How To Organize Service Initiatives - Training Recap

Last Saturday’s training session on how to organize service based initiatives within your church was one of the best trainings we’ve had this year. Twelve folks filled the Rialto space as Joe Johns and I lead this session based on our experiences.

Thanks for everyone that came and especially for the new folks that came. Trying to motivate and mobilize our congregations can be a challenge, but a challenge worth pursuing. I think we can all agree that it takes a commitment to one project at a time.

There are 2 basic directions you can go when trying to mobilize groups of people within our church. Continue reading for those two options.

Option 1 – Event/Project Focus

This is the most common direction most organizations or churches taken when organizing service based initiatives. This model is typically chosen when a surge of action is the desired outcome. We use it when we want to get our church out into the community doing practical actions with the hope that maybe some of them will make it a longer term commitment. Below are some characteristics of this type of focus.

• Project Focused
• Typically #s focused as well
• Core Team of volunteers does most of the planning/organizing
• Volunteers have little involvement/primarily labor
• Short burst impact overall with lots of projects
• Less about church to community relationships
• High level of church member connections day of event
• Personal transformation ratio is lower
• Less commitment focused
• Leads to burnout w/core team if you do this Route frequently due to intensity
• Needs projects that can handle large numbers of people
• Both inside and outside of church project sources

Option 2 – Transformational Focus

This option is more focused on the personal development of the volunteers and the recipients than it is about the event or number of projects getting done. This model is often designed to identify volunteer leaders first and train them on how to find their own project for the event. It allows the team leader to make a personal commitment to the project source and understand what is needed before the day of the event. Within this model, it creates more opportunities for volunteers to be impacted directly by the situation of the recipient, which leads to increased transformation within the volunteers. It’s about relationships, not projects.

• Recipient/transformation focused
• Develop people 1^st & do projects 2^nd
• Call church to leadership/responsibility
• Service as part of discipleship
• Help people find own projects
• Team helps with project details
• Team helps get volunteers for projects
• Relationships over projects
• Both inside and outside church project sources
• Usually less numbers
• Model gets to heart of congregation faster
• High transformation ratio

Overall, the best model is what fits the current environment of your particular community as long as you are stretching people towards taking personal responsibility for their “neighbor" in some capacity.

NeighborLink believes it takes a good mix of both directions with a heavier emphasis of option two to develop a successful service initiative within your church. We believe that programs are necessary to get people engaged but will not lead to personal transformation or a deeper relationship with Christ without direct relational effort between church members and without direct relationships with those in the margins of our city.

I would be happy to discuss this further with any small group or church in Fort Wayne. I love this conversation and do this because I believe it’s possible to make our community a better place.