Effective Church Communications

Effective Church Communications provides Timeless Strategy and Biblical Inspiration to help churches create communications that fully fulfill the Great Commission

Effective Church Communications provides Timeless Strategy and a Biblical Perspective to help churches create communications that fully fulfill the Great Commission. Our tools constantly change; our task doesn’t; we can help.

Effective Volunteer Recruitment Communications Samples: advice and PDF examples

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Ideas for volunteer ministry
Some churches do an incredible job of recruiting, encouraging and training volunteers and here is an opportunity to learn from them.

Every church needs a committed and enthusiastic team of volunteers if all the ministries and needs of the church are to work as a healthy representative of the Body of Christ.Recruiting that team, training, and keeping them functioning well are some of the major responsibilities of church communicators. Following is some overall advice and then some excellent PDF samples (click on the image for the full PDF download) of volunteer communications. The samples include a fantastic overall volunteer handbook, two volunteer recruitment and job listing booklets and one of the most complete ministry description brochures I've ever seen for church ushers. This is an extremely useful collection of volunteer equipping sample materials.

Advice for creating effective volunteer communication materials

Unfortunately, creating the communications support to keep these ministries functioning well is usually not at the top of any church communicator's list. It isn't nearly as much fun as doing a flyer for the summer picnic or any other primarily design-oriented piece because for volunteer communications to be truly effective requires: [Read more...]

Is your technology destroying your volunteer ministry?

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Volunteering at church
Our churches need lots of volunteers and we need to make sure we make it easy for them to sign up.

Ed. note: I wrote this article in response to massive frustration with an online volunteer sign-up program. I know this holiday season, we need many volunteers for various church events, but we need to be sure we are as inclusive as possible with the tools we use to get our volunteers. I would appreciate your feedback in the comments section and any experiences or recommendations you have.

It always seems like a great idea when someone discovers a software system that will replace having interact with people, such as one that will allow volunteers to sign up online for tasks that need to be done at the church or an event that needs lots of volunteers. But you need to be very careful that the technology that you get to help the church doesn't actually discourage involvement with it.  Let me explain . . . . .

Nothing is totally good or bad, but how it's used

I'm not saying that all software volunteer management programs are bad—there are lots of them available and many of them are loved by the groups that use them. However as with any technology, we have to be careful that our love of technology or the seeming benefits that it has for the church staff doesn't blind our eyes to some of the problems that technology can cause for volunteers. Before I go into specifics dos and don'ts, here is a brief review of why we have volunteer ministries and what it can do.

The reasons for volunteer ministry

In addition to the reality that leaders cannot handle all the demands of ministry by themselves, a healthy volunteer ministry is the Biblical model for how we to do ministry.

Jesus was not a lone preacher and if anyone could have handled a ministry all by himself, the sinless Son of God would qualify, but he didn't go at it alone. He chose 12 disciples and others traveled with him. After Jesus returned to his Father he put us in a Body, his church. He left us his Spirit who gives gifts to the members of his Body for the benefit of the entire church body ("Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good" 1 Cor.12:7). The early church may have had problems in how they worked out working together (1 Corinthians is a case study of this situation), but Paul's advice to them was always founded on ways for them to work together in the local church body with mutual care and peace.

In addition to this overall theological basis for volunteer ministry and that you need warm bodies to get things done, two other practical advantages are worth noting:

One, volunteering is a great way for new members to become permanently connected to the church. If someone starts volunteering in the children's ministry or prayer team or greeting or making coffee, that person will get to know other members of the church and feel they are a part of it. In addition, by trying out different jobs there is a greater chance they will interact with others, learn more, discover their spiritual gifts and overall mature in their faith far more than if they sit in a few Sunday after Sunday.

Two, another often ignored benefit of active volunteer ministries is that they are great ways for people outside the church to become involved in the church. An unchurched person may have no interest in coming to a church service but he or she might be very interested in a day of service to the homeless, giving out gifts to kids whose families can't afford them, a fundraiser for clean water, or to end human trafficking. It's also easier for your members to invite their friends to take part in activities like this.

With all these great benefits of volunteering how do we get people involved?

