5 Critical Keys to Getting People to Serve

Getting people to serve is at the very foundation of leading in the local church. Without the body of Christ functioning as a body with many members, all working together to accomplish the mission, the local church is left to injury. Burnout. It’s an injury to the body of Christ.

Just recently, we launched a brand new ministry team at The Crossing called the Get Connected Team. My hope was to assemble a team of people who aren’t serving already in the church. And what resulted is a team of 19 people, most of which were not serving already. I believe that it was quite easy to assemble this team because we have been making it a point to address these 5 critical keys to getting people to serve. In other words, they work. So let’s get into it.

5 Critical Keys to Getting People to Serve

1. Help Them Fall In Love With Jesus

People who love Jesus can’t help but serve. They take the love that God has bestowed upon them and they magnify it back onto others. If you want to see an influx of people serving in your local church, focus on helping them love, surrender to, and follow Jesus.

Preach the Gospel every week. Don’t waste any opportunity to connect whatever passage you are preaching on back to the good news of Jesus.

2. Help Them Catch the God-Sized Vision

No vision = no life. No vision = no vibrancy, energy, or passionate serving. Why? Well, when you fail at casting vision, you fail at helping the congregation understand the why of the what. Why does this church exist? Where are we going as a church and why? These are simple questions that vision answers.

You should be talking about the vision to the point where you’re tired of doing so. Just when you get to that point – when you’re tired of doing it – the congregation will get to the point where they begin to get it. Begin leading to the place God wants, not where you think your church could go.

3. Share Stories of People Who Do Serve and Have Been Served

Celebrate the serving that people are doing within the congregation. Implement a servant spotlight video that goes out once a month or a couple times a month. Know of someone who has been served by the church? Ask them if you can share their story.

What gets celebrated gets the focus. If you’re helping people see that serving is a meaningful and necessary thing, you’re going to see more people jump in.

4. Call Them to Radical Service

The pulpit is the perfect place to call your congregation to radical service. Look for ways to talk about it throughout each sermon series you preach. Look for ways to utilize your end of sermon action step as an on-ramp to serving.

In addition to calling them to radical service from the pulpit, utilize your small group ministry or Sunday school ministry to do the same thing. As the groups get smaller, the likelihood that you’ll get a positive response increase.

5. Personally Ask Them

This is the most duh one in this list, yet it’s the most under utilized one as well. When we created that new team of 19 people, we followed a simple strategy – make a list of people who come to mind and aren’t already serving then call them. It’s simple, yet highly effective.

If you do a good job of connecting with people on Sundays and throughout the week then calling them and asking them to be a part of a ministry team won’t be awkward, it will be welcomed.

Oh, and guess how many people said no when we asked them. ZERO! 100% efficiency is pretty darn good!

Get Busy!

These 5 keys to getting people to serve work, you just gotta go work them. Imagine what your church would look like if another 20 people jumped into serving in a ministry area. Or what about 30? