On Saturday, boot tracks in the snow will mean only one thing. Santa Claus has dropped off gifts meant to bring joy to you and your family.
The time your volunteers spend serving is a gift to your church. But, it's also a reflection of the spiritual gifts God gave them. That word in Greek is charisma.
If you spoke that version of Greek, you would intuitively know that the ma part meant little and the charis part meant grace. Literally "gracelets". In addition you would know char meant joy. So, spiritual gifts are God's grace working itself out through His people to bring joy to the world!
In church as in other parts of life, you measure what's most important. Why? So that you can keep track of it, use it most wisely, improve on your use of it, and celebrate what has been done.
Many churches track serving for the same reasons, more specifically, they track serving to:
- Make sure important tasks are covered. You don't want too many infants and not enough volunteers in the nursery.
- Make sure you are using people's time wisely. Volunteers lose interest if they feel their time is wasted.
- Make sure people are appreciated. More on this next time.
- See the impact of volunteer hours on ministry.
In the training post in this series we talked about using check-in to capture and then benchmark a potential volunteer's involvement in and completion of the instruction phase of volunteering. Similarly, with every serving opportunity, you can use the check-in system to capture volunteer participation.
Historically, churches have thought of check-in as an activity for parents with kids to get a name tag and to know the church is serious about child security. But, with All Check, we expanded the use of check-in so that it can be used not only for child security, but also for everyone to check in to everything they are doing, including serving.
Once you set up All Check, volunteers simply text the keyword "Check" to get a link to check themselves in for whatever service role they are doing. Unless they need a name tag, they don't even have to go to a kiosk. It's a very simple process. But the results are significant because now you have data to be able to care for and celebrate your volunteers.
As Christmas comes to your home in the next few days, may you experience the joy of the most wonderful gift ever given - the Lord has come. From all our team to you and your family, a very Merry Christmas.
