Source: Three Ministry and Volunteer Audits to Consider

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By NewChurches.com: In Episode 589 of the NewChurches Q&A Podcast, Daniel and Ed discuss what student ministry can look like in micro-churches.

“How, as we launch micro-churches or small church plants, can we encourage and develop strong student ministries?”

In This Episode, You’ll Discover:

What student ministry looks like in micro-church context
Why student ministry volunteers are important

 Shareable Quotes (#NewChurches):

“The idea is that the house church is not going to be age-graded in the same way.”  – @edstetzer
“Students will be brought into the life of the congregation as the young adults that they are.” – @edestetzer
“If it is a movement, sometimes the student ministry does connect across the movement.” – @edstetzer
“There can be community student ministry. There can be collaborative student ministry with other micro-churches.” – @edstetzer
“My experience has been that most people in micro-churches who have student age participants, they are actually involved in the life of the church and are often engaged in the student ministry of another church in town in a larger context.” – @edstetzer
“As a volunteer, you have an opportunity for profound impact.” – @edstetzer
“Perhaps your role within a micro-church context within a student ministry is about equipping students and developing them into leader-developers and disciplers who can disciple others in their context.” – @danielsangi

Recommended Resources:

Read Organic Church by Neil Cole

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This Episode’s Sponsor:

No matter how many people you have on staff at your church, there’s only so much you can accomplish in a day, right? Your church exists to serve your community, so the mission of your church and its staff is to reach as many people as you can.

So BELAY, the innovative staffing solution with over 10 years of experience serving churches with virtual assistants, bookkeepers and social media strategists, is offering a free download of their resource, ‘Church Leaders: Essential Strategies to Unleash Productivity.’

Let BELAY help your church live its mission in your community by helping you juggle less and accomplish more. Visit belaysolutions.com/lifeway for your free download.

The post Episode 589: Student Ministry in a Micro-Church Context appeared first on NewChurches.com – Church Planting, Multisite, and Multiplication.

Source: Episode 589: Student Ministry in a Micro-Church Context

The post Episode 589: Student Ministry in a Micro-Church Context appeared first on Passion for Planting.

By unSeminary: Welcome to this week’s unSeminary podcast! This week I’m chatting with a repeat guest, Danny Franks, Pastor of Guest Services at The Summit Church. The Summit Church has twelve locations around North Carolina and the heart of the church is set on sending. They continually want their people to be asking: how does God want to use me and send me?

As a church grows, it’s not uncommon for the culture and DNA to get watered down. The Summit Church realized that as they launched more campuses and moved to a central model, the guest experience looked drastically different from one campus to another. Listen in as Danny shares how to examine your church’s DNA and replicate it by developing high-capacity volunteers that will in turn invest in others.

