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.

Why upbeat interviews work better than desperate pleas for recruiting volunteers

By Leave a Comment

There are more effective ways to recruit volunteers
There are more effective ways to recruit volunteers--and the interview video described here is an effective one.

Desperation isn't pretty in volunteer requests. If you feel like shutting down the children's ministry if new people don't sign up or closing the bathrooms on Sunday morning if no one helps the facilities team—you probably won't get sign-ups by sharing your frustration.

Instead off desperate pleas, try this……

Use interviews with current volunteers

Far better than desperate pleading are positive testimonies from people who are doing the ministry you want to recruit in. If at all possible, both video them and write-up what they have to say. You can then take this material and put it into a variety of communication channels: show them at church, put them online, email them to interested potential volunteers, and use the material in bulletins, newsletters, and brochures.

Note here: you don't need to be super-serious in your interview, but don't go for funny, stupid, and trivial questions and answers. Many of the jobs at the church might seem small, but they are jobs that can impact how a soul spends eternity. And some of the jobs may not be "fun" to serve in faithfully week after week. Honor the work of volunteers in how you recruit people to serve in the work of ministry.

A few more preliminary tips: [Read more...]

Effective Volunteer Recruitment Communications Samples: advice and PDF examples

By Leave a Comment

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...]

Resource collection: How to effectively recruit the volunteers you need for fall outreach and always

By Leave a Comment

With all the fantastic opportunities fall provides for church outreach, no doubt your church calendar is filling up. But as your calendar fills, your worries also grow as you wonder how you will ever staff all the events. Will you get enough volunteers? Or will you be so tired as the holiday season approaches you can barely drag yourself through it?

Be encouraged! I've put together a number of resources for you that will help you recruit all the volunteers you need. Some are free for everyone, a number of them are for Effective Church Communication members only--and these are so useful, the ones offered this week alone are reason enough to join! Before we talk about the specifics of recruiting volunteers, I'd encourage you to consider this....

Providing help isn't the most important reason to work hard to get church volunteers

Recruiting volunteers is an extremely important ministry in the church, that's true. You may have primarily thought about recruiting volunteers primarily as something you needed to do so you'd have enough people to help at your upcoming event. But it is so much more than that.

As Christians, we know that one day we will stand before Jesus to be evaluated on the work we've done while we are here on earth (2 Cor. 5:10, 1 Cor. 3:8-15). We remember how the Apostle Paul reminded the Ephesians in Eph. 2:10 that they were created to do good works. In reality, when we make it possible for people to volunteer, we are helping them grow to spiritual maturity and to do the works Jesus wants them to do.

Though we may have lofty and true spiritual goals we want to achieve with our outreach events, to accomplish them takes detailed, focused earthly communication work. The following resources will help you do what it takes to have the volunteers you need for the ministry God has called you to. The result will be that you and everyone you work with will be blessed.

Video: How to be more successful in recruiting volunteers, a case study

This on-line video will take you step-by-step through a real life example of what a church did to try to recruit volunteers for a fall outreach event (and failed miserably) and what could be done for success. The principles taught here will work in any volunteer recruiting situation.

This ECC Training video (and many more like it) is one of the benefits of this website You can use these videos to train yourself and you can also project them and use them to train your church staff and church communication volunteers.

Click here to go to the online webinar.

PDF Book: How to be more successful in recruiting volunteers for church events, a case study

Many people have told me that a step-by-step PDF really helped them carry out what was taught on the video. I put together a 17-page booklet that takes you step-by-step through all the processes, plus has extra articles on how to recruit and retain volunteers. This article has the FREE link for ECC Members and links to how to buy it (only $5.00) for non-members.

Click here to go to the book overview.

Free article: Communications for a good continuing relationship with your volunteers

Getting volunteers to sign up or help you once is one thing, getting them to continue is another. this free article will give you some ideas on how to form lasting and productive relationships with your volunteers.

Click here to go to the article

Effective Church Communication MEMBER LINKS:

Membership in the Effective Church Communications website certainly DOES have its privileges and this month they are incredible. Not only do you have 24/7 access to the training webinar, but you get the following (click on the title area of each entry below to go directly to it):

PDF of the PowerPoint notes

That go along with the Video, so that whenever it would work out for you to show it to your staff or volunteers you can print out this PDF for them to take notes with.

An e-book copy of the book

On how to be more successful in recruiting volunteers for church outreach events. In addition you have permission to make as many copies of it as you need for volunteers and church staff members.

PDFs of Samples of Church Volunteer Samples from churches

THIS IS INCREDIBLE--you really have to see the sample materials here to understand how valuable it is. These are copies of volunteer recruitment samples from real churches. There are four pieces here including a 25-page handbook: Community is Contagious, that is an instructive and inspiring volunteer, church team guide. There are also volunteer recruitment booklets and one of the best ministry brochures I've ever seen included.

ECC Member Article: Clear communications help you create effective volunteer recruitment and retention

This article goes into more depth on how to actually write recruitment material for volunteers than the video has the time or format to do. No matter what the communication channel you use to recruit, web, print, bulletins, brochures, whatever, this will be helpful.

Be encouraged and keep working at equipping and involving volunteers

Doing the work needed to recruit and train volunteers effectively is not easy, but may the Lord use the samples and ideas here to give you inspiration and strength. When you, along with your volunteers and the people who came to know Jesus because of the events you held meet Jesus face to face it will all be more than worth it.

e-book: How to be more successful in recruiting volunteers for church outreach events

By Leave a Comment

Case Study CoverThis booklet both goes along with the ECC Training Video: A case study to help you be more successful in recruiting volunteers example a church trunk or treat, but it is also a great stand-alone instructional booklet that will give you specific advice on how to recruit any time of the year.

The most important thing (in additional to lots of prayer) to get people to sign up as volunteers in your church is for you to give them clear and complete information about the event you want them to volunteer for and how to sign up to be part of it.

Remember, having a successful volunteer turn-out isn't just about you--it is about helping people grow in their faith and doing work that is pleasing to our Lord.

This e-book is free for Effective Church Communication Members. You can download it by clicking the link below. If you are not a member, click here for membership information and how to join.

{+}

CLICK HERE to download How to be more successful in recruiting volunteers for church outreach events.

Volunteer recruitment, a how-to booklet that will help you this fall and for all events

By Leave a Comment

CASE STUDY BOOKLET
This booklet is FREE for ECC Members along with the many other ebooks and templates  available to them.

This booklet not only goes along with the video on recruiting volunteers, but it is also an extremely useful guide for any time of the year when you need advice on how to successfully recruit volunteers.

Yes, it would be wonderful if people just showed up whenever we announce we need them, but real life in real churches doesn't work out that way.

To get more volunteers churches sometimes think they need to attend conferences, read huge books, follow complex plans and while some of these things can be useful, try a far more simple and extremely effective solution: tell people what is going on, what you want them to do, and how to get in touch with you so you know they want to be part of it.

That sounds so easy, but I cannot tell you how many "volunteer" announcements, flyers and brochures I see that don't do this. This book walks you through step-by-step the kind of information you need to include for truly successful volunteer recruitment. It is available in three ways:

For Effective Church Communication Members it is is a free download. If you are not a member, check out becoming one so you can receive this and many other resources like it for free 24/7.
Click here to go to the free member download.