163: Scheduling Volunteers & Tools That Help | with Justin King

In this episode, Laurie Graham welcomes Justin King, the founder of The Church Crew, a scheduling tool designed to help small churches manage their volunteers more effectively. 

They discuss:

• Justin's personal experience with volunteer management challenges, the features of The Church Crew
• The importance of healthy systems to support volunteers
• Balancing the use of scheduling tools with leaving room for the Holy Spirit

This conversation provides valuable insights for small church leaders looking to empower their volunteers and create more sustainable ministry practices.

Connect with Justin King:
www.thechurchcrew.com

Join our free Facebook Community: www.facebook.com/groups/smallchurchministry


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Transcript

Laurie Acker: 0:01

Hey, this is Laurie Acker, welcome to the Small Church Ministry Podcast. Hey, hey, welcome back to another episode of the Small Church Ministry Podcast. Justin King is joining me today, and we just had just a kind of a fun conversation. I thought before I hit record, but this is where we're going today, you all. We're just having a conversation, and you you guys all get to listen in. Today, we're talking about setting up volunteers to succeed and how a scheduling tool might be just what you need. One of the cool things about, you know, running Small Church Ministry over the years is I've gotten to meet some really interesting people, and by and far, the majority I really like and Justin is one of those guys. And Justin reached out to me. And Justin, I'm just gonna let the let you tell them. Why did

Justin King: 0:54

That sounds great, Laurie, and thanks so much for you reach out to me? What's going on in your life? You know, you could talk about your, you know, your small church experience or whatever like, let's just, let's just go for it and have a great conversation, and we'll help some small churches along the way. having me, and thanks everyone for listening. So yeah, just you know a little about myself. I really have a passion for, for, well, volunteers, but also helping people to use their God given talent in the best way possible to do Kingdom work through their ministries. And whether that's a big church or small church, it doesn't matter. These are people that we're talking about, and God's given us all, you know, unique, unique capabilities, right? And sometimes it's hard regardless of the ministry type to sometimes it's to know how I can serve the best. Sometimes it's you do want to serve, but then you get a little pigeon holed and you're doing the same thing over and over again. You get burnout and it's a really important topic. And, you know, it starts, it starts way back for me, always, you know, I've attended a small church, and in our small church, when I was growing up, my my mom, in essence, ran the nursery, right? And she was responsible for maintaining the schedule and making sure, you know, people in their spots. And, I mean, we're talking about two nurseries, right? You had the baby nursery in the in the toddlers, and it wasn't, you know, a big ordeal, but it was always difficult to, you know, someone didn't show up, or they were sick, or who can do this? And it was always quite complicated.

Laurie Acker: 2:23

Oh, you're like, speaking everybody's story who's listening right now, like this really is one of the challenges with working with so many volunteers in smaller churches. So keep going.

Justin King: 2:33

Exactly, exactly. So, you know, I saw my mom go through these challenges through all the years, right? And then I always had a knack for technology. I went to a Christian school, got a computer science degree, and kind of reflected back on the challenges that my own mother had. And that's how The Church Crew was founded. So that's the name And I thought, you know, we could solve that really easily with a little bit of math, especially now and in the AI of the product that we built. And of course, it is our crew, world, and able to run simulations and millions of probabilities and figure out what the best option is. And I'm our people that we're working with. But it does stand for thinking, you know, we could take that advanced math and apply it to a pretty simple problem, make it easy to use, and just just solve one of the problems that our small churches have. something. It stands for Christians, Ready, Equipped and Willing, and that's typically what we find in our church, right? We got a bunch of people, they're ready. God has equipped them, giving them capabilities, and they're willing, and we just need to help them find the right spot, but also treat them fairly, you know, give them their time to serve, but don't have them do it back to back every single Sunday, because Laurie, you know, that's what happens, right? I'm sure other people can can resonate with this is you find someone who's really good at something, you ask them to help, and they go run off and do it, and they do it really well, right? And then we go off and we're focusing on some other thing, and they're off doing their thing, and before you know it, you know, 10 years have gone by and they're doing the same thing over and over again. You just kind of forget about it, because they do such a great job at what they're doing. And so what we have sought to do is to create an easy way to fairly distribute your volunteers across all the different things that need to be done in the church. And whether that's two tasks, like the nurseries in our church, or, you know, you could start adding in, you know, lawn crews, and maybe you've got different, you know, roles, you know, in the in the in the regular service itself. And we've got some churches that have, you know, different people that that read as part of it and do music as part of it, and or greeters. And any sort of tasks that the church has, you can set those up, set up your volunteers, kind of tie them together, and just let the math do its thing.