We can’t send people that we don’t keep. // In order to be a good sending church, we first need to learn how to be a good receiving church. For The Summit Church this meant taking a good look at their guest services experience at each of their campuses. Guest services covers a person’s visit from the street to the seat and everything in between. It’s about making sure the church is doing everything it can to help its guests know that they’ve been expected, planned for, and that the church is excited to have them return.What is your DNA? // To create a uniform guest services experience at each of your campuses, first ask: What is our DNA when it comes to caring for guests? It will be a process to talk through who the church is and what it looks like to welcome guests well and help them take their next step toward the gospel. After a lot of prayer and discussion through these questions, Danny developed a High-Capacity Volunteer Cohort to help communicate the church’s DNA surrounding guest services clearly to all the campuses.Identify your high-capacity volunteers. // The High-Capacity Volunteer Cohort is an eight-month journey where a small group of two to five volunteers from each campus come together. At The Summit Church there are about thirty volunteers that are a part of the Cohort at one time. They meet each month for an hour and a half to discuss books and principles that help everyone understand what the church’s DNA is. The books cover a wide swath of topics and serve as a springboard for the monthly conversation and there is always a practical component to what they teach. Ultimately the goal of the Cohort is to equip volunteers to be better leaders.Invest and Influence. // As the Pastor of Guest Services, Danny has a dotted line relationship with the Guest Services Directors at each campus. They report directly to the campus pastor and may be responsible for guest services as well as things like small groups and membership. Sometimes all of their responsibilities feel like an impossible task but when they are identifying high-capacity volunteers who are in turn trained, they are replicating themselves in a smaller group that can then go on to invest in and influence others. The Cohort process has allowed the Directors to be more like shepherds and less like administrators. And it’s empowered volunteers to find areas of need where they can pitch in and help with specific problems.Where to begin? // You don’t have to be a multisite church or a mega church to start a High-Capacity Volunteer Cohort. Any leader should be looking for who their high-capacity people are and invest in them. The first question to ask as a leader is what’s the win? What are you trying to accomplish with this cohort? What is your timeframe? Your cohort doesn’t have to last 8 months – you can do a smaller, focused version over six weeks. Next define the parts of that DNA that you want to clearly communicate. If you have trouble identifying who your high-capacity volunteers are, that may indicate there is a problem with your leadership pipeline. Something needs to shift to make sure you are regularly identifying and bringing in those potential high-capacity people. Also be aware of not having a clear end goal in sight. For more tips on how to begin, download this PDF: High-Capacity Volunteer Cohort: A How-To Guide.Resources for your cohort. // Danny has a wealth of resources on his website, including articles, workshops, training events, a coaching network and more, that you can access by visiting dfranks.com. In addition, a great book to read with your cohort would be “People are the Mission: How Churches Can Welcome Guests Without Compromising the Gospel“. In it Danny shows churches how to take a balanced approach to hospitality by developing ministries that are guest-friendly from the outset and gospel-centric to their core. Churches will learn not only how to effectively bring people in and convince them to stay, but also why our hospitality to honor the stranger doesn’t stand in opposition to honoring the Savior. Lastly, download this PDF for an overview of The Summit Church’s High-Capacity Volunteer Cohort: Guest Services 2020.

To connect with Danny Franks, reach out to him on Twitter @letmebefranks, and learn more about The Summit Church by visiting their website.

Thank You for Tuning In!

There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please share it by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremely helpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!

Lastly, don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, to get automatic updates every time a new episode goes live!

Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Risepointe

Is your church ready? Are you re-opening? Ready to welcome MORE people to worship and grow with your church? Are you out of space or are your interiors dated and needing improvement?

The architecture and design team at Risepointe want to help you align your facility with the mission and vision that God has given your church. That’s why Risepointe developed The Needs Analysis. The Needs Analysis is a comprehensive look at your site to seat experience through the lens of your first time guests. Learn more by visiting www.theneedsanalysis.com. Let them know you heard about The Needs Analysis on unSeminary for $500 off!

Source: Practical Strategy for Developing High-Capacity Volunteers with Danny Franks

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Source: 5 Ways Churches Can Bless Moms on Mother’s Day

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Source: One Step Your Church Should Accomplish Before Looking Ahead

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Source: Leadership Development in Your Church

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By: UnSeminary

One of the core takeaways from 2020 so far is that we all have lacked the imagination needed to see over the horizon. 

Who would’ve thought that this year would bring all the challenges that it has as it relates to coronavirus? 

Oftentimes people say that no one could have predicted this, that no one could have seen what was coming, but that’s not entirely true.

During my Christmas break at the end of 2019, I read Dan Carlin’s book, The End Is Always Near: Apocalyptic Moments, from the Bronze Age Collapse to Nuclear Near Misses. It was an interesting romp through history looking at apocalyptic times and the turnover of cultures. Dan ends the book by turning to the future and offering a discussion on lessons from the Spanish flu pandemic as well as the potential for a supervirus to bring our world to its knees once again. 

While Dan’s analysis doesn’t completely reflect everything that’s been happening this year, he did actually provide a fairly robust roadmap to help us navigate a pandemic. He had the imagination to apply what has happened historically to what could happen again. It felt a bit farfetched way back in December but he seems like a prophet from this side of the story.

Our job is to stretch our imaginations to think about what could happen in the coming weeks, months and even years. One of our functions as leaders is to read the winds of our times and change the sails of our organizations to steer towards where we believe God is leading us next. 

As we navigate the current phase we’re in, we need to think about where we’re going in the future. This season has taught us that we need to use our imaginations to look over the horizon at what might be ahead for our churches, especially as we wrestle with the reality of COVID-19 still impacting our communities and economies. One of our advantages is that we can look back and learn from similar events such as the Spanish flu and see how the multiple waves of the pandemic impacted those communities. While life is different now, a historical perspective does provide some guideposts for us as we think about what may be coming in the next few months.

