You’ll never have enough money to hire enough staff to accomplish your ministry vision. Because of that, building teams and engaging volunteers has to be a priority for every ministry.

Here’s a quick self-assessment. I know of several churches ranging from hundreds to thousands who have as many as 50 to 60 percent of their adults engaged in volunteer ministry. How is your church doing? What if you could significantly increase the number of people serving in ministry?

One of the consulting services I provide to churches responds to this very need. I’ve developed a strategy to help churches increase volunteer engagement. I’d love to work with you and your church to increase the number of people serving others.

As part of that strategy, I’m also available to teach in your Sunday services. Here’s a recent message I taught at Radiant Church in Phoenix on this topic. It was focused on teaching biblical principles about God’s plan for our lives. Part of that plan is for us to use the gifts God gives us to serve other people. Check out the video below.

Are you interested in increasing the number of volunteers in your church? If so, contact me so we can begin to talk about potential next steps.

Because of what I do, I get to sit in many different services in many different churches. I’m surprised at how very little connection I typically see between the various elements of the services in many churches. It’s as if there was no planning — I’m guessing everyone prepared their portion of the service separately. The message stands alone. The worship stands alone. The announcements stand alone. The videos stand alone. The special music stands alone.

On the other hand, there are churches that understand the value of communicating one message throughout the entire service. Every element is connected. It flows from beginning to end. In fact, if you were to pull out a particular element on its own, you may ask why would a church include that in a service? But, in the context of the entire service, it helps communicate a powerful message. This video is a good illustration of this.

Last week at the East Paulding location of West Ridge Church, the band played “Black Dress” by The Normals. It’s a song about adultery. It’s accompanied by a video that visually captures a man wrestling with sexual temptation. On their own, either one of these elements would be completely inappropriate for a worship service. In combination with everything else including the Bible teaching that follows, though, it provided the foundation for the one message that was communicated in the service. Check out the video:

Among other things, let me highlight…

• Chris Fenner did an amazing job with the video. He’s incredibly talented. We’re grateful to have him on our team.
• The video shares an unfortunate trend we’re seeing: People are putting their marriages at risk by engaging past relationships through Facebook. It’s a real life issue that needs to be addressed.
• Paul Richardson immediately comes out to connect the message of the song and video with the message he’s teaching — it’s the same message.

I love the intentionality of creative arts programming like this. We’re fortunate to have many of these resources in-house at West Ridge to accomplish this. However, there are many resources available so that churches of any size can integrate every element with the one message in a service.

Are you being intentional about communicating one message through your entire service? This article on 10 Ways to Improve Series Planning may help you think about how you can improve your planning to improve this aspect of your services.

The following was written by Joseph Sangl, President & CEO of Injoy Stewardship Solutions.

As a church leader, you are acutely aware that the God-given mission and vision costs money.  Church leaders must raise the money for the key next steps toward their God-given mission and vision. But let’s face it, most church leaders haven’t received much financial management training or guidance on how to talk to people about money.  Pastors become pastors to help people learn about and experience the life-changing message of Jesus.  As the church reaches more people, there is suddenly a need to take a big next step to be able to serve all of the people that are being ministered to – and it costs money – BIG money.

When faced with this challenge, here are six key questions to ask yourself and your leadership team:

1. Is this truly a God-given vision?
2. Is the next step crisp and clear?
3. How much will the next step cost?
4. How far do we need to go with this step?
5. How fast do we need to get there?
6. Are the leaders in my church on board?

As a leader, these questions can serve you very well in understanding the current environment, but one additional question to ask yourself is: “Do I want my church members to just participate in a fundraiser, or should this be a spiritual journey that leads to life transformation?”

I don’t know about you, but there’s nothing as incredible as a fully funded vision that leads to life transformation!  That’s exactly what Injoy Stewardship Solutions is all about – helping leaders fully fund their vision while lives are transformed as a result of engaging in an effective stewardship journey — one based upon the blueprint of the Bible.

Joe and his team at Injoy would love to talk with you about the next big financial steps you are facing at your church.  Share your project with them below and a member of the Injoy team will respond ASAP to see how we can help you move the dream to reality!

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This is a sponsored post from Injoy Stewardship Solutions, one of my ministry partners on TonyMorganLive.com.

