Shoulder Tapping
One of the things I always seemed to get upset over in youth ministry and what other department leaders did as well is that our Sr. Pastor would not get up and tell everyone they needed to volunteer…regularly.
We felt people would do it if “he” would just say it. Boy, how we had it mostly wrong. I mean some people will volunteer because the Pastor says to but most people will volunteer and be loyal to your team because you build relationships with them.
Here are a few ways the leadership teams/departments can help each other in recruiting:
- Meet and get to know others – I used to position myself at one of the exits after every Sunday morning service. My goal was to shake hands and thank everyone for coming and get to know them some.
- Build a relationship with them – My goal each week was to get to know those that came so I could help them find their place.
- Ask them where they would feel best serving – Eventually I would then ask them either where they served or what would they be interested in.
- Point them in the right direction – If they were interested in serving in a certain area I would connect them with the right team member.
Ultimately, it never failed…those people on my team always came through the connections and relationships we built each week.
Jason,
So true. I have discovered this to be true in our short fourteen month lifespan. I guess Maxwell was right, leadership is relationship.
I agree that’s a huge start! But I also think we need to be more intentional about the whole process. It’s more than finding volunteers, it’s calling people to ministry and so requires a lot more work! Drats….
It means having ministry descriptions, knowing the gifts and interests of those in the “pool” of possibilities, using a team of people to pray over names and consider the best matches, and listening to God’s whisperings (or shoutings) about best matches. And then it’s also being intentional about the “ask.” Nothing on the fly, no immediate decisions needed, giving them time to pray about it and ask others for their input. When you have faith in this whole biblically-modeled process of calling people to serve in the kingdom…it works! I’ve witnessed it time and time again. It doesn’t mean that every answer will be a “yes” but it means that every answer will be a prayerful and careful consideration.
This is something I discussed with the Sr pastor yesterday. We are a church plant that is about 6 months old, so we are still developing our core. At this point we have the majority of the attenders that are willing to let the pastoral team/families do the work. We get some occasional help, but not where it should be at this point IMO. Most of them have been on board from the beginning, but we have a few that have just started in January. I have been trying to catch a few of them when I can just to get an opinion on a project..brainstorm with them..something that will hopefully peak an interest. So far we aren’t seeing the results, but I think we are making the connections. Just this week one of the members opened up a little more about his life, so I am hoping it gets the snowball going down the hill soon. Any suggestions on church planting, and getting the attenders more involved? What has worked/doesn’t work, etc?
I disagree with some peoples views of this. Yes the will of God is important and we need to pray about things. However I think we need to just put people in place and let God do his work. While we spend our time praying over people who are “considering” the possibility of serving, there are others dying and going to hell. It is good to think things out, however. We can think things out to a point where we come up with lots of good excuses. In the book of Mathew Jesus told Simon and Andrew “follow me and become fishers of men”. He did not say, hey if you feel you have the time, I’d like you to follow me. Could you pray about it and get back to me. We need to ready ourselves and all those around us to audaciously run head first into this war at hand.
I’m ready Richard…let run!!!!