Laurie Acker: 4:40

Okay, now I want to stop you at that word math, because math for some people is really scary. Some people probably already shut down and just started having some trauma responses from their eighth grade algebra teacher. You know what I mean? So math is is kind of a scary thing. It's also one of those things for people that they say, We never use math like we don't use math in real life. Why would we ever have to learn that like, you know, go. Through calculus, you're like, "Wow when am I going to use this." I mean, I use, I think it's geometry, I use quite often, and algebra too, actually, if you really think about it. But when you say math can solve a people problem, I just want to back up just a little bit, because I think a lot of people are like, "What are you saying?" How in the world would math solve this issue of scheduling volunteers, working with volunteers, you know, talk to us a little bit about that.

Justin King: 5:28

Sure. Well, let's think about our simple example again, right? My mom's building that nursery schedule. She's got two nurseries. Let's say she's got 15 potential volunteers. Okay, so what she's actually going to do is look at a calendar and put Laurie's name maybe on the first week, and then try to fill in other people and see how far she can go until she has to use you again, right? Because she wants to treat you fairly. And so we're kind of putting this gap between all of our volunteers and making sure everyone's kind of spaced out fairly. And that might be across Sunday services and Wednesday services and special events and all these different things. And we may not realize it, but in our brain, what we're doing is we're using math, the math of how many days has it been since this person last served, and how many days until they're scheduled to serve again? And trying to plug each individual into kind of a mathematical fairness algorithm, right? We don't know we're doing it, but we're just laying it all out on paper. And so what we've done is we've turned that into an actual mathematical operation. So what we do in the solution in the matter of just a couple of seconds, is we take all of your volunteers and we run potentially 1000s of simulations of who can serve in which slots, and then we score every single person and say, what is their fairness score based on the last time they serve the next time they serve. And then we rank it and to figure out what is the absolute best possible simulation. And that's the one that we show to the user.

Laurie Acker: 6:52

Okay, now you, you are so excited about this, and I'm thinking, this happens in like, seconds, right? Like, I'm a kind of person, like, I like to turn the water on in my sink, and I don't care where the water comes from as long as it is coming out. You know what I mean? And so hearing you get all passionate about this, like, this is why you built this, this program. The system that you did right? Is because somebody else, we just plug in the names, and your system, like, spits it out, right? Is that what you're saying?

Justin King: 7:19

Exactly. You've got one button to click, and literally have the option when you say, "Hey, I'm going to create my next month's schedule." If you want to just click the automatic button, then it's just going to give you the schedule and say, "Here it is." All of that work I just talked about has been done. You didn't see the complexity. You certainly don't see the 1000s of simulations that we ran. You just see the schedule at your fingertips. Now some people do like to start with kind of a manual thing, and say, "Oh, well, you know, I do want to put this person here and this person here." But then again, click a button, let the math do the rest of it. So you're exactly right. You're not exposed to any of this complexity. You want a schedule? Push a button. Boom, there it is. We want it to be simple for everyone to use.

