Blog | 5 Tips for Improving Church Volunteer Meetings
5 Tips for Improving Church Volunteer Meetings
Every pastor understands that meeting with their teams is absolutely crucial. But often times, the meetings happen between leadership staff and other employees while neglecting volunteer teams entirely. The truth is, volunteers often provide just as much value as the employees of a church, and attempting to run a ministry without them would be nearly impossible. That’s why it’s crucial to devote time to meeting with volunteers – in teams or individually – to keep them engaged, excited about the church’s mission, encouraged, and growing.
5 Tips: Improving Church Volunteer Meetings
Meeting with volunteers shouldn’t feel like a “checkbox item”. Church volunteer meetings can be largely beneficial – both for you and the volunteers. Our experience both in the church and through detailed research has revealed 5 hugely impactful strategies for making church volunteer meetings effective, so here they are!
1) Frequency
Volunteers are usually quite committed to their roles, but also, understand that they are sacrificing their time to be there. Volunteers don’t need to be constantly updated and “in the loop” as much as employees, but can’t be neglected entirely.
We recommend that you meet with volunteers (one on one in small churches, or as groups in larger churches) about once every two months. This allows you to keep them engaged, let them know you recognize and care for them and their commitment to leading the church, but keeps them from feeling like they are wasting their time.
2) Email and Text Updates
Bouncing off the last point, volunteers still need to feel as though they are a part of the loop. But unlike employees who are around all day, volunteers are seldomly in an easy place of contact. For that reason, we recommend keeping volunteer groups in the loop through email or text updates. Whether it’s group texts, mass emails, or automated email campaigns through softwares like MailChimp or Constant Contact, giving your volunteers continuous updates through text and email can be hugely effective for building an informed team and culture of engagement.
3) Build a Format
Volunteer meetings are meant to be direct, concise, helpful, and productive. But you also don’t want them to be bland. Work on coming up with a great format that’s engaging and beneficial for everyone! Decide on a length so you don’t drastically run over – if you tell everyone it’ll be an hour, don’t babble on for two.
4) Training Tips
People love to improve, and there’s no better place to help grow your team than during volunteer meetings. Afterall, you probably hardly get to talk with them during Sunday mornings. Whatever the format of your meeting is, make sure you include a time to communicate helpful tips for their respective area. Whether it’s about communication, timing, or a slew of other things, offer genuinely helpful advice that they can put into practice the next week.
5) Meeting Location
Believe it or not, where you meet will drastically impact the attitude of everyone. Depending on the size of your volunteer teams, coffee shops or your own house are great places to host meetings. No one wants to show up to a mandatory meeting and hear a boring speech in a boring building… Sorry. We hate to say it, but atmosphere directly influences peoples’ attitude.
Plan ahead on this one! If you can, prepare some food for everyone or cover a round of coffees. Make people feel comfortable and excited to talk about the ministries they’re involved in!
In Summary
Volunteer meetings can be massively beneficial. They should never feel like a chore. Do make them more affective, make sure you are meeting in a comfortable and, in some way, “fun” location. Whether you host at your home or a coffee shop, the atmosphere can massively impact everyone’s attitude towards the meeting. Offer genuinely helpful and actionable training tips for each volunteer’s respective areas, and keep the entire meeting following along a format to keep it from running long or getting mundane. Finally, keep everyone in the loop on important pieces through email/text updates and bi-monthly in-person meetings. We hope these help you and your team to host more effective and beneficial volunteer meetings this year!
About the Author
Chris Fleming is a professional musician from Minneapolis, MN who has played with artists such as Kari Jobe, TAYA, Aodhan King, and Jason Gray. He is actively involved with the CCM scene and has contributed as a drummer, music director, song writer, and producer for various worship artists and churches locally and nationally. Chris is the Motion Designer at Motion Worship, helping to create motion background collections and countdowns for our subscribers.