There are four parts to our discipleship process: Connect, Grow, Serve, and Go.
If you missed any of the previous sections in this series click below:
Behind the Scenes of Our Four Step Discipleship Process
Connect: Part One of Our Discipleship Process
Grow: Part Two of Our Discipleship Process
Serve: Part Three of Our Discipleship Process
Go: Part Four of Our Discipleship Process
What is SERVE all about? I believe that service and being involved in ministry is one of the best ways for people to grow spiritually. At Pioneer Memorial Church, we try to make it as easy as possible for people to be involved.
Before I share the process, allow me to share the framework.
Framework for Ministry
Team. We believe that anyone (generally) can be involved on a team.
Leader. To be a leader of a team you must be a member of the church.
Elder. An elder in the church exercises spiritual oversight and works in consultation with the pastors.
Pastor. There are several staff pastors lead by a senior pastor. As a staff pastor I help to oversee various ministry leaders.
How Are Leaders Placed?
If a leader leaves or needs to be replaced his/her name is taken to our nominating committee. This is an ongoing committee in our church whose only function is to replace ministry leaders. For example, we have a health and wellness ministry in our church. They usually put on several “Connect” type events each year that we can invite people in the community to. When the previous leaders moved away, I set about a process of trying to find a replacement for them, since this is one of the ministries that I oversee. I put in an announcement in our church bulletin and also announced it through our various outlets like newsletters, Facebook, and Twitter.
As a result, several people came forward saying that they would like to be involved. After meeting with those interested, I selected one person who I thought would do a good job as a leader. I then recommended her name to the nominating committee. The nominating committee will evaluate the name, and then officially nominate that person by putting their name in the bulletin for one week. If there are no objections, the name is placed again in the bulletin for a second reading and then the person officially becomes a leader.
The process is actually not as cumbersome as it sounds and someone can go through the process quite quickly.
How Can Someone Join a Team?
At the end of every service the speaker makes an appeal using our Connect card, challenging the people to take some kind of next steps in their walk with God. One of the options that can be selected is to “Join a Service Team.”
If someone selects this option, they are sent a congratulations email, and then given a link which includes various ministries they can be involved in. The link will take them to this page: pmchurch.org/serve. Here, they select the ministry, put in their contact information, and then their information automatically gets sent to the ministry leader for followup. We try to make the process as easy as possible. If you go to that link, by the way, you’ll notice that there are many different kinds of service teams that people can join. Some of the serve opportunities are related to the church service, like our greeting or a/v teams, and other serve opportunities have to do with partnerships that we have in the community.
We use a form service called Formstack.com. This website can be used to easily make new sign-up forms, which we then embed into our webpage. The process is fairly automated, which makes it easier to manage. We send people the intro email, and then the leader contacts them from there to be involved in their ministry.
So what do you think? What are some ways that we could better this system? How do people get involved in service in your church? To leave a comment click here.
[image by elicefeliz]
Several of us have wondered why this system has apparently not worked at all for the Familiy Life ministry in PMC. Several, including the chair, decided it was time to resign from the Family Life Committee, after years of service there, & gave notice several months ago. As far as we can see, no one has been put in place as chair, & no new members have been put onto that committee. One team member, considering it an important part of church life, has continued planning a few activities on her own; otherwise the ministry has basically died. We all wonder, Did/does the church not consider it an important ministry? Is it seen as an unnecessary extra? Is it felt that the Grow Groups will replace it? Were the efforts of the past several years viewed as poorly executed? Is there some subtle passive-aggressive pastoral resistance we never understood?
Hmmm…Good questions. That’s the first time I’ve ever heard anything about it, but I haven’t been here that long. We’d be happy to put that on the list of ministries people can get involved in. How can I help?
Yeah, we don’t have a special prayer service for each new person. How do you guys do that? Invite them on stage to pray for them?