Laurie Acker: 7:58

Okay, let's talk about volunteers just for one second. Because, you know, you know, some of our listeners who are listening right now said,"Well, that would be nice if I had more than one volunteer," because they're like, "We just have, you know, Jack does the nursery, you know, Barbara does the kitchen, so and so is doing the landscaping." "We don't have money for bookkeepers." "Well, we don't really have money for a pastor." Like, you know, we have a lot of churches like that, and I just want to back up a little bit. I mean, churches in our community like that, who are really just struggling even to find a volunteer. But I just want to back up and talk about systems for a minute and one of the reasons we don't have volunteers. Because one of the things that happens when we don't have good systems in place, and we're not being really people-centered. And by the way, I think planning tools like you're talking about, help us be more people-centered, because we burn people out and they don't want to volunteer anymore because they have been over-utilized. Or it you said the word "fair," which is probably also just, you know, it's kind of a there's a lot of feelings around the word "fair," whether we need to be "fair" in ministry or not. But when we're treated in a way that doesn't make allowances for our lives, or when we have to cancel, or when a season is bad for us, or, you know, things like that. I really believe this is one of the reasons we don't have as many volunteers in many churches these days is because people have finally said, "Wait, that's not right." Like, that's not that's not a good expectation for me. And I think having systems in place before we might grow or before we bring someone in, having a healthy system is really important. Because a lot of us are out there recruiting volunteers because we're desperate, and we're bringing them into really sick, sad families, yeah? Like, it's like, "Hey, come to our Thanksgiving dinner. It's going to be chaos. Everybody's going to be yelling, we're not going to have enough food, but come join us, because we need you." And we're doing this in our churches. Like, have you seen that, though? Like, we're bringing people into unhealthy places. I'm like, can we get healthy first, right? And then bring people into a Thanksgiving dinner that's actually set up, where there is food, and we're not going to yell at each other, and nobody's going to storm out the door, you know, or, you know, yell at the dog. So talk to me just a little bit about volunteers. And you know, kind of what you've seen as a healthier kind of system, like, have you seen healthy and fun and joyful volunteer serving? Because that's my goal.

Justin King: 10:19

Absolutely. Yeah. I think I've seen I've seen it all. I think between, and across, different size, it doesn't matter whether you're small church or big church. There's always, you know, volunteer challenges. I've visited some of the biggest churches and talked to people and they still have some of the same challenges. So don't think it's just because we're a small church that we have these challenges. You have it you have it everywhere. One thing I found is that, around finding volunteers, people won't, people are fearful to raise their hand and sign up for something unless they really understand what they're getting into right? If you have a single event and you say, "Hey, we've got something going on Saturday from one to three, and we need people to do this." It's a lot easier to get volunteers, right? Let's say, "Yeah, I can bring the hot dogs, and I can, you know, mow the yard, and I can put up signs, or whatever it is that you're that you're pulling off." When you start to say, "Hey, we need people for nursery, right? Or I need people to teach this class, or any people for this other thing." The first thing you're thinking is, "Holy cow, what am I committing myself to?"

Laurie Acker: 11:20

Yeah, panic, fear, get out the door because we're not sure what it is.

Justin King: 11:24

Exactly, exactly. So when you throw your name in So by creating a system that understands your preferences and the hat without that understanding, you know, you don't know what's coming, right? And so what systems will help your availability and can automatically work around them, automatically makes my life easier as a volunteer, because I you do, even as a volunteer, is it gives you more control, right? So you can come in and say, "I'd love to volunteer for, don't have to call people and have these awkward situations you know, the nursery, or for the lawn crew or whatnot. But, you know, here's my limitations, right? I'm actually out of town these dates, so don't schedule me." Don't create an awkward situation. You know, "I can only serve, you know, on these and make it feel like I'm canceling all the time. particular dates," or "I can only serve on this particular you know, thing that you're doing," right? "I can mow the lawn, but I don't want to work with kids," right? You want to And the other thing a system can really help with is, again, select the areas that you want to work with. going back to when my mom ran the nursery. She was constantly getting phone calls before, you know, texting and all that stuff. I'm aging myself a bit. But, you know, getting phone calls saying, "Hey, can I switch?" "Well, who's doing this?" "What can I... ," you know, these complicated conversations, move things around. And again, systems can can help with that, right? So if I can log into a tool and see all the volunteers and what everybody's doing and realize,"Oh, I'm feeling under the weather." "Oh, Sally's working on Sunday, you know, or, you know, next Sunday. Let me see if I can just swap with her." And handle that in a systemic way. It makes the administrator's life easier. It makes your life easier because you know who you're swapping with. And, you know, again, it takes that burden off the volunteer feeling like they're, you know, creating a problem for other people. So, yeah, when I think, when you have systems in place where there's transparency and you can go in and move things around, you're more likely to get people to volunteer, right? Because they understand, that they work with the paradigm, right, that that you're living in.