Big news today! We’re launching the second eBook in the Leisure Suit series. This one is called Hanging Up the Leisure Suit: How to Get Unstuck. Among other things, this resource includes strategies and practical steps for:

• making the necessary changes to get different results
• bridging the gap between vision and execution
• following God’s blueprint for fulfilling his purposes
• avoiding over-reliance on teaching to produce change, and
• creating healthy systems in your church

Like my previous eBooks, this one is FREE. (You can share it with your teammates.) It’s short. (You won’t have to invest much time reading it.) It includes exercises and discussion questions. (My goal is for you to have healthy conversations that lead to positive change.) And, you’ll get to start those conversations immediately–no need to visit the bookstore or wait for the Amazon box to show up on your doorstep. (Do people still read hardback books?)

Again, I’m grateful for the partnership with Church Community Builder. Because of their very generous contribution to Engage Burkina, this entire series will be delivered to you for free.

My primary mission in life is to help leaders and churches have a bigger impact. I don’t want you to be stuck. I’m praying this eBook helps you take your next steps in your leadership and in your ministry.

And don’t be stingy. Share this with a friend so they can experience it too.

By Nick Blevins, contributing writer

Nick Blevins

I get to meet with a local network of ministry leaders a few times a year. We talk about everything related to ministry as we share ideas and encourage one another. Every time we ask for topics to discuss, there is one that always comes up the most.

It’s finding volunteers.

People in our network consistently ask each other what they do to recruit volunteers. When asking that question, it seems as though everyone is looking for that perfect resource or idea that would cause people to step up in droves to volunteer. What we often miss is all of the other things in our churches that are negatively affecting volunteerism. Those other things could be a barrier to everything else we do to recruit volunteers. Here are some questions to ask when figuring out if something else is negatively influencing volunteering.

1. Are our mission and vision clear and compelling? A clear mission and compelling vision will motivate people toward action or help them see how they don’t fit. A lack of clarity breeds confusion, which leads to inactivity.
2. Do most people know our strategy? If they don’t know the plan, it’s harder for them to see where they fit in.
3. How many volunteers would it take to staff every role on every team and ministry? This would take some work to figure out but it’s worth it. If it would require more than 60% of the adults you’re reaching, you may be doing too much. Few churches have 60% of their adults serving.
4. What is our ratio of full-time equivalent staff to attenders? Leaning too heavily on staff can hurt volunteering. Tony recommends a ratio of 1:100 which will help churches empower volunteers.
5. Is our staff made up of doers or leaders? The staff needs to be both, but staff who lean toward doing everything themselves will be a barrier to volunteering. (more…)

“Purists are passionate, but their passion will build boundaries that stifle, strangle and eventually kill off innovation.” -Joshua Blankenship

Go read the rest of Joshua’s insightful article. Change is hard. But change is necessary.

Research shows that 84% of church members engaged in a small group/class stay at the church for at least five years. In fact, the number one reason the formerly unchurched stay active in the church is based on ministry involvement.

In an earlier post, we discussed how to get people from Point A (inactive) to Point B (engaged).

The question now is how to get someone from Point B (engaged) to Point C (participating/serving). Numbers don’t lie. They show that someone who is not only participating, but actively serving is among the happiest in the church.

Combining several of the main drawing factors to a church, and integrating it with the way our culture communicates, a social media driven Inreach Site (member dashboard) can truly help your visitors and members get from Point B to Point C.

• Communicate through social media effectively. People spend more than 5.5 hours a day, on average, engaged in social media. Why not utilize the language our culture is speaking to engage them?  Allowing your active members, staff and leadership to easily share all sorts of items from their member dashboard opens the door to increased guest invites and member participation to small groups, special events, volunteer opportunities and more.
• Allow visitors to connect with the pastor. #1 reason the unchurched choose to attend a church is based on the pastor/preaching.  With an integrated feed of your sermon audio/video into the member dashboard, your visitors and members can easily access the most recent media items uploaded to your website.
• Facilitate engagement through prayer. 82% of adults and 89% of teenagers pray in a normal week.  Utilizing the Prayer Wall, which is accessible through the member dashboard or the church website and is moderated by the website administrator, engaging visitors and members is much easier when you incorporate the power of prayer into relationships.
• Increase participation in small groups.  As mentioned earlier in the post, 84% of church members engaged in a small group/class stay at the church for at least five years.  Equipping other small group attendees to personally invite others via Facebook and Twitter makes small group integration organic and natural.

