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
2 comments:
I like the small gift idea. Though my idea of a lottery ticket was shot down (hahahaha), on holiday weekends we know people make an extra sacrifice to serve. We had a lady in our church that made chocolate treats, and would buy one for each volunteer (on Easter, Christmas, etc). We'd get them a couple of days ahead of time, and pass it out during / after the service.
Your second point, "Enlist with vision instead of need", is a good one. It is always important to remember the purpose of serving others. When we keep the vision of reaching precious souls for Christ in mind, service becomes a hope-inspired joy instead of a duty-inspired drudgery. :)
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