Fall is one of the most important times for your church. Not only is your congregation coming back on a regular basis after being away for some summer fun, but this is also an opportunity to show new individuals or families in your community what your church is all about.
However, don’t forget that volunteers should play a critical role in making your events successful this fall. Let’s look at a few ways you can inform your church family about your different ministries and how partnering with a church management solution (ChMS) like Realm can find, communicate with, and schedule new or seasoned volunteers who can help make your fall events the best ever.
Host a Ministry Fair
Though it might come as a surprise, most congregants – unless they’re highly involved – don’t have much awareness of the ministry areas your church offers. Hosting a ministry fair is a great way to bring your church family together and communicate what areas they can offer assistance. This can be as big or as small as it needs to be; usually it only takes a few pop-up tents or tables, some signage, and an individual representing that ministry area.
This is also a great time to use a ChMS to gather the skills and interests of your congregation. Simply set up a laptop at your ministry fair and ask your congregation to update their skills and interests on their profile. Once those are updated, you’ll have direct access to their talents and spiritual gifts and be able to tie those to roles you’ll need later for fall events or other serving opportunities. For example, an individual could notate their skills as a nurse or teacher and have interests in taking part in your children’s ministry.
Plus, Realm’s Skills and Interests are prebuilt, so they’re out-of-the-box ready but completely editable so staff can customize them to fit best for the unique needs of your ministry.
Create Roles and Share Them with the Congregation
Next, it’s time to build and share your Roles with your congregation. Roles are the serving opportunities you’ll need filled by your volunteers, such as nursery workers, greeters, cooks, bakers, and any other important serving opportunities needed to make your event a success.
The beauty of Realm’s Roles is that staff can tie Roles to Skills and Interests. For example, you may be expecting a big turnout for your first fall event later this year, so it’s probably a good idea to have a nursery set up for small children. You can create the role of “nursery worker” and request that it have the Skill of “teacher” or “nurse” and/or the Interest of “children’s ministry.” Staff can even request additional qualifications for Roles, such as age requirements or the need for a background check screening.
Once Roles are built, they can be shared with your congregation who can find them in Realm and express interest to serve. Staff can even promote key roles to your entire church through the Newsfeed in Realm.
Build Serving Teams
For your fall events to be successful, it’s critical that your volunteers are able to work together as a team.
As your congregation begins looking through the Roles and expressing their interest in serving for your fall event, you can start adding them to Serving Teams. Realm’s Serving Teams allows you to categorize your volunteers with similar roles for events so staff and volunteer team leaders can oversee a single roster.
This also allows for clear communication to the entire team so everyone is on board with the same message. For example, all the greeters or all the children’s ministry volunteers could be in their own team.
Run Background Checks
Up to this point, you’ve:
- created a ministry fair to communicate your ministry areas with your congregation
- helped your congregation complete their Skills and Interests
- built Roles, tied Skills and Interests to them and allowed your congregation to express their interest to serve
- grouped individuals who have similar Roles into Teams so you can have a single roster for clear communication
With all the great ideas you’ll have to support your volunteer efforts this fall, another key area that you don’t want to skimp on is safety. By running background checks on your volunteers – such as anyone dealing with children or potentially handling money – you’re providing the safest environment possible at your next fall event. And since Realm has fully integrated background checks, it’s as simple as requesting a background check for all your volunteers.
Create and Communicate Your Schedule
After all background checks have been completed for specified volunteers, now it’s time to create the volunteer schedule for your event.
Realm’s Volunteer Scheduling allows staff or volunteer team leaders to create a single schedule for an entire Serving Team. When creating the schedule, you can easily designate how many roles you need and what time they need to arrive to serve.
Realm automatically serves up people in the team tied to that role, so you’re never hunting down the right person. Schedules can even be tied to your current fall event in Realm, so there’s no need to duplicate work.
Once the schedule is completed, communicate it with your volunteers. They’ll see the request in their Realm account or Realm Connect mobile app and can accept it right there. On the off-chance that something happens, volunteers can even find their own replacements.
Lastly, there’s no need to worry if they’ll remember when they’re serving – Realm automatically notifies them twice based on your desired frequency before your fall event takes place.
If your church follows these important steps above, you can rest assured your volunteers will be equipped, on time, and ready to make the return to church extra special for your congregation this fall. Click here to learn more about how Realm Volunteers can support your church’s work through events, worship services, and more.
