Articles for tag: Volunteers

August 22, 2019

Christian Standard

SPOTLIGHT: Woodstock Christian Church, Woodstock, Ga.

By Justin Horey When Kirby Lloyd accepted the call to serve as senior minister at Woodstock (Georgia) Christian Church in 2017, he didn’t intend to make sweeping changes. In fact, Lloyd didn’t even displace the minister who preceded him. Instead, Lynn Eynon, who had served as Woodstock’s senior minister for more than three decades, remained on staff as the minister of pastoral care. Instead of launching a variety of new ministries upon arriving, Lloyd encouraged Woodstock Christian to do a better job of promoting what it was already doing. Like many smaller Southern churches, Woodstock offers a food pantry, a

March 6, 2019

Christian Standard

Milligan Freshman Honored for Volunteerism (Plus News Briefs)

Compiled by Chris Moon Milligan College freshman Chase McGlamery won a big award for his service to his community and church. McGlamery received the Governor’s Volunteer Stars Award; he was one of 108 honorees this year. McGlamery completed more than 300 hours of community service during 2018, even while acclimating himself to life at Milligan, where he is majoring in communications. In total, he completed more than 1,000 hours of community service during high school. He began volunteering at age 8. Much of his work has involved technology. “Since I was in elementary school, teachers would ask me to help

January 2, 2019

Christian Standard

‘Pastor’s Project’ Offers Help to Struggling Ministers

By Chris Moon Dick Creek has been busy lately—and it’s the result of having knee surgery. A year and a half ago, he launched The Pastor’s Project, an initiative to help struggling pastors. The effort has grown since then to include a “Rapid Response” ministry for pastors who find themselves in crisis and a “Rural Church Initiative” to connect thriving churches with those that might be struggling, in hopes of sparking a revitalization. And all of this emerged from the time Creek was stuck in his chair, healing up from knee replacement surgery. “I had a lot of time on

July 30, 2018

Christian Standard

BikeMasters Ministry Takes Show on Road in California

By Jim Nieman Volunteers from CrossCity Christian Church, Fresno, Calif., started repairing bikes as a small part of a big ministry event about 15 years ago, but it wasn’t until three years ago that the church began throwing significant financial resources behind the bike-repair effort and made it a full-fledged ministry. BikeMasters now repairs bikes at about 10 events a year, focusing its efforts and peddling good feelings mainly in poorer neighborhoods. “It’s taken on a life of its own,” says Jim Corrao, CrossCity’s chief financial officer and missions pastor for the past five years (and, before that, executive pastor

November 28, 2017

Christian Standard

Sew to Sow

By Emily Drayne Sandra Ward has an amazing heart. She saw children wearing next to nothing, found a simple tie dress, and thought, Hey, I can make that myself! With that, she founded Sew to Sow. Based out of Kernersville, North Carolina, and affiliated with First Christian, Kernersville, this ministry provides handmade outfits for children sizes 16 and under. The first batch of outfits was sent to Brazil in 2013, and the dressmaking has continued since then. I had the privilege of spending an afternoon with this group and I was impressed by the quality of the outfits, their love

May 12, 2017

Christian Standard

Our Grandparenting Ministry””and Yours

(This article is a sidebar to “Grandparenting Ministry” by Michael Crosley.)   By Michael Crosley We have a core team of nine grandparents guiding the ministry and working closely with the Next Gen Ministry team. Future plans include: 1. Developing strategies to incorporate the concepts of intentional grandparenting into the thinking of our church. This will be achieved through using social media and regular references about grandparenting in church publications and services. 2. Providing equipping opportunities such as classes and occasional seminars. 3. Sponsoring “grand events.” We plan to have two or three special events each year just for grandparents

March 31, 2017

Michael C. Mack

How to Work with ‘Knowledge Workers’ in Your Ministry

By Michael C. Mack In today”s rapidly changing world, the most effective leaders do three things well: ask, listen, and learn. Whether they lead a church with a large number of staff or work directly with key volunteers, church leaders today must work well with “knowledge workers,” those Peter Drucker defines as people who know more about their role than their boss does. In business talent-management circles, managing knowledge workers has become a hot topic of discussion, leading to increased training and coaching of managers in this area. “It is hard to tell people what to do and how to

November 9, 2016

Christian Standard

Do It Again

By Jim Tune The hardest part of life, one preacher said, is that it”s so daily. Every day the bed needs to be made. Breakfast needs to be cooked. Dishes, dusting, work, and sleep demand our attention every single day. The same with ministry. Many of our churches need hundreds of volunteers to operate every week. The numbers vary depending on the size of the church, but every church needs people to show up and do their job. There”s not much glory in showing up faithfully, but without it we”re sunk. We get tired, though. The thousandth time a husband

September 9, 2016

Michael C. Mack

Care for Parents and Their Special-Needs Children

By Michael C. Mack Parents of children with special needs long for a break””just a few hours to do whatever they want. “At the same time,” says Bobbie Lynn Rider, “letting go of control and trusting someone else with your loved one can be difficult.” Rider””a blogger at www.graceandfortitude.com, a site that encourages and blesses mothers and caregivers of special-needs individuals””along with her husband, took their daughter to a parent”™s-day-out event at Karns Church of Christ in Knoxville, Tennessee, hosted by the church”™s “Forever His” ministry. About 90 volunteers made the event a success for the 25 or so special-needs

June 6, 2016

Christian Standard

Leadership Reincarnated

By Eddie Lowen With changing times has come fresh interest in leadership. That”s good, because a constantly evolving culture demands regularly rethinking how we lead. If there is a field of study that has been reclaimed or reincarnated by baby boomers, it is leadership. When I entered ministry, leadership wasn”t a hot topic. There were a handful of leadership books and a few gurus making the rounds, but not many. Dale Carnegie and Zig Ziglar talked leadership before it was cool, no doubt. But over the last 25 years, there has been an explosion of writing, speaking, tweeting, and blogging