Laurie Acker: 13:16

I think there's a trust level there too, right? That this person cares about my availability, that I trust they have. They have a bigger plan, a system like I can trust them to, you know, just kind of oversee. So as we're talking about scheduling volunteers, we're really talking about a piece of setting volunteers up to succeed. I talk about that at almost every conference, at almost every training I do, setting volunteers up to succeed. Because oftentimes we're really setting people up to fail. We set them up for awkward conversations. We don't tell them what to do when they have a mic, right? I'm sorry, but people do have to cancel. There needs to be a system in place, like, what do they do if, if they can't be there? So we're really talking about setting up volunteers to succeed. Now I'm going to hit the system thing. I've got two questions. And one, when I, when I did worship ministry for a while, I had a system, and I wrote a whole blog post on it. And I rotated songs in and out. I introduced new songs certain weeks, and I would do that new song three times in a row, so people would learn it. And I kind of filtered through and then I would, I would retire songs, because I knew things needed to stay fresh. And I've had people say, well, and I mean, going from your brain, that's probably very mathematical, like I had an equation of how I did it, and it made it, made setting up, like worship orders, really easy for me. And I've had people say to me, "Well, that's not leaving room for the Spirit."

Justin King: 14:45

Right?

Laurie Acker: 14:45

"You can't plan that far ahead, you're not leaving room for the Spirit." And I'm like, for me, it was the opposite, because I had a plan, so I didn't have to stress out. And when I wanted to tweak it or change it, or, "Oh, this song's gonna be good." I could, it was so easy to kind of shuffle it. And I can almost hear people when I do these podcasts, I like hear their responses. I hear people saying, "I would never use a system like that." I, you know, "If somebody is passionate about the nursery, they should be in there as much as they want." Or, you know, math, you know, like, "Let's leave room for the Holy Spirit." How do you feel about like a system for scheduling volunteers. How would you respond to that criticism?"Well, you're not really leaving room for God to lead you. If you have a spreadsheet, right?"

Justin King: 15:29

It's, it's fair. I've actually, I've heard that exact concern, I guess you could say, right? Around using various tools, right? And I've heard it around even, you know pastors and how they plan their messages, or, you know, lots of different areas, right? And so I completely agree with the concept that you need to let the Holy Spirit work, right? If God is going to direct us in a certain way, He is going to do it. And in my view of this, we're getting a little theological here, I wasn't planning this. But my view is it's kind of like the Damascus Road, right? You're heading in one direction because you think you know, "With all the knowledge, all the information, with everything that God has given me, I think I need to go in this direction." And if God wants you to do something different, He is going to supernaturally stop you in your tracks, slam the door shut, and say, actually jump in. We need to go a different way, right? In a way I think God has, He will. I mean, Scripture proves that He has done that, right? There's so many examples of people using wisdom. God given wisdom. What they think God wants them to do. He stops them and changes their direction. And I think that can be applied to to ministry, right? I don't think that means that we just walk into everything completely unprepared, and, you know, expecting, you know, God, to just supernaturally direct everything. I mean, can you do that? Absolutely. But I think God also expects us to use God given wisdom and the tools that that we have at our fingertips to to do things decently and in order right? To prepare and to plant. And, I don't know about you, Laurie, but I've been in so many services where you expect it to go one way, and there was a plan in place, and God has changed it.

