Does it always seem like only a small portion of your church members ever participate in anything? It’s a common problem, but it’s actually not as hard as you might think to mobilize your people.
Whether you’re trying to mobilize them to be more active in the church, volunteer or even go on missions, one thing remains the same – you have to spark passion in them.
It’s all about engaging members in a way that makes them desire to be an active member, grow in their faith and even reach out to the unchurched around them.
1. Give Them A Common Mission
You might think faith or the church would be a common enough of a mission to bring everyone together. However, earning a living is a common mission, but how many people actually want to go to work each day? To mobilize your people, you have to give them a common mission that’s close to their hearts. As an interview on Forbes points out, you must bring your people together through shared values and a common goal.
2. Focus On Their Strengths
While your members are attending the same church, it’s important to remember they’re not all the same. Every member has their own strengths. When you’re constantly asking for volunteers for the same types of tasks, you’re only going to get the people who are good at those tasks. Everyone else may simply feel excluded.
For instance, if you’re helping a local family relocate after a natural disaster, don’t just ask for people to help build a house. Also ask for volunteers to help landscape, pick out furniture, take the family shopping for the essentials, plan a welcome party for the family and anything else related. You’re now appealing to a wide variety of strengths, which helps to mobilize your people to help.
3. Go Where Passions Lie
How often do you talk to your members about their passions? With so many distractions and responsibilities, it’s difficult to mobilize your people if they’re not passionate about the church. The solution – find out what they’re passionate about and try to incorporate it.
For instance, do you only have a single ministry group? If you discover members with shared passions, consider having smaller ministry groups that focus on those passions. This makes your church far more engaging and even opens the church to a wider variety of volunteer opportunities.
4. Create A Memorable Opportunity
When you talk to many life-long church members, you’ll usually discover a common story – they all had that one moment where they didn’t just have faith, they experienced faith. They might have volunteered and talked to someone who they could relate to and saw how the power of faith helped them.
Try to find unique and memorable opportunities. Get your church more involved in the community to encourage spiritual interactions outside of just other church members. If you notice certain members struggling, talk to them and try to find an opportunity that would help them through their own issues.
5. Provide Simple Ways To Connect
It’s truly amazing how the Internet has changed the way churches communicate. If you want to mobilize your people, you need to stay in contact with them. More importantly, you need ways for them to stay in contact with each other. Social media, forums on your church website, text messaging and email are all great ways to keep communications going throughout the week.
Instead of members drifting away from church for most of the week, they stay in engaged. The more engaged they are, the more likely they are to want to be active members instead of just sitting on the sidelines.
6. Encourage More Prayers
Prayer is important, but if you asked your members, you’d be surprised at how many of them don’t pray that often. It’s no reason to panic. However, encouraging more prayers helps to strengthen faith and even bring members closer together. As a result, you have a stronger church that’s easier to mobilize. Get things started by sending out prayers on social media or creating prayer groups that boost each other via text.
7. Consider A Ladder Philosophy
Finally, give members room to grow in their faith and as people. Most people aren’t content to just stay in the same spot their entire lives. If every time you call a member to action, you just put them in the same exact role, they’re probably going to stop answering the call.
It’s actually one of the reasons members tend to leave the church. They want the chance to grow. Create a type of ladder philosophy that helps members continue to rise. For instance, as members work hard to help those around them and grow the church, let them eventually rise to strong leaders themselves.
Ready to mobilize your people? Find out how a church website helps you mobilize members 24/7.
About The Author
Comments 1
We conduct Explore and Go Mobilize 2 times per year in our community. Sometimes its formal and other times in formal.
We try and engage as often as possible to our local churches. We utilize whatever God sends our way.
What I would like to know is: Do you have this in a power point style?
Over the past 5 years we have done very well and been quite productive in getting the gospel out. I was hoping that it maybe in a pp form. Thank you
Patricia O’Nery
Executive Coordinator