This is where reality hits idealism. Getting people to volunteer is VERY hard and getting them to follow through on what they promised to do is even harder. A computer program to do the work for you is very appealing. A computer program can be PART of the solution, but here are some cautions in using one:

How to make sure your technology doesn’t destroy your volunteer program

Realize that your technology system won't work for everyone. We must never forget that we live in a transitional time when some people in your church are very tech savvy and some people still do not have computers. In the same way that many churches have both an online newsletter and a print newsletter and realize that they will need to continue both channels of communications for some time, so also you can have a computer sign up program for volunteers, but you must have ways for people to be involved who for some reason can't or won't use the computer to sign up. If you don't, you are effectively shutting out a large pool of volunteers. Not only is that not a wise use of people resources, but it is unkind.

Be realistic about how "easy" your program is for people to use. It might seem easy to you because you got training in how to use it and you were motivated by the dream of how easy this would make your life, but I've yet to see a volunteer program from the user side that was even remotely easy or intuitive to use. To see how it works for your people, ask several members of your congregation, who are different age groups to come in to the church office and without any coaching from you, ask them to sign-up and navigate through your volunteer sign up system. Take notes and then…..

Create training on how to use the system and how it can benefit your church. This won't be easy to do, and you still won't get everyone involved, but it will help. If at all possible, if you have a program like Camtasia where you can demonstrate the program in your voice with your system and your volunteer jobs and you can create training videos for your church—this is a very helpful solution. You could also train team leaders and have them train their teams. Adequate, upbeat training can turn a disliked program into a tool people can't imagine doing without.

Listen to feedback, record it and consider your response. If many people don't like the system and complain about it, ask them for more detailed reasons: what was confusing, what didn't work, what didn't they like about it? Record their answers and in a calm time, pray about how to respond. If people aren't using the program and really dislike it, it can be difficult, but we always must remember we are servants and our technology should also serve our people, not intimidate or frustrate them.

In addition to your technology, try this simple method for volunteer sign-ups

One of the best ways to get people to volunteer for various ministries is to have a form people can fill out, check a box on and sign up that's in the church bulletin.  When the announcement is made about a volunteer need, if all they have to do is take out a form, fill it out and put it into the offering plate, you'll get many more sign-ups. Some churches rotate volunteer position requests on their connection card. Something like this isn't a duplicate of your technology tools or a replacement, you still want to use that because the many in your church will love it—this paper option is part of, to paraphrase a verse, "being all things to all people that we might get some to volunteer."

For more information, advice, a training video and ebooks on successful volunteer ministries in the church, check out these links:

Why and how to revitalize your volunteers before seasonal or special event outreach

https://www.effectivechurchcom.com/2011/09/how-to-revitalize-your-volunteers-before-seasonal-or-special-event-outreach/

Why the 80/20 situation isn’t true for the recruitment and retention of church volunteers

https://www.effectivechurchcom.com/why-the-8020-situation-isnt-true-for-the-recruitment-and-retention-of-church-volunteers/

Effective Volunteer Recruitment Communications Samples: advice and PDF examples

https://www.effectivechurchcom.com/2009/09/effective-volunteer-recruitment-communications/

 

Recruiting volunteers for the holidays–tell people what they don’t know

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Thanks Giving Volunteer Recruitment flyer
This is a copy of a flyer used to recruit volunteers for a Thanksgiving outreach. We need to communicate clearly all we've been planning if we want people to help. Just click on the flyer to download a PDF that is easier to read.

Yvon's note: this is an article from our archives that is worth repeating to encourage you to communicate how we need people to help with holiday events. Following are some practical ways we recruited for a successful sharing and service opportunity at our church.The article below was written when I was in the midst of recruiting and the results were fantastic. LOTS of people got involved, the event was extremely well attended, many helped, and many people were served.

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It is challenging to plan a ministry outreach for any holiday and even more so when we want to recruit volunteers to help with it. Because there are so many things to do for a successful outreach and our minds are preoccupied with the event. It is easy to short-change our congregations in how we communicate to them about what is going on and what we need them to do. People don't know what we need unless we ask specifically.

Here is a flyer we created to remedy that situation

As a very practical example of a way to ask in a specific way that will get the response you need, our Adult Sunday School Class is hosting a Thanksgiving outreach dinner. I've been working on it for some time and for it to be successful we need many in the class to be involved. Though they have known we are doing this for some time--we just got the final approval of the location last week. I needed to let the class know and to let them know what we needed  them to do.

My first idea was to simply do a PowerPoint Slide and announce it, but I knew that wasn't enough. I reminded myself of what I constantly try to teach that those of us who work and plan ministry events must always remember that the people we want to involve haven't been working on it as we have; they haven't been thinking and praying about it for as long as we have. They can't read our minds.

