Increasing Serve Team Engagement

Onboarding best practices, metrics that matter, and how we steward high-capacity volunteers.

CLICK IMAGE TO DOWNLOAD BREAKOUT NOTES

ADDITIONAL LINKS

SERVE TEAM 201 BOOKLET

SERVE TEAM 201 FORM

VOLUNTEER APPLICATION

TABLE CONNECTOR NOTES

BREAKOUT Q&A SUBMISSIONS

CULTURE

How do you keep people excited and engaged on your Dream Team?	This is all about having a healthy culture. Teams that have fun together grow. Teams that actually know each other grow. People have to connect to the vision of the house and to each other. If people don't connect to each other on a team it's difficult for them to be excited and engaged.
What’s your suggestion for a multicampus church to create the same serve team culture at multiple locations with different serve team lead styles?	We have a monthly Serve Team Culture meeting with the staff from all campuses (anyone leading volunteer teams). We have a standing agenda for that meeting that includes: Metrics & Accountability Who are you excited about right now? Key Dates / Upcoming Events Best Practices for Recruiting Stories and Celebration
How do you engage someone who has remained only attending? AKA not a new guest or recent growth track attendee.	It's very difficult to do cold recruiting. Most of our recruiting happens via our Growth Track and Small Groups. Meaning, that's where most of our volunteers come from.
How do you facilitate a sense of spiritual family among volunteers if they’re all spread out (e.g. Greeters) and/or only serve once a month?	Maximize the pre-service team huddle. Check out our huddle template in the breakout session notes.
Do you allow people to serve as much as they want? For example if someone on the production team wants to serve every week all services on camera, do you allow that or limit to prevent burnout?	Yes, we allow people to serve as much as they want. It's important to stay connected to these volunteers to monitor their emotional health. We're more concerned about an individual serving in multiple ministries because the department heads don't always know that their team members may be serving in other ministries.
How do we have the tough conversation to the volunteer to say no without them being offended? Some of our dream team gets offended when we ask them to relax.	It's our job to steward our volunteers, it comes from a place of love. Staying healthy long term is more important than maximizing one volunteer's time and effort.
For your Usher director who leads all ushers for all for services, does this director serve every week, twice a month, once a month?	We have two rotations, A & B, that serve twice a month. Each rotation has a team Lead that reports to the Usher Director.

DEVELOPING LEADERS

Do you have a process to move people from a low technical serve team position to a high technical serve team position? The % for engagement seems always higher for the less technical serve options vs. high tech options.	True, technical roles require a specific skillset. We do scheduled trainings for technical serve roles to better equip the entire team. In doing so, the higher skilled individuals usually emerge.
We have Serve Team Leaders that have been leading their team for many years, do you have any implemented break periods or “time off” for them implemented in their leadership care?	That decision is best made by having a conversation with the leader. A sabbatical from serving is a great idea. We wouldn't mandate it unless the individual is unhealthy.
What is the best way to communicate these values to your teams? A vision night with all of our dream teams? Leaders communicating this to the individual teams?	A large annual celebration is good, and we do this, but the most effective thing is to maximize your pre-service huddles and infuse DNA and culture in those settings.
When and how often do you have venues for training, coaching, and values reinforcement? What systems do you have in place to ensure values are being taught and defended?	We try to reinforce our values in a variety of meetings. Each department submits their annual training calendar with the goal for each of those meetings
What does a high energy, fun training session look like? What is your primary focus? Looking to get more engagement in attendance and excitement and not just attending another meeting.	Our rule of thumb is to maximize the time you have during meetings. Don't waste anyone's time. Food is always a plus, but training and celebration can be accomplished together at most meetings. If you want instant momentum, share stories. They go viral. Stories of your team going the extra mile, loving others when no one is watching

DISCIPLESHIP

How do you spiritually feed volunteers? Is there a hard limit on serving or just rule of thumb on how often newer volunteers can serve? Required or suggested attendance?

Spiritual growth comes in many ways, so we ask our team leads to be encourage growth and celebrate steps (like baptism). Our training meetings throughout the year are a combination of spiritual inspiration and coaching on the practicals, or "how-tos" for each ministry environment.

FIRST SERVE + FOLLOW-UP

How is it determined who sends the text to someone that just went through 201?	The staff present at the 201 breakout send the same day text.
Do you prefer a follow up text vs phone call? Are people more likely to respond to a text vs a voicemail?	Text is the most successful way to interact with new or potential volunteers.
Does a serve team member’s first serve look like a shadow of a top team member?	Yes—they shadow our best team members.

GROWTH TRACK

What do you do if people say they want to serve but not attending a small group?	Let them serve!
What is the tangible next step from pew member to serving?	Go to the second step of our Growth Track, Serve Team 201. It happens on the 2nd Sunday of each month.
What are your thoughts on pop up tables that highlight a volunteer need for a certain team? Only one or two a week. (ie: Kids volunteer table, Production Volunteer table)	Love it. We've done "volunteer campaigns" where we have tables in the Commons. Summertime is a great time to do this.
Do you recruit people that aren’t saved yet or don’t know how reliable they are?	No. We learn a lot about people through the Table Connectors that host at Discovery 101 & Serve Team 201, and we use a meeting called our Connections Review to stay connected as a staff on how we are giving each person the right next step. You can learn more about Table Connectors & our Connections Review in our Growth Track People Board Notes..

