By Todd Adkins
In the wake of COVID-19, we have a tremendous opportunity in our churches to build an army of volunteers and leaders, not just an audience. All of the new volunteer roles that are emerging during this season are pretty crazy. And added to that, the many existing roles that we have that have to be adapted to ensure the health of our congregation, as well as make sure that we remain compliant with local guidelines. I do know those guidelines change from place to place, and sometimes they are dramatically different, but one thing dramatically affects us all: the guidelines change what our church will look like in the short term.
Now, the ideal situation before was to max out our parking and seating capacity. And in this transition back to some kind of normal, it is going to look different. The volunteer roles that we need from week to week will look different as well. When you have a standardized template for your role profiles (I really mean job descriptions here), it provides so much clarity to your volunteers in the midst of so much uncertainty in their lives, especially when they are serving in more than one role. We’ve given you dozens of new and adapted roles that you might consider for your church. And we’ve arranged those by ministry category so that you can find them quickly. But I do want to walk you through a couple of examples of both new role profiles and maybe some adjusted ones you have in your church.
The first one is an adjusted role. It’s your parking team. The parking team is probably now going to do something more like ensuring that parking cones are blocking off every other parking space to maintain social distancing guidelines in your local area, or perhaps you are also using them as greeters as attendees arrive as well. Keep in mind you are changing this for your local context, I am just giving you examples.
Next, you would have a seating team. Seating teams could just be ushers revisited. They are ensuring that barriers are in place in the worship center to maintain good distancing. They are propping open doors. They are making sure that as attendees arrive they are welcomed. And they are also, maybe, dismissing attendees row by row, or section by section, when the service concludes.
Attendance compliancy would be something that is new. Many of us are in places where we need to check the headcount to make sure we are remaining compliant with the local occupancy guidelines and we don’t max out our space.
Those are some new and adapted roles inside the church. But there are some that are outside the church during the week as well. Those might be digital group leaders. The digital group leader may have been called a teacher before, or could have been a group leader before, but the point is it’s digital and they are focused on the online community and Bible study for a group of adults or students or kids. You can adapt those roles accordingly. We need to consider what’s changed in that role and make sure we adapted it well.
An additional role that you may need to add in that space would be digital group support. They are going to provide training, support, and troubleshooting for those online meetings that are happening in your church. Regardless of the platform that you use, you may need to consider using a person in that role.
Whether these roles are completely new, or are being adapted for a season, providing clarity will add both competence and confidence to your volunteers, which is really important. Again, I want you to remember, there is no one who knows your church and your leaders better than you do. So please take these as a starting point and adapt these descriptions to meet your unique situation.
To assist your church in working toward a new normal, we’ve created FREE downloadable versions of these new and adapted role profiles. Click here to download now.
*Please note these roles are not intended to be legal counsel but provide considerations that should be contextualized for your local church. Please consult resources like the CDC, FEMA, and local and state health departments as well as federal, state, and local government guidelines for the most up-to-date information for your area.