Recently, I spent some time looking at case studies of three cities during the Spanish flu pandemic to get a sense of how the churches at that time responded and if we could learn from that response. I’d encourage you to do the same. I found these three articles to be particularly helpful:

Pittsburgh, PA:  “Closed houses of worship served during 1918 flu pandemic”Minneapolis, MN: “Lessons Learned from the 1918–1919 Influenza Pandemic”Washington, D.C.:  ”What Did DC Churches Do When the Spanish Flu Struck Again?”

In the spirit of thinking about where we may be going next, here are five questions that our churches may need to wrestle with in the coming months. Use these as a guide for discussion as you and your leadership team consider the impending issues that we find ourselves dealing with.

Would you lend your church building as a vaccine center? 

It is clear that if a vaccine comes into safe and widespread use, there’s going to be a problem around how our health systems actually distribute these vaccines. Surely we’re not going to be able to just line up at our doctor’s office or the local hospital. Those spaces aren’t large enough and aren’t built to process a large number of people in a short period of time. 

However, most church buildings are designed to get people in and out quickly, and we have ample parking and large open spaces that can easily be converted. During the Spanish flu, churches were converted into hospitals and became a great way to serve their communities.

If a vaccine does become available, it’s going to be required by at least 70% of the population. That’s hundreds of millions of people in the United States alone! Will our churches be counted among those that are willing to offer help in a time like this? 

In a similar vein, would your church be willing to offer its building to the local school board as they attempt to figure out how to do lower capacity classes this September? This could be an opportunity for your church to help your community in a very real way right now. Most churches have meeting rooms and various subspaces for our weekend services. These could easily be retrofitted to help a school provide low-capacity classes for kids in your district. 

Are we willing to communicate well in the public square?

Are you ready to respond to the press if your church becomes a hotspot? 

One of the things that’s become obvious in responding to COVID-19 is that public perception is an important factor that all leaders need to consider. I know many church leaders have wrestled with not wanting to gather too early because they want to keep their community healthy and safe. 

At some point, if your church does decide to meet in person, it would be irresponsible to not have a press communication plan in place in the event a member of your church becomes COVID-19 positive or, worst case, if your church becomes a super spreader. We’ve already seen evidence of this in churches around the world, and the negative effect that has been felt by these churches could impact their ministries for years to come. 

Taking some time now to build a communications plan that clearly outlines what would happen if a case is identified in your church will help you avoid pain in the future.

Throughout this season, I’ve been encouraging churches to think proactively about hiring a communications director. This issue alone may be the biggest reason to push you to make those hires at this time.

Are your systems designed to move smoothly from in-person to online experiences in response to a second wave? 

It’s highly likely that we will see a continued resurgence of COVID-19 across the country in the coming weeks and months. As your church transitions to in-person services, are you retaining all of your systems to be able to transition smoothly back to online when needed?

Don’t abandon the infrastructure that you have developed in this season. This is important for the individuals in your church who are uncomfortable coming back and because there may come a point when churches need to be closed a second time. Think carefully about how you could do both in-person and online experiences since you might need to provide a mixed offering for the foreseeable future. 

The rush to in-person gatherings and the cheerleading that has gone along with that will potentially have negative consequences for those churches in the event that they need to return to online only experiences. Every church should be considering how to do both in-person and online well and should have the ability to move its community back and forth between the two.

What would happen to your giving if your city’s main employer closed? 

The economic impact of the coronavirus hasn’t shown up yet, not really. The government liquidity that has been pushed into the system is giving a false sense of financial security against what’s actually happening on Main Street. 

What would happen if that liquidity was pulled and the main employer in your town was to fail? What would the ripple effect be in your town if that employer went bankrupt and was unable to pay its people?

Recently, I was in a “company town,” one of these rural-ish communities that are largely reliant on a large multinational corporation to support their local economy. That company has been an incredible blessing to the financial picture of this community for years, but I got a little bit scared when I saw how much development has radiated out from that employer. If that company was to pull out of that town, it would take decades for the community to recover. 