People need a tangible, paper, printed reminder of what we are doing and what we want them to do. Once the print piece is produced, we can put it on our information table for those who might have missed the first announcement and remind people about it in subsequent weeks. It can also be posted on the website and sent out in church emails.

We have to clearly share our vision and requests

We have a lot going on, we want people to do a number of things. Though in the coming weeks I will have specific task lists and sign-up sheets I wanted to give people a flyer that specifically told them:

  • what was going on
  • basic information
  • our goals
  • prayer requests
  • what we needed them to do

The flyer illustrated here is what I came up with. The information is what is most important here and it was well-received.

It seems like we never have the time to put together things like this, but they are vitally important for as many people as possible to be involved in ministry events and outreach.

For the longer article that discusses why we decided to do this kind of outreach, CLICK HERE.

 

 

Church Communicator’s review of Six Strategies for Effective Church Communications

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Six Strategies BookI try very hard to create materials that are useful to all church communicators. I do pour heart, soul, and many prayers into them and I send them off (typos and all) trusting God that they make sense and are useful.

It is wonderful to get positive feedback from people and following is a review of Six Strategies For Effective Church Communicators. I'm passing it along because I think the author covers many of the major points of the book well.

Please if you have comments, do send them to me and please put them in the comment sections of the books and even more on my books on amazon CLICK HERE to go to that link. Your opinion is what is so important--I don't do these to talk to myself, but to serve all of you as you create communications that will help your churches fully fulfill the Great Commission.

I don't do these to talk to myself, but to serve all of you as youelp your churches fully fulfill the Great Commission.

Email review of Six Strategies of Effective Church Communications

The Six Strategies are written in a concise style and makes for quick
reading... It should be very useful to help "train" those involved with PR
and church communications (the style should make it easier to get those who
don't like to read, to at least skim through the book).

I agree wholeheartedly with all the observations, insights, strategies and
advice you give, and especially relate to, and identify with, your thoughts
that there are too many media channels to leave to one individual to
effectively communicate with, and that there should be a "communications
team" where individuals from the same "Body" work on different areas
according to their areas of familiarity.  Also, that a congregation's
communications should reflect who they are and not try to convey an image
that does not match who they are.

As I am in the printing business, I am "painfully aware" of the enormous and
fast changes happening in communications and the multitude of "channels"
that are appearing and evolving.

[ I also notice you used some expressions from the OIKOS book (great
recommendation as well... I read it, although I don't agree with all the
content, but the basic message matches what I was taught in a "Master's
Plan" bible study from the 1980s.) ]
. . . . .
Again, thank you, thank you, thank you, for what you've assembled and
written in this book.  I give this a big thumbs up!  You put into easy to
follow words, thoughts that I have had for the past few years.  Even the
bible passages caused me to smile, as I just completed working on quite a
number of them in the last few weeks for the liturgical scripture readings
in our PowerPoint for worship.

In my opinion, the only thing needed to complement the strategies of the
book is a bit more explanation of the Five Steps so readers remember them
better as they read references to The Five Steps in the strategies. But I
guess I can look forward to that in the book you will publish soon: "The
Five Steps of Effective Church Communications and Marketing".

from EW, Canada

If you want a copy of  The Six Strategies of Effective Church Communication, CLICK HERE.

Recruiting Volunteers—Why and How

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Gayle Hilligoss Picture
Article by Gayle Hilligoss

Ed.note: Volunteers are often essential if you want to get done the amount of communications needed for all the ministries in a church. The primary ministry assistant usually has more than enough projects in addition to the primary communication work (bulletin, newsletter, website) of the church to keep her very busy. If the various ministries of the church including children's, men's, women's, mission's, singles', etc., are going to get all the needed communications done, the primary ministry assistant will need help. Gayle Hilligoss as usual has some wise and very practical advice on recruiting and working with volunteers.

 

Want to start a lively dialogue among ministry assistants? Bring up the subject of volunteers. After a candid discussion, those present at a seminar eventually did agree that selecting and training volunteers can:

• multiply your time and productivity
• require an investment of time and energy
• be a blessing—or not!

Applied to the church, the Pareto Principle or 80/20 Rule suggests 80 percent of work is done by 20 percent of the members. A lot of office professionals would like to locate a few people beyond that significant 20 percent and put them to work. In many churches budgets are tight, programs are expanding, and both paid and volunteer workers are overextended. People are busy. Why should they want to handle the office tasks you’d like to give away?

