A checklist for onboarding more volunteers at your church this Christmas

Great news! We compiled every Christmas post I’ve ever written into one giant ebook full of checklists! It’s called “The Complete Christmas Engagement Guide” — and it’s totally free!

I'm one of those guys who believes that God has already brought all the volunteers for everything he wants us to do at our Christmas outreaches and celebrations.

1 Corinthians 12:18 says that he even "arranges the parts of the Body, just as he wills." That means he has already arranged for all the people we need to connect guests and communicate Christ to anyone he leads to your church and mine this Christmas.

Now lets go get 'em!

Here are 4 ways to staff your ministry teams with plenty of volunteers this Christmas, with a checklist for each one.

➊ Increase the speed of your first response to them after signing up.

Don’t make the common mistake of figuring out when and how you will will respond to those who sign up to serve at Christmas whenever you feel ready. You have to be ready BEFORE they sign up.

Here’s why. We look at signups as a collection of interested, able and enthusiastic people who are just waiting by the phone for you to respond to their willingness to serve on one of your teams.

They are not.

Here is who they really are: people who are interested, able and enthusiastic to serve when they sign up. While we go back to our offices at church, feeling the weight and importance of the need for great volunteers for our Christmas outreaches everyday, they return to their jobs, their kid’s events and family obligations that have nothing to do with the event(s) we recruited them for.

In other words, we’ve stayed motivated. They have moved on. Their slow response will at best match our slow response to them. Nobody wins in that scenario.

The game is won when right after they sign up, they receive a text on their way home. This text gives them their time to serve, where to report to and mentions an email with a job description attached that will arrive in their inbox within 24 hours. This email will invite them to ask any questions while everything is still fresh in their minds and their calendars are handy.

Basically, get ‘em while their hot. That is the scenario that will add the highest percentage of new and existing volunteers to your Christmas efforts.

Get this checklist and all the rest too in “The Complete Christmas Engagement Guide” →

➋ Invite them onto a team and not just a rotation

If the role they are serving in requires any special orientation that cannot happen just before “game time” at Christmas services, make the first response a quick gathering to meet some of the team members for coffee in your cafe or office at church.

Meet the team and have a snack-this is how to help them realize that they are becoming part of a team that has a meaningful fun time serving together. This creates a sense of positive accountability , a greater desire to serve, and a higher probability that they could serve in that role in some way after Christmas is over.

Get this checklist and all the rest too in “The Complete Christmas Engagement Guide” →

➌ Have a special place for them to gather before and after they serve

Christmas volunteers will serve during services they are not attending. Multiple services. Many of them serve in capacities that don’t require them to serve during the entire service.

Jim and Rita serve in many areas in our church and around Christmas time, you’ll find them in our Christmas Changemaker Lounge enjoying a break with others they serve with.

We also have a large room usually used for older kids or teens normally, but is empty during our Christmas services. Our Guest Services Director (Shelley Hall) and our Volunteer Director (Julie Liem) help turn it into a winter wonderland for volunteers with fun Christmas music, catered meals from different restaurant owners from our church or community (some of them donated).

This room sometimes doubles as a place were people serve in behind the scenes jobs like writing cards to first times guests from the previous service, assembling gifts or giveaways, etc. The combination Christmas Party/Santa’s Workshop vibe creates a space that volunteers want to be, a place where they can enjoy hanging out with each other year after year.

Get this checklist and all the rest too in “The Complete Christmas Engagement Guide” →

➍ Use unplaced people from your last sign ups

We use Church Community Builder as our database. Most databases allow you to track interested volunteers who got placed and those who didn’t for whatever reason. We can run a report that creates a list of people in that category and then develop a plan to reengage them in light of special Christmas opportunities.

Our young adult pastor, Charles Stoicu, helped me envision this great way for engaging formerly interested volunteers. Once the list is created, a mail merge is sent inviting those on the list to serve on special teams for Christmas. This mail merge has links for teams on it that once clicked, open up forms to fill out with job descriptions already attached. Follow up is swift and people are reminded again which team they chose with more details the week before the serve.

Use the questions below to use these checklists well. Above all, pray for workers for the harvest this Christmas. Jesus would not asked us to pray this if the answer was going to be “no”.

TO CHEW ON WHILE WE CLIMB

➊ Get together with Staff or your Guest Services team having shared the link to this post. Brainstorm together what it would look like to have the best volunteer experience possible for your Christmas services.

➋ Discuss which of the 4 ways to fill your teams with new volunteers for Christmas are most relevant for you this year. How would you prioritize them? Are there any you would not do? Are there some that you could adapt in some way to your church to maximize it’s impact?

➌ Once you’ve committed to 1 or more of these ways, Copy/Paste and print out the corresponding checklists and delegate them to qualified people who would be excited to run point on that kind of effort. Decide on due dates for specific items.

➍ Schedule an evaluation date in January to evaluate how everything went and the implications for Christmas services next year.

➎ Get ahead of strategic needs for connecting new volunteers and guests by watching the Climbing the Assimilayas Video Course together with your team.