If you long for an environment of committed, like-minded believers that have everything in common as the church in the book of Acts is modeled, give IgniteCRM and its Inreach Site a try.  You can receive a free consultation from a faithHighway representative to learn more about the Inreach Site (member dashboard) and associated CRM (church relationship management) web-based software.

Call 877.703.2484 and press 2 or visit our website to talk to an expert.

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This is a sponsored post from faithHighway, one of my ministry partners on TonyMorganLive.com.

“There’s nothing wrong with a plan, but remember Von Moltke’s famous dictum that no plan survives first contact with the enemy. The danger is a plan that seduces us into thinking failure is impossible and adaptation is unnecessary – a kind of ‘Titanic’ plan, unsinkable (until it hits the iceberg).” –Tim Harford from Adapt: Why Success Always Starts With Failure

In the Church, we tend to start new programs, but it’s very difficult for us to end programs. Ministries and events become traditions. We worship the traditions. We’re unable to stop anything because at least one person may be helped by what we’re doing. We’re unable to stop anything because at least one person loves doing the ministry or event.

What would happen if the Church started doing less, but we encouraged people to do more outside the Church? What would happen if churches focused on what God called them to do, and empowered people to do what God calls them to do?

The challenge, of course, is that people hear God telling them to do something and they assume their church should also embrace that vision. We need to get in the practice of encouraging people to obey God’s prompting in their lives. They need to be challenged to go do it. Feed the hungry. Provide the place to sleep. Give the money. Serve those that need help. Counsel your neighbor. If we wait for that to become a church ministry or event, it may not get done. And, more important, people may be missing out on the life change that God was hoping would happen.

(more…)

Yesterday I was reading about a leadership change at Mars Hill Church in Seattle. It included this great observation from Mark Driscoll:

“Church size affects nearly every aspect of a church; bigger churches are not simply larger versions of smaller churches, but rather very different organizations.”

In my church consulting experiences, I see this all the time. Churches cling to what worked in the past assuming that it will bring success in the future. That rarely happens. In order to sustain growth and health, churches need to change.

Because churches are unwilling to give up on what worked for them in the past, here’s what I see:

1. Churches get pulled in many different directions and lack a unified purpose, even though the Bible reminds us “There should be no division in the body.”
2. Churches hold on to their structure, even though Scripture tells us “New wine calls for new wineskins.”
3. Churches don’t define and implement strategies to accomplish God’s vision, even though the Proverbs tell us “Good planning and hard work lead to prosperity.”
4. Churches don’t embrace new leadership, even though God’s Word instructs us to find capable people and “Appoint them as leaders over groups of one thousand, one hundred, fifty, and ten.”
5. Churches fail to establish systems, even though we know “God is not a God of disorder.”
6. Churches don’t prepare financially for the future, even though Jesus told us to “First sit down and estimate the cost.”
7. Churches don’t welcome counsel from people with experience, even though we’re reminded that “Fools think their own way is right, but the wise listen to others.”

I could go on and on, but I think you get my point. We can’t become the church God intends for us to be if we’re unwilling to become the church God intends for us to be.

For more reading on this topic, check out my newest eBook The Leisure Suit Trap: 8 Reasons Your Church is Stuck.

A few months ago, I was the visitor. Being on leadership at a church myself, I wasn’t seeking regular attendance there. I was simply attending an event they hosted so my 3 year old could have a new, fun summer experience.

Unfortunately, an obvious lack of organization made the event awkward and uncomfortable. I didn’t know where to take him in the building. It was chaotic and…I didn’t feel welcomed.

It reminded me of one statistic I had heard recently, “only 10% of first time visitors end up becoming regular attendees.”

With only 2% of Christians inviting a non-believer to church any given year, there’s a big chance that most visitors to your church aren’t going to know anyone.

Here’s the upside. The likelihood of a first time guest becoming a member increases to 50% when they are invited to a small group.

It’s been proven that almost 90% of guests will return to a church, if someone follows up with them on the same day as their visit; that percentage drops to 60% if you wait just 24 hours.

Unfortunately, many churches don’t have an effective way to manage and follow up with visitors in 24 hours, much less at all. We need to get people from Point A (inactive) to Point B (engaged). To do this, we need a process in place and to communicate it often.

Ask yourself these questions as you consider your visitor connection process: