identify, develop, and multiply leaders.
As leadership responsibility increases, leadership focus should increase too.
What This Looks Like Practically
A Volunteer may serve in multiple departments.
A Team Leader may only be a Team Leader in one department. They may continue serving in other areas, but their Team Leader role is their priority.
A Coordinator should have one primary ministry department. Their focus should be developing Team Leaders, strengthening systems, protecting culture, and helping the ministry grow healthier. Coordinators may still facilitate a Small Group.
The key is simple:
Additional serving should never interfere with the leadership responsibility someone has been entrusted with.
When Two Departments See the Same Potential
There will be times when someone serves in multiple departments, and more than one leader sees leadership potential in them.
That is a good problem to have, but the pipeline should never become a recruiting competition.
If you are interested in developing someone who serves in another department, talk with that department leader first, NOT the individual.
If both departments see leadership potential, involve the individual in the conversation. Help them pray, reflect, and determine where their gifts, relationships, and leadership potential fit best.
The goal is not to place someone where we need them most.
The goal is to help them discover where they can lead most effectively.
Avoiding the Super Volunteer Trap
Every church has highly dependable people who will say yes whenever there is a need.
We are grateful for them, but we also need to protect them.
If every ministry depends on the same small group of people, we have not built a strong leadership culture. We have built dependency.
Instead of always asking:
“Who can do this?” We need to start asking, “Who can we develop to do this?”
And once someone begins leading: “Who are they developing next?”
That is where multiplication begins.
The Principle to Remember
Serve broadly when appropriate. Lead narrowly. Multiply intentionally.
Volunteers may serve in several areas.
Team Leaders lead in one department while still having flexibility to serve elsewhere.
Coordinators have one primary ministry focus while continuing to participate/facilitate in our Small Groups.
That clarity protects our volunteers, strengthens our leaders, and keeps the pipeline focused on what it was designed to do:
Develop more people. Do not simply give more responsibility to the same people.
A healthy leadership pipeline should not produce a handful of people carrying the entire church.
It should produce more leaders.
And those leaders should develop more leaders.
Discussion Question
- How should departments communicate when more than one leader sees leadership potential in the same person?
- How can we better recognize when additional serving commitments are beginning to compete with someone’s leadership responsibility?
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