Laurie Acker: 17:16

100%

Justin King: 17:16

I've seen message. Complete messages completely change. Pastors get up there and say, "Well, we were going to talk about Creation, but instead, you know, we're flipping over and talking about Revelation." I don't know, whatever, but I've seen that happen. I've seen that happen in leadership positions where it seems like God is directing one thing to happen, and somebody else shows up and the Spirit moves and things change. I mean, yes, we should absolutely pivot when the Spirit leads. If you have someone that's come into your ministry and says, "My passion is to run the nursery." Then absolutely let that person run the nursery. You don't need to. You may not need a scheduling tool if you have someone who wants to cut the grass every single week, like, that's their ministry. And that's that's fine. Praise the Lord for what they've done. But I do think some other areas of volunteer management are important, like, just because they come in and say, you know,"We want to take this over, that's what God has led us to do." That doesn't mean you just let them do it and then forget about it. I mean, they should still be, you know, appreciated, and recognized and, you know, in some cases, trained, right? I mean, if they want to run the nursery, but they have no experience running the nursery, right, then you need to prepare them and give them the tools to do that. So maybe a longer answer, but I absolutely think we should leave room for the Spirit and certainly listen to to to His impact in our ministries. But I don't think that that means that we shouldn't plan and prepare and to do our best to make sure our ministries are run decently in an order.

Laurie Acker: 18:43

Yeah, and the truth is, the right tools will save you time and energy, and often they will save you money, you know, but the right tools save you time. I mean, think about before the wheel was invented, or the pulley or a lever, right? Like the right tools save us time. I think sometimes smaller churches are sometimes a little hesitant about tools, because they're like, "We're so we're so small we don't need a tool." But the right tools will save you time. As you talk about a scheduling tool, my experience in a, actually, in a small church and a mid-sized church was Planning Center. And when we used Planning Center, I was very aware that we were using, probably, I don't know, 10-2% of the capability. Like, I mean, we're paying a bunch of money for something that we were using for one little, tiny piece of it. So you actually have your own tool that you have have designed, and you help churches and you know, so what can you compare, like, some of maybe the the big names, the mid-sized names. Are you comfortable doing this, like, talking about, like, what's for who? Because I know, like, we have mid-sized churches and large churches who love us and follow our podcast, and then we've got the baby micro churches, and then we've got, you know, a lot of different sizes. What kind of churches? No, I should say this differently. What questions should people ask when they're looking at a scheduling tool? How do you find the tool that's right for you?

Justin King: 20:06

Yeah, that's a great question. Laurie. So you're right. You've got some of the big players out there, like the Planning Centers, Breeze, that's, you know, somewhere in the middle and there's a bunch of different ones. Many of them now have some sort of volunteer scheduling capability, along with tithing, and people management, and, you know, donation tracking, like all these different capabilities. So when I built The Church Crew, I did not build it for those that are already using these large tools, because many of those have those scheduling capabilities already integrated, and it might fit the bill. In fact, if you're familiar Planning Center, their scheduling capability kind of came out of more worship planning, right? And it was really designed to say, "Okay, who's going to play these instruments." And, you know, you interject the music right into there, and they've got apps to, you know, do all that stuff. So it's, it's very, very powerful, and I've seen a lot of churches very successfully use it. But as you can imagine, when you're planning, let's say, a worship team, you don't usually just want it to be kind of mathematically optimized. You're probably thinking through,"Yeah, these are the people that work well together." Or this one's going to be, you know, like, you know, at our church sometimes, you know, it'll be all women doing it, or all men doing it, or, you know, different things you're setting up. So you're thinking more specifically around who you're scheduling. This is, you know, the tool that we built was for those that really don't need that complexity. And certainly the expense of these tools, it can be $50, $100, $200 a month, and can be really expensive for for small churches. So we were designed, we started $5 a month, super cheap, and it's designed to very quickly, insert your volunteers, insert the task I need to serve, click a button, get a schedule, and you're done. Solve a simple problem around volunteer management and not get into the complexities of of what these bigger tools do.

Laurie Acker: 21:55

Thank you for saying the word simple. Like I love simple.

