The Volunteer Effect: How Your Church Can Find, Train, and Keep Volunteers Who Make a Difference

by Jason Young, Jonathan Malm, Jenni Catron (Foreword)

Every ministry needs capable and reliable volunteers, but so often it feels like no one is coming forward to fill your church's needs. In reality, the people around us do want to volunteer their time and talents, but we often fail to connect potential volunteers to ministry opportunities or lose them somewhere along the way.The Volunteer Effect is your start-to-finish guide to recruiting, leading, and retaining volunteers for your ministry. Based on solid management theory delivered in an engaging narrative form, this book shows you how to- recruit people to a mission, not just a role- create low-risk entry points- build a team that evokes pride- train them for the bigger picture- and much moreYour most effective volunteers are already in your church! Let this resource show you how to find--and keep--them.

Genres: Leadership, Nonfiction, Christian

About the author

Dr. Jason Young helps create environments where people love to work and serve by equipping leaders and teams to lead with clarity, empathy, and purpose. He is trusted by organizations such as Delta Air Lines, Life Church, North Point Ministries, the Global Leadership Summit, Google, Audi of America, and many others.

Jason holds doctoral degrees in leadership and hospitality, blending academic depth with real-world experience. His style, in writing and on stage, is story-driven, practical, and down-to-earth, helping leaders become the kind of people others love to follow.

When he’s not coaching or writing, Jason enjoys his role as a professor, investing in undergraduate through doctoral students because his own life was deeply shaped by a professor who believed in him.

Reviews

[Valery Stapleton · Rating 5 out of 5]

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Wow! This is GOLD 🏅 I feel challenged and inspired at the same time. I have SO much room to grow as a leader and I can’t wait to get better for my team 💪🏼 I love the practical steps shared throughout the book. You’ll definitely want a notebook when you start reading this 📝

[Lindsay · Rating 5 out of 5]

There was a lot of really good info in this book for leading volunteers in a church setting. I plan to take a couple ideas from this book and try implementing them in my role at my church

[Tinia Graham · Rating 4 out of 5]

I learned some good ideas and good information as I try to work on the "lack of volunteers" issue with the non-profit I work with. Glad I read it. Authors are clear that they are in the work of ministry and this book is very much about that profession. If you are part of a church working with volunteers, this will probably be a great book for you. I took all the information and it was easy for me to translate it to work for my non-profit.

[Sasha]

While a little Christian-conventional, this does contain very on-the-nose points about volunteers in faith communities.

[John Richards · Rating 5 out of 5]

A good book from two guys who have worked in the soil of volunteer culture at larger churches. I especially liked their simple process of finding, training, and keeping volunteers. They provided concrete examples of ways they have done all three with relative success. One of my favorite chapters dealt with firing volunteers, which isn't always easy to do. But they offer some good tips on working through that hard conversation. This is a good book for pastors, leaders, and volunteer leaders who are interested in building a healthy volunteer culture.

[Rachel Gardiner · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was surprisingly good and helpful! It provides great insight on how to lead and steward volunteers. Books in this area can feel unnecessarily repetitive and I appreciated that this one did not feel that way. I also respect and share their opinion that volunteers are more than the services they can provide; that was a common theme throughout each chapter. Tons of application for those of us leading volunteers in any area!

[Nick birri · Rating 5 out of 5]

An absolute text book on leading teams. I say teams in general and not just volunteer teams because even if you’re a leader within a for-profit organization, you can use these same skills to make sure your employees are motivated on something by other than a paycheck!

[Liz Phillips · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must read for ministry leaders!

[Amy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mostly for larger congregations. Still a few useful ideas.

[Brittany · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really 4.5 stars. I loved the ease of reading, the tangible goals and shifts in mindset. It’s really helped me as I’ve stepped into a volunteer coordination part of my job.

[Elizabeth Broome · Rating 4 out of 5]

Worth the read. I found myself skipping alot. There were many perspectives and opinions I was grateful to read.

[Zach Vogel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic book for our church staff

We read this book as a staff to better understand the importance of stewarding our volunteers. A very good read and conversation starter.