Invite and Invest
How do you invite your members to serve/volunteer at your church or organization? And once they do begin to serve, how are you investing in them?
Inviting and investing are key components to getting people into serving and keeping them around. Without an invitation, who is going to know what is going on and when/where to show up? And if you don't invest in those who do show up, they are A LOT less likely to stick around or come back.
Here at Saddleback Church we use all sorts of media formats to invite; web, print, dvd's, emails, and the old fashioned phone calls! Some of the ways we invest in them are: hand-written thank you cards, personal emails, personal phone calls, we take people out to coffee or lunch, and we have an annual WOW Awards show. (more about WOW in a future post)
What are you doing to invite and invest in your members?
Inviting and investing are key components to getting people into serving and keeping them around. Without an invitation, who is going to know what is going on and when/where to show up? And if you don't invest in those who do show up, they are A LOT less likely to stick around or come back.
Here at Saddleback Church we use all sorts of media formats to invite; web, print, dvd's, emails, and the old fashioned phone calls! Some of the ways we invest in them are: hand-written thank you cards, personal emails, personal phone calls, we take people out to coffee or lunch, and we have an annual WOW Awards show. (more about WOW in a future post)
What are you doing to invite and invest in your members?
One of our shepherds goes to the home of the new member with an involvment form in hand. They leave with the form filled out. The various gifts indicated on the form are recorded and the appropriate deacons are contacted about the new members who are gifted in their area. The deacons are encouraged to get the new member involved within a couple of weeks.
Posted by
dagwud |
8:29 PM
I am Director of a mid-sized Youth Ministry in Northern Virginia.
To invite folks, we do from time to time have large-scale publicity runs at Church (a video promo, and we always have Volunteer info packets and applications at our Youth Ministry table), but what we've found to be most effective is the one-on-one invitation to come observe a Youth Ministry event. Then we go from there.
As for Investment, we have once a month Leader Trainings/Gatherings, an annual Leaders Retreat, an Annual Appreciation Dinner, and we assign each Volunteer Leader to a paid Staffer and make sure that each Volunteer receives some kind of "care" contact twice a month--phone call, handwritten note, check-in face-to-face, etc.
(akielsmeier-jones [at] trurochurch [dot] org)
Posted by
Abram & Sarah |
1:56 PM
I am a Children's & Youth Worker in a medium sized church in the UK. We do some stuff from up the front at services, and church meetings. Our experience is that although it gets people thinking they don't take it further. So we spend time trying to invest on people visiting members to encourage them in a deeper involvement. That generally seems to work for us.
In my previous church we regularly did a survey during the main service of giftings so that we could keep a database of peoples giftings, equipment, and talents.
Posted by
Chris |
1:57 AM
I'm the pastor of a small to midsize church with a part-time worship leader and lots of volunteers. I promote various ministry opportunities using our email newsletter, bulletin, Sunday pre-service slides. Usually the actual invitation to service is done one on one. I invest in volunteers through our weekly TAG (Thanks Appreciation Gratitude) article in the newsletter and through my blog.
Rick Johnson
pastorrickj@sbcglobal.net
Posted by
Rick Johnson |
4:48 PM
My church recently did a series on evangelism and all during the series we told people that the last week of the series would be an intentionally evangelistic message. We encouraged people to invite friends and gave them stacks of invitation cards to do so. Several people accepted Christ in this special service.
Posted by
Donnie |
9:56 PM
Sorry, Donnie again - donnie at liferoads.org
Posted by
Donnie |
9:58 PM