Church Volunteer Management Strategies to Fuel Your Ministry

Your church’s volunteers provide critical support for its ministry, which congregants are increasingly realizing as they seek ways to deepen their faith and community engagement. As of 2025, 24% of regular attendees volunteer weekly through their churches, up from 15% in 2024. And this figure doesn’t even include those who serve on a monthly, semimonthly, or as-needed basis!

These rising numbers mean that effective church volunteer management is more important now than ever. In this guide, you’ll learn all you need to know about this process, including:

• What is church volunteer management?
• Benefits of Managing Church Volunteers Effectively
• The Church Volunteer Management Lifecycle & Strategies
• How to Choose Church Volunteer Management Software

As you develop a volunteer management strategy based on these topics, remember that your church’s mission should always be your top priority and the guiding principle of your efforts. Additionally, if you use the right tools to streamline the volunteer recruitment process, all you need to bring to the table is your mission. That being said, let’s get started!

What is church volunteer management?

Church volunteer management is the systematic and strategic process of recruiting, engaging, and coordinating volunteers within your church. Its goal is to create an environment where your volunteers can thrive as they contribute their time and talents to your ministry with minimal administrative hassle on your team’s end.

There is some overlap between management practices in other volunteer-supported organizations (such as charities, schools, and healthcare organizations) and the best approach for your church. However, church volunteer management can be a bit more complicated due to the wide variety of roles your congregation can take on. Depending on your church’s size and structure, they might:

• Help out in your nursery, children’s church, or other aspects of kids’ ministry.
• Lead Bible study groups or teach Sunday school for adults and students.
• Welcome attendees in the parking lot or entryway.
• Assist with worship, whether with the music itself or the operation of audio/visual equipment.
• Set up and tear down special events.
• Care for community members in need (e.g., coordinating a meal train for a grieving family).
• Participate in church-sponsored community service or mission work.
• Perform various administrative functions (e.g., stuffing and sending out congregational direct mail messages).
• And anything else you can think of!

Church volunteer management also falls under the umbrella of member engagement at many churches (because the priority is getting church members to volunteer), whereas volunteering is a broader supporter engagement method for most other organizations.

Benefits of Managing Church Volunteers Effectively

Despite the additional complexities that come with managing volunteers at your church, a strong approach to this process can have many positive impacts on your ministry, such as:

• Improving operational efficiency. Your staff only has so much bandwidth to run all of your church’s programs and complete administrative activities. Volunteers can take many essential tasks off your team’s plate, and streamlined management ensures you don’t add too much more work back to their to-do lists in the process.
• Increasing congregational engagement. When church members start volunteering, they go from passive attendees to active participants in your work. They may also be more motivated to come to church regularly and speak more positively about their experiences once they have this additional reason to engage.
• Facilitating spiritual and community growth. Volunteering provides a new avenue for church attendees to use their time and skills in a way that aligns with their faith, and to connect with other congregants and staff members while serving.

Naturally, your church can only maximize these benefits if you implement the right volunteer management strategies at every stage of your volunteers’ journey.

The Church Volunteer Management Lifecycle & Strategies

The volunteer journey or lifecycle is a tool to help you visualize how each of your church’s volunteers goes from not being engaged in this way to repeatedly and enthusiastically contributing their time to your ministry. Let’s discuss what each step entails and how you can effectively manage volunteers at that stage.

Recruitment

The recruitment stage of the volunteer lifecycle is all about making a positive impression on potential volunteers and encouraging them to sign up to meet one of your church’s needs. It lays the foundation for the rest of the volunteer experience, which is why many volunteer management experts believe that retention begins upon recruitment.

Here are some tips to help your church recruit the right volunteers for the right positions:

• Create user-friendly digital applications. Your forms should only ask for essential information (contact details, areas of interest, availability, etc.), provide clear instructions, and be quick to complete and submit on any device, even for your less tech-savvy members. While you can use the occasional print form in a pinch, online forms allow you to collect and store application data more easily.
• Write clear role descriptions. Volunteers want to know exactly what they’re signing up for in terms of responsibilities, time commitments, and other factors, so make sure to publicize all of that information about each role. For example, let prospective volunteer greeters know how many services you expect them to help with each month, how far in advance they should arrive for each service, and whether they’ll need to fold bulletins or set up refreshments in addition to welcoming attendees.
• Promote positions across multiple channels. Millennials and Generation Z make up the majority of today’s church volunteers, and these younger individuals will likely respond well to digital communications about your opportunities (emails, text messages, social media posts, etc.). However, print materials like flyers and bulletin inserts still have their place in driving the message home that you need volunteers while your members are physically in your building.

Keep in mind that recruitment for some roles may be more complex than others. Finding volunteers to fill the greeter position described above will likely just require reviewing their applications and reaching out to confirm individuals’ interest and understanding of the role. However, other roles may require additional vetting for skill-related or safety reasons, such as auditioning prospective musicians or conducting background checks for children’s ministry volunteers.

Onboarding

Onboarding ensures new volunteers have everything they need to perform well in their roles. In your initial training session, make sure to cover:

• Your church’s mission and values to remind volunteers why they’re doing what they’re doing.
• General policies and procedures, such as communication expectations, dress codes, and safety information.
• Role-specific education—for example, walking through your Sunday school curriculum with teachers or showing special event volunteers where supplies should be put away.

After this basic training, have new volunteers shadow more experienced volunteers during their first shifts. This one-on-one time allows new volunteers to see how they should tackle their responsibilities and ask any questions they may still have before they start taking on those duties independently.

