Customer Reviews

Simply Strategic Volunteers:: Empowering People for Ministry

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Tim Stevens and Tony Morgan understand volunteers. Beyond volunteers, they understand leadership of volunteers. In concise, snappy, story-loaded chapters, these hands-on authors offer practical, usable principles that will help you motivate, empower and create champions of the volunteers who make up your church (or any organization). This should be in your library and the library of every leader in your church. Highly recommended!

I've had the honor of overseeing about 200 volunteers for my online ministry for those with chronic illness since 1996. It is always a challenge to be able to maintain "control" (for lack of a better word) while communicating how much the service of the volunteers is appreciated. I found this book extremely helpful in my own volunteer management, even though most of "my" volunteers are actually online.

While reading this book I was trying to decide how to make some necessary logistical decisions about online ministry programs, but not wishing to hurt the feelings of any volunteers who oversaw these programs. In no way did I wish to have them feel I was moving their ministry program around online without considering their experience in working with the people it served each day.

I have to say that this book helped me immensely. In some cases, my answer was to just wait, and God was faithful and putting it on the hearts of my volunteers to make some of the changes I have preferred-- but had not even spoken out loud.

Volunteers are extremely special people and those involved in ministry, despite their own physical pain and limited energy, can never fully be thanked enough. This book, unlike most volunteer management books, also mentioned e-volunteers or virtual volunteers.

Simply Strategic Volunteers was, and will continue to be, an excellent tool for me as I make decisions about programs and people and where the priorities of each are in the body of the ministry. This is one of those books every ministry or nonprofit leader should read through each year as a refresher course.

Three cheers for Morgan and Stevens! When you place value on your volunteers, you marshal the full resources of your staff, the board, the budget and all the other management buckets to ensure volunteerism success. If it's worth doing, it's worth doing well.

"It is easy to get lost in the micro-purpose of the ministry and forget the macro-vision of the organization," write Tony Morgan and Tim Stevens in their incredibly practical book (99 quick volunteer ideas).

Is your volunteer program in alignment with your organization's mission? Do you have a run-away program (led by volunteers, perhaps) that is no longer aligned with the macro-vision of your organization? Do your programs flow out of your mission statement and your Big Holy Audacious Goal? When they do, blast off with every gun blazing. Remember, your unpaid volunteers and paid volunteers are on the same team! (That would be Jesus' team.)

The Volunteer Bucket is one of 20 buckets in my book, Mastering The Management Buckets: 20 Critical Competencies for Leading Your Business or Non-profit, and you must integrate all the buckets. Everyone who works with volunteers needs their own copy of Simply Strategic Volunteers.

This is a text that every church staff person or lay leader should read about how to recruit volunteers and help them live our their personal ministry.

This a simple yet great book with wonderful ideas for working with and developing a wonderful team of volunteers in church ministry.

An excellent and practical book. Easy reading and definitely a tool for increasing your volunteer staff. Anyone who buys it will not be disappointed!

Tony Morgan and Tim Steven truly opened my eyes to how valuable the volunteers are in my church. The way I do ministry will never be the same.