I’m Lou Pizzichillo. I built Team Fit, but most of my week is spent serving as the founding pastor of Community Church on Long Island, New York.
We started Community Church in January of 2020 with a simple idea. We wanted to create a church for people who don’t go to church, in a part of the country where a lot of people don’t go to church.
Since then, we’ve grown to around 1,300 people. Community Church was recently named the #47 fastest-growing church in America on Outreach Magazine’s list of the 100 fastest-growing churches, making us the fastest-growing church in New York.
There are a lot of numbers I could point to when I tell our church’s story, but one of the most meaningful to me is the 497 people who consider themselves part of our volunteer team, because of what being part of this team has done in their lives.
Our team has shaped the way I think about serving
Like every pastor, I know the feeling of looking at a weekend and seeing the spots that still need to be filled. We need another person in Kids. Someone called out on Guest Services. Production needs another volunteer. There are always real needs, and somebody has to fill them.
But over the years, I’ve become more and more interested in the other side of that equation.
There are people walking into our churches every week who want to be part of something. They want relationships. They want to contribute. They want to feel like this isn’t just the church they attend, it’s their church too.
And serving is one of the best ways I’ve seen that happen.
Some of the strongest relationships in our church started because two people happened to serve on the same team.I’ve watched people discover things they’re really good at that they never would have tried otherwise. I’ve watched people who felt like they were on the outside find a group of people who knew their name and were excited to see them.
I’m sure you’ve seen the same thing in your church.
That’s part of what makes building a healthy volunteer culture so important. Yes, our churches need people to serve. But we also get the privilege of helping people find meaningful places to contribute.
The challenge we faced
At Community Church, we now have dozens of different ways someone can serve. Some are obvious. Others are things the average person attending on Sunday probably doesn’t even know exist.
And we started running into a problem that I think a lot of churches experience.
People were willing to serve, but they weren’t always sure what they were saying yes to.
And honestly, that makes sense. Especially for someone who’s newer to a church, there’s still a lot of trust being built. They may like the church and want to get involved, but they don’t know what “joining the team” actually means yet. How much time is this going to take? How often am I expected to serve? What happens if I don’t like it? Am I committing to this forever? Is it going to be awkward if I want to stop?
Most people aren’t going to say all of that out loud. They just feel the uncertainty of being asked to make a commitment before they really understand what the commitment is.
We could give them a list of teams, but that still required them to choose something they knew very little about. We could have a leader walk them through the options, but even then, there’s a difference between someone explaining where we need help and giving someone the freedom to explore for themselves.
I started wondering if we could lower the stakes of that first step. What if people could understand their options, see what might fit them, and get a clearer picture of what they were signing up for before anyone asked them to commit?
I wanted people to have a way to explore
The idea was pretty simple.
What if someone could tell us a little about themselves and then see the serving opportunities that might be a good fit for them?
Not a test that tells them what they’re allowed to do. Not something that locks them into a role. Just a starting point.
Here’s what you’re like. Here are a few places you might enjoy. Here’s what those roles actually involve. Take a look around.
Then they can decide what interests them.
For our leaders, it means the conversation doesn’t always have to begin with, “Here’s where we need someone.”
It can begin with, “Let’s figure out where you might fit.”
That’s the idea that eventually became Team Fit.
Team Fit came out of what I was learning as a pastor
I want to be clear about the relationship between Team Fit and Community Church.
Team Fit is an independent company that I founded personally. It isn’t owned by Community Church, and it isn’t a ministry or product of the church.
But it would also be strange for me to pretend the two stories have nothing to do with each other.
Community Church is where I’ve spent the last six years learning about this.
Almost 500 people now consider themselves part of our volunteer team. I’ve gotten to watch what works, what doesn’t work, what creates unnecessary friction and what helps people take that first step.
Team Fit is one of the things that has grown out of that experience.
It didn’t create our volunteer culture. If anything, our volunteer culture helped create Team Fit.
We’re still learning
I originally built the software for Community Church, before it was called Team Fit and before I had any plans to offer it to other churches. The results were immediate.
Volunteer interest increased by 300%.People started expressing interest in serving at three times the rate they had the year before.
Seeing that made me feel like this was something that should be available to other churches too.
I don’t expect every church to see the exact same results we did. Every church is different. But I do think we’ve found a better way to help people take that first step. When people can explore their options, understand what they’re signing up for and discover where they might fit before they’re asked to commit, saying yes becomes a lot easier.
That’s why I built Team Fit. It helps get the right people in the right places, and it helps us serve the people we’re asking to serve.