RELEVANT CHILDREN'S MINISTRY

Easter is just around the corner and for most churches this means extra services, lots of guests and all the members showing up on the same day.  And in many cases, you're also having an Easter egg hunt or other special event on top of it all.  This means you need extra volunteers to adequately care for all the kids and families who will be there.  This can be challenging since many people want to be free to spend the day with their family unhindered.

But what can be a volunteer challenge can also be one of the greatest new volunteer enlistment opportunities of the year.  If you have the right strategy in place, you can get lots of new volunteers this Easter.  Here's how to do it.

Although I normally discourage using mass volunteer appeals from the pulpit, Easter is one of the times it can work very well.  Here's how to approach it.

The Pastor or another staff member should get up and remind the congregation that Easter is coming.  Share the vision of what a great opportunity it will be to reach new people for Christ and reach out to those who only occasionally attend.  But in order for it to be effective, the church needs many people who have never served, to step up and serve one time at Easter.  Remember, you're simply asking for a one-time commitment.  Give people the opportunity to then immediately sign-up to serve by using a response card or texting to a designated number or stopping by a booth, etc.

Next steps...

• Take great care of the one-time Easter volunteers.  Communicate with them.  Give them clear instructions.  Make it easy for them to sign in.  Feed them.  Treat them like royalty.

• Place the one-time Easter volunteers with your rock star volunteers.  In other words, place them with your best, most enthusiastic, committed volunteers.  You want their energy, excitement and vision to rub off on the one-time volunteers.

• Put your one-time serve volunteers in roles that will make it easy for them to succeed and have a great experience.  An example would be placing an Easter volunteer as a greeter or helping hide eggs rather than shoving them in a room with 30 preschoolers.  

• The week after they serve, contact them and ask if they would like to join your team on a regular basis.  If you've given them a great first serving experience, I've had as high as 70-80% of the people decide to join the team on a regular basis.  

Let me give you a real-time example to show you this is not just theory.  A few years ago, we invited people to serve one time in an event we were having.  The week after the event, we divided up the names of the people who had served for the first time and begin calling them.  One of names on my list was a couple named Charles and Jessica.  I called and asked if I could meet with them about joining our team on a regular basis.  Long story short, they began serving on a regular basis.  Fast forward a few years and now they are both on staff and are making a huge impact.  And it all started from a one-time ask to serve at a special event.

You can get this and more proven strategies for building a great volunteer team in my new book "The Formula for Building Great Volunteer Teams."  It is available in both print and ebook format at this link.