Research suggests people volunteer because they want to:

• share their time and resources
• provide something someone needs
• experience a sense of accomplishment
• feel more a part of the community
• gain experience at a skill
• contribute a skill or knowledge
• heal from a personal loss
• contribute to positive actions
• have influence on how things are done

Understanding motivation helps you build effective volunteer ministries which provide people opportunities to give, to share, and to grow. Everybody wins. Including you.

Those who have successfully recruited and worked with volunteers say a satisfactory experience depends on following proven basics.

Recruit selectively

We call them volunteers, but recruits is more accurate. Not to stumble over terminology, recruit your volunteers. Instead of putting out a blanket SOS, ask specific people to do specific jobs. Being a successful recruiter takes time and effort, but the results are worthwhile. Not only will you gain the help you need, the enlistees benefit from the experience as well.

Start by making a list of jobs you want to delegate. Be specific about what each job entails.

Make a list of possible helpers whose talents and personality make a good match to the tasks. Think beyond the people who already do everything. Consider those whose talents are not presently being utilized at the church. In every church there are individuals, some who are already busy individuals, who are willing and even eager to pitch in.

Write, call, or visit each prospective helper. Make your request and explain the task.

The key to recruiting these people is to let them know you have worthwhile tasks to do and their expertise is needed. People resent being asked to do simple busy work; likewise, no one enjoys being expected to perform far beyond his or her abilities.

Define expectations

Most recruiters do a good job of explaining what needs to be done. Fewer take the equally important step of identifying standards of performance. People perform better when goals are clear and specific; take time to define the quality of work you require.

For all but the most simple jobs, provide written instructions. Include in this job description the scope of the volunteer’s authority and to whom she is answerable. People need to know up front the criteria for excellence.

Ask for a short term commitment

Proceed cautiously. Start with a request for a single project. Or gain a commitment for a week or two. If the arrangement works well, you can ask for a repeat. If not, neither of you will be put in an awkward position to end it. Many longtime assistants suggest no volunteer, regardless of reputation or experience, should be recruited for more than a year at a time.

Provide guidance

Once your recruit has accepted, provide training depending on the complexity of the job. Don’t micro-manage, but do provide adequate instruction on how the job is to be done satisfactorily.

Be prepared to spend some time getting your recruit up to speed. She’s seen the written description, now show her how the job should be done. This is no time to be nonchalant. If you take training time lightly, you send the message this is not so important after all. Once any questions are answered, let the worker take over. Assure her you are available if needed.

Monitor progress

Check back in 15 minutes or so to see how things are going. Answer any questions. If there are problems, make course corrections right away.

Don’t overdo, but do check periodically as the project progresses. Observe what has been done since you last touched base. Ask the recruit to show progress made; discuss any changes to be made.

At the end of the task, spend a few minutes with your worker talking about the experience. Ask what she learned about the job, both positive and negative. Find out if there were any surprises and how she handled them.

An effective recruiter can learn a great deal about workers from this kind of feedback: how suited they are for the job, how they respond to suggestions, their ability to give and take directions, their work ethic, and more. Just as important, this is your opportunity to congratulate workers for good decisions, offer optional solutions, and ask for ideas on how the process might be improved. Good ideas often come from people looking at tasks with a fresh view.

Be pleasant, brief, and kind. You want your volunteers to succeed at their tasks.

Express appreciation

Appreciation and recognition are vital to a successful volunteer program. Churches use scores of devices to encourage esprit de corps: lunches, banquets, day trips, newsletter honor rolls, even a website devoted to volunteers and their activities.

Be as plain or as fancy as you like, have fun with it, and just be sure you use the magic words, thank you. Show volunteers they are valuable members of your church office team. Let them know the work they do is important to the success of the ministry. Set the example by your caring attitude, your positive spirit, your effectiveness.

Some churches provide attractive shirts for their volunteers; others use badges or baseball hats imprinted with a distinctive logo to identify their volunteer corps. Many honor their workers with certificates. These little extras not only show appreciation, they encourage team spirit.

An effective way to enlist more volunteers is to make heroes of the ones already serving.

Be realistic

Even though you do your best to choose the right person, equip each volunteer to do his or her best, and sincerely show your appreciation—still, this person is not a paid staff member and will likely operate with a different agenda. Be aware that some volunteers take commitment more seriously than others; don’t be dismayed if a volunteer turns out to be less than reliable.

Nevertheless, expect a good experience. Most of the time that is exactly what volunteers deliver!