This interview was initially published in the Spring 2026 issue of The Global Advocate. The full issue can be found here:
Thanks to their connection with the University of Findlay, College First Church of God frequently works with students to fill volunteer positions. These serendipitous opportunities have seen many young people with a loose (or zero) connection to Jesus being discipled, receiving internships, and serving the church even after they move into their careers.
Recently, Pastor Nancy Hiser explained this strategy as “Volunteer Evangelism”, a kind of ‘show then tell’ which seek to get non-Christians involved in volunteer opportunities with the church to expose them to the real Jesus.
Below we interview Pastor Nancy to better understand the principles behind Volunteer Evangelism, and how other churches could apply them.
Could you talk to me a little bit about where you kind of developed that idea of volunteering as a form of evangelism? Where did that come from?
Nancy: Part of it came out of this thought process: when we're trying to reach young people, what is holding them back? What obstacles do they have to overcome in order to connect with us? Because that's what we're trying to initially develop, a sense of connection.
When I think about a lot of forms of evangelism, we're asking them to be interested in something that they already probably are not interested in, which is the Bible, or Jesus, or worship.
Usually when we're evangelizing, we're like, “come to this Bible study or this worship night”, which is asking people to step into a space that they know nothing about, that they probably feel insecure about. Either we're asking them to do that or we're asking them to come to some kind of loose social activity, because that's supposed to be the answer for evangelism.
But a lot of young people have a fear of unstructured socialization. That's not something that this generation has done well, for a lot of different reasons.
And so, I noticed that when I invited students to things and they had a job to do, that they did a lot better with that than just unstructured socialization. And I noticed it first with already Christian students. They would not come to the young adult lunch or coffee time, but they would come if I gave them a job to do at that event, because then they had a reason to be there and they had something that was an ‘out’ socially. Like, “I can't talk. I'm serving the pizza.”
If people are going to do this, one thing I would recommend that they do is think through what values their programming shares, even with people who maybe don't believe Jesus is the Savior.
I'm going to bat a better percentage of young people wanting to volunteer to serve dinner at the homeless shelter than I am people wanting to pass out programs on Sunday for church. Because they don't necessarily believe that going to church is important, but they may believe that feeding the hungry is important, because that's a shared value that they have with Christianity. That might be something that would feel super rewarding for them, to go and serve at the City Mission, and they're doing it alongside Christians, or maybe they're transporting people from the church to go do it, but it's part of a shared value that we already have.
If churches are unable to identify areas of crossover with non-believers, it is an opportunity to evaluate current ministries or to create new ones to address the needs of the community.
Can you speak about how your recruiting background has helped you pick out the right people for volunteering?
Recruiting is understanding what people's skill sets are, but then also, what are your needs? What's the best way to meet the needs of the organization with the talent that's available? And then also, how does that talent allow you to realign your current team?
So, for example, I have some people on my team that are amazing and they have a deep theological background and they're very skilled at leading people. I would rather not have them spend their time serving the pizza, stacking the chairs, driving the van, some of those things, because I need them in a teaching role. I need them as an advisor. I need them to be investing in other front-line leaders.
One of the mistakes we sometimes make as leaders is we just ask the same small group of people to do absolutely everything, regardless of what their skill set actually is because we just need to get things done. But we really burn people out and limit their capacity when we ask them to do things that we don't really need them to do.
If there's a job that anybody could do, I want to fill that job with someone who needs to be reached, that might be open to serving in that role so that they can get some exposure to our church and our team and those people who are very well-developed disciples.
I certainly wouldn't bring anybody in who wasn't a Christian to [do] lesson planning or to teach. I don't want to put them in a position where I would tell youth group kids, “this [isn’t] a Christian leader.” But that's a very different role than “this person came in tonight to make some corn dogs for you.”
I think sometimes people get a little confused about what a leader role is and what it isn't. I've gotten pushback sometimes from people who say, “why would you have somebody who's not a Christian coming in to lead?” and I'm like, “that person's not leading.” They're making copies, they're helping supervise the pool party, they're a very mature, responsible person and they passed a background check but they're not leading anything at this point. They're simply helping out.
We need to, on our teams, have defined leader roles and roles that aren't.
So, I think it starts with defining what your needs and roles are on your team and then figuring out what skill sets those roles require. And then, [you can ask], who else do you need on your team? Do those people need to be well-developed disciples? Could they be new disciples? Can they not have made a decision for Jesus yet?
When you ask non-Christians to volunteer for a church event, what is their typical response?
Anything you're doing that's broadly humanitarian or philanthropic is going to have a certain amount of appeal to young people in particular, but really all people. So, I would try to look at areas of your ministry that are not as focused on specifically teaching doctrine, because that's just something that the secular world doesn't value. The secular world is not trying to spread the gospel. So, they're not going to want to knock on doors and pray for people.
One thing I've noted about young people is that they're less concerned, a lot of times, with what people believe and that belief being correct than they are that people's actions are helping others. So, a lot of what [the church] does is focused on making sure people have correct belief about God, which is important. But that's not a common space yet. That's not a shared value at this point with a young person who's not a Christian. Whereas they're probably concerned with making sure that people have homes, right? If you're doing an apostles build with your church, they might be all about joining you to help build a house for someone who is homeless.
We had a lot of young people turn out for Operation Christmas Child Night, which is, I think, the ideal intersection ministry opportunity for churches because they may be coming because they love providing a gift to a child somewhere who is poor. In our culture, we consider it a bit of a tragedy if kids don't have Christmas presents.
So, for them, they're like, “I'm coming to make sure that there's a kid in the world who gets a gift.” But we're also going to talk about the gospel while they're there and talk about that the greatest gift is Christ. So, they're actually participating in the spread of the gospel by coming and packing a box. And they don't believe in the gospel yet, but they're also hearing the gospel while they're there because we're educating them about the project.
It makes me think that often we have it backwards when we talk about how people come to faith. You mentioned young people care less about right belief and more about right action. And I wonder if, for some people, it's more effective for us to do it right before we understand why we're doing it?
I think in my work with Hindu students, in particular, a lot of times we will have conversations about grace and the teachings of Jesus out of what we consider to be our right behavior towards them.
[These Hindu students] may be in need a mattress or a dresser or a ride to the airport, and we're providing and we're meeting that need, and then [we’re] able to talk to them about why we would do that. Why would we help somebody who doesn't share our faith, isn't from our country, doesn't agree with us about who God or Jesus is?
Well, we would do that because of Jesus's lesson about the Good Samaritan, and then that gives us an entryway to talk about Jesus's teaching and what Jesus did for people and what He taught us.
And then, I say, “we do this because you're an important person, who God created. And this is how Jesus taught me to treat you. So that's why we treat you this way.” But we have to have the behavior to open up the conversation.
*This interview has been edited for clarity
CGGC eNews—Vol. 20, No. 16
Login To Leave Comment