Justin King: 21:59

Yeah, that is the goal. And if you look at the UI[user interface], it's just a few buttons to click. I have used Planning Center. I've helped certain churches try to use it to its fullest extent, and it is very complicated. Now it is very powerful. You can do a ton of things with it. You can schedule your buildings and, like, check in and out resources, and televisions, and projectors, and rooms, and like all this kind of complexity, and some people need that. But from the churches that I grew up in, that was just extra complexity that we would not even look at, extra buttons and clicks it wanted to stay away from. And so for smaller churches, what I found is they tend to pick small, easy-to-use tools that solve a particular problem. Whether that's this volunteer management or maybe a meal train is an example, like a very simple tool. You know, when we need to schedule meals, that's another great tool that I've used in the past. And there's several others like that that solve a small problem, inexpensive, sometimes free, and that's really all you need when, when you're a small ministry,

Laurie Acker: 23:27

Yeah, I love it. So what do you do? Like, are you just out there helping churches with this scheduling app? Are there other things? Like, I just think you're a super interesting person, really fun to talk to.

Justin King: 23:42

Well, thank you. So this is definitely a side, passion project, if you will, for myself. Tt's, you know, I kind of told you the story how it came about and and, I mean, I kind of sat on the idea for years, and God just kept burden me with this saying, "You can solve this. Just, just build it. Just build a tool that can solve this problem." So it's certainly not my full time job. It's, it's a passion project. Professionally, I'm in, I'm in software sales. I do work in technology and software. It's more in the supply chain space. I do a lot of this mathematical operation around, you know, forecasting, you know, product and manufacturing, and demand, and disruptions around the world. So kind of the same world at a different, a different level. But the math, in a lot of ways, is the same, right? These optimization routines that run the most complex companies in the world, right? You can apply that logic to a very simple problem, like run volunteer simulations and pick the one that just makes the most sense. And that's in essence, what we've done here.

Laurie Acker: 24:42

You know, and what you're talking about is like using your your skills, your love, your passion, your education, your expertise, and helping out smaller churches. And you know, when we think about volunteers, empowering our small churches, that's what we're all called to do. Like this is the "Being a light" thing everybody like this is when I and the podcast, I say,"Be a light." What do you have? What do you do? What do you have to offer that can help your church? Because it totally can't. I mean, if Justin figured out a way to have math help small church, like, I mean, definitely your people skills, your you know, love for kids. I, even, like love for animals. You know, understanding space, understanding, you know, biology. Like so many things in our just our typical world, life, being. Whatever your job is, whatever your education, whatever your passion is. If you're a bird watcher. Like, how can the skills that we have around those really power our churches? I know that was just a really weird example to say bird watcher, but I'm telling you, I've seen churches like, start a dog park in their front yard when they notice everybody is like, walking dogs past and you know, it's, it's a ministry, right? It's a way to reach our community. So I love what you're doing. I love that, that you saw a need in a small church, and you're like, "Hey, this is a really simple way to solve it, inexpensive." And I also want to mention, having scheduling tools isn't just about helping the volunteers who are serving, like, if you're in charge of an area, it's also helping the person who's in charge.

Justin King: 26:06

Absolutely.

Laurie Acker: 26:07

It is difficult to make schedules. It is difficult to have to, you know, bend around different things without systems. It is, it is, it's stressful, right? So sometimes those people who are like, "Hey, could you like, you know, help, you know, the volunteers for coffee." Say, "Hey, here's a system. It's a really cool system. It's really easy. We've made it easy for you to volunteer." I love making it easy for volunteers.

Justin King: 26:30

Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, imagine if you're, you know, managing a group of volunteers, and somebody calls and says, "Hey, you know, got the flu at the last minute. Can't come." Imagine if you could click a button and something could tell you right away who the next perfect candidate is, right? Rather than going through your list and trying to look at the calendar and figuring all that, right? And that's what we do. So when as an administrator, you go in, you say, "Oh, Laurie, can't serve." The next name in line is the mathematically optimal person based on the last time they serve, the next one, their vacation schedule, everything that should fill that spot. And so it's exactly what we're

Laurie Acker: 27:02

So for churches that you help, Justin, who use doing, trying to make it super simple. your tool, what size church do you think is ideal? Or what size churches do you help? Because, again, we've got churches that really have, like, one person in the nursery, and then we've got churches that are, you know, pushing 200 and 300 is there a certain size or, I guess, kind of niche that that you serve best?