HUDDLE

How to get those who are serving the second service, to attend the “huddle” if they are sitting in the first service.	This is tough, but we really emphasize attending the huddle. Don't fight it if they can't, but encourage it if they are able to step out of service a little early to attend.
What time are your huddles? How do y’all manage with asking people to sit a service and serve a different one but encouraging to be on time to huddle, that may make them miss some of the service.	Most of our huddles take place 30-45 minutes before the service.

METRICS

How do you determine how long a season of measuring metrics will be for you? In other words, when you are trying to find certain data, how do you determine that this department needs x amount of time studied in order of us to take data? How long do you let new ideas in motion until it’s considered a pass or fail?	Every report we pull has a different timeframe. Example: We audit our Serve Team lists 1x per quarter, but our weekend check-in report is pulled every week. For data to be reliable, you need about a 6 month window at the very least. New ideas that are clearly failing should be stopped immediately.
For the 201 conversion chart, do you have standards for what “joined team” means. IE: consistency, after X amount of times?	We don't, we consider them "joined" once their first serve is complete and they've returned to the team and checked in.
On your 201 conversion report, how do you track when people join the serve team to be counted on that report? If they join within one month of their 201 class? Within 6 months of their 201 class? What's the cut off date? Thank you!!	They can join a team at any point after our 201 class. Sometimes it's immediate, meaning they'll schedule their 1st serve the following week, and then officially join following that. It's not uncommon for it to take 4-6 weeks for someone to complete their first serve.
How long ago did you start tracking metrics with this level granularity? What has been the measured effectiveness? Who/is the input gathered?	We've been measuring conversion data and net growth (additions and attrition) for several years, the cascade has been measured 1-2x per year, but we're beginning to look at that quarterly. Remember, these are all metrics that we believe reveal the overall health of your entire Serve Team. It's important to break down the data per department as well. Not only do the metrics reveal the health of the volunteer teams, but they speak to the quality of leadership our staff provides. At the most basic level, it's accountability.
On the cascade spreadsheet, how often is that updated? Are their levels of involvement spread across multiple departments?	Historically, 1-2x per year. 2025 we'll look at it quarterly. It requires your staff to audit their volunteer lists 4x a year.
Do you have an active report to track engaged volunteers to assist with proactive discipleship? Such as completing growth track, last serve, active tither, etc. to create a cumulative score to measure how engaged they are?	Yes and no. We use the Rock as our CMS, and it defines "engaged" in very broad terms. We're actually going through the exercise now of re-defining how we define engaged.

RECRUITING & ONBOARDING

What are the most effective strategies for recruiting additional members for the serve team, aside from utilizing Growth Track?	Volunteers who recruit other volunteers is by the far the most effective form of recruiting. Your current volunteers should be a walking billboard for others to join. Teams that enjoy serving are contagious.
What recruitment tools have you used that works? What language do you use when recruiting volunteers? What does the onboarding process look like? How do you get people to buy in?	Onboarding process: 1) Attend 201 2) Go to the ministry breakout of your choosing 3) Turn forms in and schedule a first serve 4) Complete first serve 5) First serve evaluation, if it's a yes - 6) We build the profile in Planning Center and add to the team in Rock (our CMS) 7) Begin to check-in when you start serving
Do you recommend empowering and challenging your current serve team to recruit leaders on their own for the serve team they serve in? (Children’s ministry)	Yes! We encourage people to tell their friends about why they love serving on a team, and to help them go through the Growth Track and find a place to use their gifts. We also have specific ministry highlights in our Serve Team 201 class, depending on current and seasonal needs.

RETENTION & SCHEDULING

What do you do for volunteer retention?	Equip, love, support, celebrate are things we do. But the most importantly, be there for them in challenging seasons of their lives.
Advice on how to retain volunteers/leaders for the long haul in preschool ministry?	Don't schedule your volunteers every week. Provide support and relationship outside of serving. Make sure they're connected to someone other than you. They need connections with each other
How do you handle volunteers that commit to helping but then don’t show up when the time comes? They are excited but always seem to have something come up when it comes time to volunteer How do you deal with habitual last-minute serve request declines and no-shows (“I forgot I was scheduled to serve”)	We roll with it. I wouldn't police this too much. Declines and no-shows are part of what we all deal with. Our rule of them is... if you have 10 available spots for people to serve, then invite 20 to serve. Stack the deck, there will always be no-shows. Build your teams deep enough to serve people well even with a % of people that don't serve when they've been scheduled.
When a volunteer declines their position, what is your process? Do they find their own replacement? What communication platform do you use?	They do not find their own replacement (but wouldn't that be awesome!). We communicate via Planning Center Online. When a volunteer steps out of their role, it's important to be gracious and loving in that process. We like to say that we'll "leave the light on" for volunteers.