Engagement

Engagement encompasses everything you do to help volunteers become more involved and motivated as they serve at your church. Some key areas of church volunteer engagement to incorporate into your management strategy include:

• Communication: Keep lines of communication open (via email, text, or both) between your volunteers and coordinators so volunteers always know what’s going on and where to direct questions or concerns.
• Scheduling: Provide flexibility with shifts and accommodate individual availability as much as possible, and consider giving more experienced volunteers permission to self-schedule.
• Ongoing training: Offer opportunities and resources (articles to read, videos to watch, workshops and webinars to attend, etc.) for volunteers to stay up-to-date on best practices and continue developing their skills after onboarding. Make these optional when possible, and ensure anything mandatory is brief and convenient.
• Spiritual and community growth: Consider planning social events where volunteers can get to know each other when they aren’t serving. You can also facilitate spiritual development by hosting a volunteer-specific Bible study or creating a channel for volunteers to share prayer requests on top of emphasizing the general value of serving others.

When executed well, these engagement tips ensure your efforts benefit your volunteers, your team, and your church’s overall ministry.

Appreciation

Once volunteers have begun engaging, it’s important to express your gratitude. While being recognized shouldn’t be a volunteer’s primary motivation for serving in your church, it is an added bonus that can encourage them to keep working to the best of their ability.

You can show appreciation for your volunteers in a variety of ways, depending on what resonates with them. For instance, you might:

• Send thank-you messages via email, handwritten notes, or digital greeting cards.
• Give out tangible gifts like t-shirts, journals, or gift cards.
• Host an annual volunteer appreciation event.
• Create a video celebrating volunteers’ accomplishments.
• Spotlight individual volunteers who go above and beyond on your church’s social media accounts or in its annual report.

These formal recognition methods are most effective after a volunteer’s first shift, when they achieve a goal or reach a milestone of service, and at the end of each year. Don’t worry about sending a thank-you note every time someone volunteers—if they serve weekly or even monthly, the work will pile up for you, and it may overwhelm recipients. However, your team should make sure to verbally express their gratitude to each volunteer after their shifts so they always know their work is appreciated.

Retention

Although appreciation and retention are usually considered separate stages in the volunteer lifecycle, they overlap significantly. Recognizing volunteers for their work is the first step in getting them to stick around long-term.

From there, your church’s volunteer retention efforts may also involve:

• Establishing the right communication cadence. Sending too many messages to volunteers can lead to feelings of fatigue and burnout, while not reaching out often enough won’t keep church volunteering top of mind. Experiment with your communication cadence for program updates, shift reminders, and requests to serve to strike the right balance where volunteers are informed but not overwhelmed.
• Asking for feedback. Engaged volunteers may have good ideas about how to improve your program, and giving them channels to make their voices heard will show that you value their input, both of which can lead to higher retention rates. Send out periodic surveys or hold one-on-one check-in sessions where volunteers can share their suggestions. After you’ve reviewed all collected feedback, let volunteers know whether you’re implementing their ideas and why or why not.
• Providing advancement opportunities. Volunteers who feel stagnant in their roles and don’t see a way to grow or change up their experiences may stop serving. Prevent this and acknowledge long-serving volunteers by giving them the option to take on a leadership position (e.g., supervising or mentoring other volunteers) or serve in a new, higher-visibility capacity (e.g., doing jobs similar to their weekly roles at church-wide events or Christmas and Easter services).

Generally speaking, the higher your church’s volunteer retention rate is, the better equipped your program and overall ministry will be to thrive for years to come.

How to Choose Church Volunteer Management Software

Especially as your church’s volunteer program grows, the right software can make essential tasks at every stage of the volunteer lifecycle easier for your team. If you’re ready to invest in a volunteer management solution or want to upgrade your existing tools, look for an all-in-one platform that will support the complete journey through features like:

• A robust volunteer database that automatically creates a detailed profile for each volunteer and tracks their involvement.
• Customizable application forms, which you can embed on your church’s website and share across platforms for a streamlined recruitment process.
• Resource libraries and online course builders to simplify both onboarding and ongoing training efforts.
• Built-in communication tools so you can easily text or email any segment of your volunteer base at the best time to engage them.
• An accessible volunteer portal where volunteers can input availability or self-schedule, view upcoming shifts and training materials, contact your team, and connect with peers.
• Detailed reporting and analytics showing what’s going well with your volunteer program, where you can improve, what feedback your volunteers have given, and what impact your volunteers have had on your ministry.

For a user-friendly solution that includes all of these features and more, look no further than Better Impact! More than 25,000 organizations around the world of all sizes and missions (including houses of worship and other faith-based organizations) leverage our Volunteer Impact platform for strategic, streamlined management of all aspects of their volunteer programs. But don’t just take our word for it—check out our client case studies to see just how much Volunteer Impact has improved real organizations’ efforts!

Wrapping Up: Additional Volunteer Management Resources

Church volunteer management is a unique beast to tackle, but with a solid plan for navigating each stage of the volunteer lifecycle, you’ll create a program that supports your ministry in essential ways for the long haul. Use the tips in this guide to get started, and remember that investing in the right software (like our Volunteer Impact solution!) can be a make-or-break factor in your strategy’s effectiveness.

For more information on volunteer management, check out these resources:

• Volunteer Management Training: An Overview & Top Resources
• Nonprofit Volunteer Recruitment: Overview + Top Strategies
• 18 Best Volunteer Management Software Tools for Nonprofits