March 29, 2016

Mark A. Taylor

After Easter: the Challenge Remains

By Mark A. Taylor   Churches and church leaders around the world are breathing a collective sigh of relief this week. Easter is over. All the hard work anticipating big Easter attendances is finished. Larger numbers of volunteers were recruited. Worship services were added (some megachurches began Easter services on Thursday evening). Musicians practiced harder and longer; choirs and worship teams prepared their best. Preachers gave special effort to make sure their sermons were polished and ready. New churches and multisites launched on Easter Sunday, with the hope to attract newcomers on the one Sunday when tradition prods the largest

December 5, 2015

Michael C. Mack

Celebrate Your Volunteers This Season

By Michael C. Mack This is a great time of year to say thank-you and let your volunteers know how much you appreciate them for their service. Here are five simple but significant giving ideas: 1. Be sure your gift communicates that you care about and appreciate each person as an individual. 2. If you have a large number of volunteers, it may be cost prohibitive to send each one an extravagant gift, but you can send a high-quality Christmas card””not the $3 boxed set of 100 cards!””with a personal note in each one, thanking them for their ministry, letting

November 13, 2015

Christian Standard

A Ministry of Hope

By Name Withheld In Indonesia, life can be short. In just two weeks we heard about at least five deaths in our neighborhood or among our neighbors” friends and families. Each death is important to the Indonesians. In most of the villages, if someone dies, the whole village shuts down to mourn. The day someone dies, the death is announced over the loudspeaker from the mosque in the kampung (neighborhood). The men in the community immediately begin building a wooden box for burial, and then they set up plastic chairs and a large tarp so people can come be with

November 5, 2015

Christian Standard

Pennsylvania Church Leading Public School Assemblies

By Jennifer Johnson Many churches lament their inability to impact the public schools or serve their students. But this fall, Discovery Christian Church is presenting anti-bullying programs in three local elementary and two middle schools in Cranberry Township, PA. “A few years ago we did a summer outreach camp for kids in the community,” says Discovery lead pastor Toney Salva. “We held the event in a park instead of in our church building, and one of the school counselors became aware of us and thought we might be able to help with their anti-bullying initiatives.” Discovery did one very successful assembly in

October 2, 2015

Christian Standard

Tour of Duties

By Jennifer Johnson Recently, two older ladies in our church began taking Communion to members in the hospital. While this is far from the 24-hour, professionally trained chaplaincy program organized by First Christian Church in Decatur (see related article), for Miss Marilyn and Miss Pat it was a Bigfoot-sized step out of their comfort zones. “I was scared to death,” Pat said the Sunday after her first hospital visit. But she did it, gathering up the portable Communion set and her car keys and setting out on a faith adventure. Now she and Marilyn are old pros, sometimes scheduling their

October 2, 2015

Christian Standard

A Backstage Pass to Volunteerism

By Jennifer Johnson Like many churches, Compass Christian Church in Colleyville, TX, has a new members class””theirs is called “Discover Compass”””to share information about the church, its mission, and its ministries. Unlike most churches, Compass follows this up with a behind-the-scenes tour to help each person find a way to serve. “We hold the Discover Compass class one week and invite people to come back the following week for Serve Tour,” says Rich Green, serve pastor at Compass. “We begin with a short overview of the importance of serving and why it”s part of the Christian life; then we walk through

September 29, 2015

Mark A. Taylor

Annual Panic

By Mark A. Taylor Every August and September, I was gripped by panic. As part-time education minister with a smaller church (now it”s mega), I was responsible to recruit Sunday school workers for every age level and to staff a fully graded program on Wednesday nights. When kids choirs took a break on Sunday evenings (we had Sunday-night church back in those days), my job was to create and find workers for kids” classes then too. In a church of a few hundred, that was a lot of volunteers, and we never seemed to have quite enough. We encouraged people

September 17, 2015

Christian Standard

What Are They Thinking?

By Susan Lawrence Volunteers are at the heart of ministry. We may serve as a volunteer, work alongside volunteers, or oversee volunteers. We may even do all three at the same time! Working with volunteers isn”t the same as working with paid employees. Use the following as a cheat sheet to help you understand what might be going on behind the faces of your volunteers. For example, here are two possibilities for what the volunteer who serves every week, without complaint, and without ever needing to be reminded, might be thinking . . .  1. I love serving. This is

September 15, 2015

Mark A. Taylor

Volunteers: They”re Vital!

By Mark A. Taylor Not long after I left ministry in the local church to come to the nine-to-five office environment at Standard Publishing, I had an epiphany. I had taken for granted the volunteers who had helped me at the church. When I needed them to come to a meeting, they came. When I asked them to teach a class, they taught. When I recruited them to give up time to keep my latest notion from failing, they were there. Meanwhile, I counted everything I did for the church as part of the job they were paying me for.

September 14, 2015

Christian Standard

25 Ways to Show Volunteers They Matter

Tips, tactics, and testimonies by church leaders who know the value of a volunteer. Compiled by Jennifer Johnson ________ 1. Last fall, I wrote a note to each Bible study leader mentioning specific strengths I see in her. Then I read the notes aloud in our start-up leader meeting. The fun thing was they weren”t expecting this type of affirmation at the beginning of the year. “”Nancy Karpenske, women and spiritual transformation pastor, LifeBridge Christian Church, Longmont, Colorado 2. A couple of times a year we hold major serving events in our community. In our weekend services after each of these events,

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