This month at Grace Community we are working hard to celebrate our volunteers. Every week volunteers make it possible for our church to reach people in our city with the message of Jesus. Volunteers at our church lead worship, serve in the parking lot to greet people, welcome guests at each door, lead kid’s small groups, run sound boards, man the video cameras, rock babies in our nursery, sing with crazy preschoolers, and ensure that every guest who checks out our church has the best experience possible. Our volunteers are leaders who have a servant’s heart. Here are a few things we try to do to celebrate what God is doing through them throughout the year…
- Host a Volunteer Banquet // This year for the first time we are hosting a banquet for our volunteers and we are going to have a blast. We hope to inspire them, laugh with them, and encourage them on the same night. We do this once a year but we are placing a ton of effort into the night to make it special. Will recap this event after March 17!
- Celebrate their birthdays // This year we are sending a small gift to every volunteer on their birthday. We found small basketballs and had them personalized for our voolunteers with our logo and a short message on them. We sign each one as a staff and mail them out each month. Everybody loves to be remembered on their birthday.
- Honor them // In our student and college ministry we try to call out a few volunteers each month and honor them in our training meetings. We also highlight volunteers through social media throughout the church just so we can honor what they are doing to make a difference.
- Encourage them // We try to make sure that everyone on our staff knows that encouraging volunteers is a big deal. We sent out emails and notes often just to let volunteers know we care and we value them. We also try to make sure that we are encouraging volunteers on a regular basis in our worship gatherings. We want them to know they are on our team.
- Support them // Volunteers need to know that they have a group of people to support them when things are not going well. We try to make our teams feel like family. When volunteers hurt we all hurt with them and try to walk with them.
- Make it fun // Every chance we get we try to have fun as we serve. Volunteers love to laugh and we try to do as much of that as possible. We are even brining in a comedian to our volunteer banquet because having fun is a big deal.