Are you aware of who the main employer is in your town or city? Have you thought about any way that you could support them in this season? Are you aware of what impact it might have on your church if they were to close?

What if your volunteers don’t come back? 

One of the saddest things we’ve been seeing in this season as churches attempt to get in-person services going again is the assumption that all of the volunteers feel just as strongly about in-person services as the pastoral team. This just simply isn’t the case.

The many people who over the last few months haven’t been serving in our churches and haven’t heard from us personally will be put off if the next time they hear from you, it’s just about the church needing them to volunteer again. What if 50% of your volunteers opted out of volunteering in your rush to move back to in-person services? Could your church sustain its ministry with far less volunteers? 

This is a significant issue for us to wrestle through because our churches are driven by volunteers. The church has always been best understood as a volunteer organization, and the local church is the greatest volunteer-driven enterprise in the world. If our volunteers don’t come back, we will have a big problem on our hands when we reopen. Watching carefully as people opt out will be an important practice for us as we go through our reopening phases.

Make Some Space to Ask, “What if?”

This season feels like we just ran a marathon and then at the end of the marathon, someone handed us a bike and told us this is actually a reverse triathlon. I don’t want this discussion to be a discouragement to you; rather, I want to encourage you to think carefully about the future. 

There will be many waves of the impact of COVID-19 that we’ll need to continue to deal with as they roll through our churches. Part of our roles as leaders is to try to look up over the horizon and discover and think through and imagine where we may be headed next, to rally our team towards those issues, and to do what we can to prepare for them.

Download PDF Article

Source: 5 Questions About COVID-19 that Your Church Might Still Need to Answer

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Source: Redeploying Staff or High-Level Leaders During COVID-19

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Source: New and Adapted Volunteer Roles

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By: The Church.digital

When I was a kid, I was told that talking in church was not allowed. My parents would allow me to draw or put my head down, but talking was not permitted. As I got older, I was permitted to sit in the student section of church and keep quiet passing notes to my friends during the service. We would pay attention, but we also had our own conversation going on by passing notes. This was in the stone age that preceded text messaging and instant messaging available on a cell phone. We would actually talk about what we liked about the message and made plans for hanging out after church. It helped me solidify friendships in church and dig in deeper into conversation. Now imagine, I grow up and oversee Church Online now. Should I encourage people to be quiet during the service? No way! This is the big benefit of Church Online. You can encourage chat during the service. Online chat during the service builds community and helps people stay connected to the content of your church service. Online chat is a great way to begin the conversation that moves your online audience from a crowd into community. All this starts with a quality chat host.Here are three things chat hosts can drive:

Conversation: Your chat hosts are both greeters and small group leaders in the chat. They help people feel welcome, but also keep the conversation stimulating throughout the service. This is why it’s important to have primary and secondary chat hosts at each online service hour. Someone should be driving the conversation and someone should be supporting, as well. This way guests can also feel comfortable joining in. If two people are affirming guests, it makes them feel welcome and keeps them engaged throughout the service.
Consistency: Having the same team on a regular basis drives community. Think of it this way, who was the person you constantly said “hello” to when you first began visiting your church. You felt like you knew someone. It was the beginning of community for you. You might have had someone notice when you were out. They said things like “we missed you last week.” We see the same kind of community developing in our chat at Christ Fellowship. Volunteers are building friendships with guests. Guests are feeling more comfortable and choosing their service hours based on the chat volunteers that are attending. It’s creating consistency in their online attendance.
Conversion: I don’t just mean salvations. Yes, people are being led to Christ through our online services, but the chat helps get them connected to our church. Chat converts attendees by offering next steps and opportunities to connect to groups and attend our membership class. Chat hosts provide urls to forms and encourage guests to connect to our church. This is how we move from content to conversation to community.

Could you imagine if we offered chat, not just online but in physical services? I guess we’ll have to explore that idea soon. But in the meantime, think about how chat can make an impact on your digital platforms. Consistent chat volunteers can help you connect viewers to your church. It will require time and investment, so be prepared to build a core of people who are dedicated to serving your church. You can start small with just two volunteers at one service hour, but it is a great way to begin moving online guests into your discipleship strategy and get them connected to your church.

Source: The Need for Chat

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