Have you ever experienced déjà vu when listening to church announcements? It’s possible you’re mistaken, but isn’t it the third time this month someone from the pulpit has tried to recruit people to serve in children’s ministry? There has to be a better way to get the word out about new volunteer opportunities. Guess what? Now there is.

At MonkDev, we’ve been developing a new Ministry Focused Layout for Volunteer Opportunities that allows people to see all the ways they can serve from one web page. It’s categorized, clean, and easy to implement.

3 Mistakes Churches Make When Recruiting Volunteers  

1) The Process Is Managed By One Person

Perhaps volunteer opportunities exist but, similar to one of the churches we talked to, they are managed by a single person and essentially live in an imaginary database in that person’s head. What if the person leaves or is out sick? That model of capturing volunteers is just not sustainable long term.

2) It’s Totally Disorganized

It could be that your volunteer opportunities have made it to your website but are split up based on the ministry. This creates confusion for visitors coming to your site wanting to get plugged in. It’s time to get all of your opportunities into a centralized, easy to navigate place.

3) There’s A Bottleneck

Communications Coordinator Beverly Lwenya from The District Church in Washington D.C. told us they regularly have 30 to 40 volunteer opportunities. “The willingness to serve is there,” she says. Unfortunately their recruiting process is regularly interrupted. Currently, the only way people can get plugged in to serve at her church is through a connection card. This means someone on the church’s staff has to read the card, type it into a database, send out an email to the new volunteer, and complete several other steps before the volunteer is actually connected to an area of ministry where they can serve.  Recently, The District Church requested our newest Ministry Focused Layout for Volunteers. 

“I’m hoping that the Ministry Focused Layout directed toward volunteers will remove the bottleneck between people wanting to serve and having to fill out the connect form... I think it will allow people to self-serve and pick the opportunity that is right for them.” - Beverly Lwenya

The Solution:

Churches from all denominations agree they want to empower members of their congregations to serve.  Why? Serving gives people the opportunity to move from Sunday-only churchgoers to engaged members of the congregation.

In order for the church to work effectively, it needs people to be in key ministry areas including:

• Children’s Ministry
• Welcome Team
• Tech Team
• Student Ministry
• Young Adults/College
• Arts

If people are serving, they are engaged and they will continue to pour their time and talents into the church.  This ultimately furthers the church’s mission and ensures the church thrives.

The Ministry Focused Layout for Volunteer Opportunities helps you by organizing your volunteers and quickly connecting them to all of the opportunities within the church. It allows you to stop worrying about recruiting and instead think about developing all of the volunteers you have.

Once people new to volunteering have the opportunity to serve, they may just love it. 

“I sat in the pew for many years but once I got my first taste of serving, that was it.”  Beverly shares. 

If you want to give your church members an easy way to plug into volunteer opportunities, contact us about our Ministry Focused Layout for Volunteer Opportunities by filling out the form below.