Leadership

8 Things to Never Forget When Creating Your Experience (Part Two)

Let me refresh us on what I mean by an “experience”:
What I mean when I say “experience” is your worship services, your classes, your events, your Vacation Bible School, your conferences. Anything where you are creating an environment where people are engaging in worship or coming together in a large group setting.

Your gatherings should be more than an ‘event’ – people should be taken on a journey, have a feeling, a connection with your message.
Your congregation should have an experience every time that come to your gatherings.

With that in mind, I’d like to offer 4 more Things to Never Forget When You are Creating Your Experience:

5. Never Forget: To help provide consistent Training Opportunities for Veterans.

Training volunteers is so important. And training shouldn’t stop with new volunteers.

You should be consistently providing training opportunities for new members of your team and for your veterans.

Consider this approach: Try offering training opportunities like college courses so it’s clear where someone is in the training process and gives clear milestones for growth.

I’ve seen a lot of success using this method in my experience.

We called our training process “BASICS” and it was designed like this:

BASICS 101 = Observe a Volunteer operate a position on a Sunday.
BASCIS 102 = Monday Night Training experience.
BASICS 103 = New Volunteer would operate a position on a Sunday with a Veteran with them. “Bowling with Bumpers”.

BASICS 201, 202, 203 = same process but designed for Veterans to be Cross-Trained

BASICS 301, 302, 303 = an advanced course for Live Directors and Producers

I’ll talk about this training process more in a later episode.
The point I’m trying to make here is to set your volunteers up to succeed. Build their confidence. Train them well. And you’ll see the execution of your services improve. Never forget that training your team is key.

Learn more about the BASICS Training Process here.

6. Never Forget: That your service matters.

If your volunteers know why they serve and are clear on your vision: they will invest in your ministry and they won’t be there just to push a button.

Here are some Ideas for reminding your team how their service matters:
1. Create opportunities for them share their own story with each other.
Reserve time for people to share their testimony, and what God is doing in their life.

2. Create opportunities for other people in the church to share their story of how the services have impacted their life.
I had an hour between services. I intentionally filled that time with –
-food, games, devotions, staff members speaking, team members sharing, prayer, and other community building things.

3. Get out of the booth – go see and serve in the care response at a service.
Take your volunteers out of your control room, out of your booth down where the result of their service is happening. Take them to the care room or response area. Don’t be intrusive, and don’t interrupt conversations, but show them real people that are responding to an invitation. If you can, even have your volunteers learn how to have care conversations and create opportunities where its routine for production volunteers to have care conversations with people who respond in the service. Talk about motivating! Imagine your volunteers having direct conversations with people who have responded to a service or experience that your volunteers help create. Now their heart is in the game.

4. Celebrate numbers.
Every number is a person, and that person matters to God. If your vision or your goal is to see salvation and spiritual growth from the experiences you create as a team, why not share measurable results with them? Share salvation numbers, baptism numbers, care responses, how many people signed up for a small group or bible study. These are the things you’re after. Celebrate with your team how these things are happening in your church.

Serving your team and your church matters.

7. Never Forget: To be active in creating the culture.

Whether you are a staff member or volunteer, you are a part of creating the culture you want to be apart of.

Here are 6 quick things to think about when helping create your team culture:

1. Create a team Headquarters space to hang out in.
2. Have Team Events: perhaps have 1 small monthly event, 1 large quarterly event
3. Create a Closed Facebook Group:  where your volunteers can connect with each other online in a safe place.
4. Create Small Groups consisting of people on your Team: this encourages small group involvement and also helps people create deeper friendships with other
volunteers on the team.
5. Team Clothing and Gear: get some shirts, lanyards, jackets, hats. These items are getting pretty cheap with sites like vistaprint.com and other resources.
6. Celebrate Together: I mentioned this some earlier, but celebrating together is a huge piece in building your culture – Celebrate salvation & baptism numbers, celebrate birthdays, new babies, promotions, and other wins from your team.

8. Never Forget: To Raise Up Leaders and Multiply Yourself.

Let me bust this myth: “If I work myself out of a job, then I won’t have a job.”

Here’s the truth:
The more you can continually work yourself out of a job…
-the more valuable you are to your church.
-the more serving opportunities you’re creating for other people.
-the more effective your ministry is.

STAFF:
Are you creating a structure where you are working yourself out of your job?

VOLUNTEERS:
Are you stepping into those opportunities?
-Stepping into leadership roles allows you and your team to have greater impact in creating your experience.
-It also is a gift to your staff leader to maximize his ministry efforts. They can spend more time ministering to people rather than getting tasks done.

When you keep these 8 things at the front of your mind and are active in creating structure around these ideas, your ministry will explode.
And you’ll be ready and prepared for the growth.

You are creating experiences for people to meet Jesus and grow in their walk with Him. What you do matters to people. You may think you’re just pushing a button or moving a fader – its so much more than that – you’re creating an experience.

CARL BARNHILL
Creative Director / Owner
[twelve:thirty]media | Columbia, SC
twelvethirtymedia.com

Carl Barnhill has served on staff at some of the largest churches and organizations in the country. He served as Media Director at Precept Ministries International, directing the television and radio program Precepts for Life with Kay Arthur, broadcasted to over 98 million homes around the world. He served as Video Production Director at Pinelake Church in Brandon, MS, where he produced media content for four campuses, as well as led volunteer teams.

He most recently served as Video Coordinator for Newspring Church in South Carolina. Newspring has 10 campuses across the state with a weekly attendance of over 35,000. At one campus alone, the number of consistent volunteers serving in media production tripled, under his leadership.

He currently serves as Creative Director and Owner of [twelve:thirty]media, a company that serves churches and ministries all over the world through motion graphics content and church media coaching.