This week I am sharing Christmas ideas for Children's Ministry. Idea #4 is Christmas Volunteers. Most churches have additional services at Christmas time. This usually means you will need extra volunteers in Children's Ministry. This provides you with a great opportunity to enlist new volunteers.
Here's a strategy that we have had good success with.
- 4 weeks out begin asking people for a one-time serve for Christmas services. Normally I do not recommend doing church-wide asks in the adult service. But Christmas and Easter are the exceptions. If you present it as a church-wide push for people to step up and help at a Christmas service, you will usually get good response. Present all church ministries together when doing this. This should be in addition to the best way to enlist volunteers...one-on-one asks. You will need to do both to be the most effective.
- Enlist with vision instead of need. Explain to potential volunteers that many families will try out "church" at Christmas time who otherwise would not attend. By volunteering, they are playing a key role in reaching families for Christ.
- Place the new volunteers with your key, current volunteers when they serve. See this post for more details on how to effectively do this.
- Give each person that volunteered a handwritten thank you note and small gift for serving.
- After Christmas, personally invite the people who served for the first time to come back and join the team on a regular basis. We normally get a 60-70% return rate.
Posted by Dale Hudson