Justin King: 27:29

Well, I mean, if you listen to this podcast and you say, "I don't have any of those problems, Laurie, what are you talking about? We've got three people, and we just take turns." You know, then you probably don't need a tool, right? So the smallest of ministries, you know, may not need something yet, although, even if you don't necessarily need help with the math, it does help for things like just keeping people informed, right? So a text message reminder that says, you know, "Hey, Justin, don't forget, you're serving in the nursery this Sunday." So those sorts of things can be, be beneficial, just to kind of the engagement of the notification side of it. Generally speaking, you know, you need, you know, at least a pool of, let's say, 8-10 volunteers for one task is probably on the smaller end of what we have. All the way to some churches are using us to have that are larger and have have a couple 100. But again, then you got the bridge where they'll stop using a tool like ours, and they're going to move into like a Planning Center, because that's just more fit for their for their purpose. So, you know, attendance anywhere from, you know, 50 to 400, maybe 500 that's really on the end. But it's, it's definitely designed and built for small church ministry, because that's, that's what I grew up in, and that's what I know, that's what I saw. And I particularly noted that most tools that are out there are not targeting the smaller ministries. They're targeting the bigger ones, because that's where the dollars is, and, you know, and that's where they're going to make their money. And that's not the focus here for me. It's, it's really, it's a passion project. It's something God laid on my heart,"You can solve this." And I'm really excited where it's going to go. I am letting the Spirit lead here, as we were talking about earlier, because I don't necessarily know what the next step is for us. But God has brought some interesting people into my life through this, one of which is someone who has a PhD in psychology, who has, likewise, a burden for volunteers. And he's not a tech guy, so he has nothing to do with like, the scheduling and the fairness and all that. He's just like thinking, you know, about the human brain and some of what we talked about, of you know, why aren't people getting engaged? How can we help people get engaged? How we can help find, you know, maybe they don't even know the skills that God has given them, right? How do we help unlock that? You know, using scripture and, you know, discipling them to help them unlock, like with the skills that God has given, how they can apply that to ministry. So I don't know where this is going to take us, Laurie, but it's been an exciting journey that God has put us on, and we're helping churches. It's helped me, it's helping a lot of people, both the volunteers and the administrators. And, you know, our website, we've got a couple blogs that go outside of volunteer management, but things around, what, how do you recruit? Like, what are some ideas? And those have been helpful for folks as well as you know, what type of outreaches should small churches focus on right? I mean, small churches can't put on an event for 2,000 people. They just want the resources to do that. But what can we do in our local communities, in our small communities, to just let people know that we're there, that we love them, that we we want to make a connection. We want them to get involved and just to see the love of Christ through our through our local ministry.

Laurie Acker: 30:32

Yeah, well, we are excited to connect with you also, and love that you've written for our blog as well, which is really fun. And how, if people want to connect with you, get in touch with you, check out your resource, you know, see the different features that are offered with your tool, how do they do that? What's the best way?

Justin King: 30:51

Yeah, the easiest way is just to go to our website, which is www.thechurchcrew.com. Don't forget the at "the" beginning. I don't know what you'll get elsewhere, www.thechurchcrew.com and you can contact us there. You can do a free trial, or if you just want to reach out to me directly, just send a note to info@thechurchcrew.com, and I will personally get that and happy to connect with anyone.

Laurie Acker: 31:13

Love it. Thank you so much for taking the time to be with us, Justin. It's it's great to meet you, to get to know you, to have this conversation. And I'm looking forward to more. Thanks for being part of our community and helping small churches with what you got. It's awesome.

Justin King: 31:28

I've loved it good to get to know you, and poking around with small church ministry, and learning more about what you're doing, Laurie. So Praise God. Praise God for what He's doing through both of our lives.

Laurie Acker: 31:36

Yeah. So fun. All right, everybody until next week. You know what I have to say? Be a light.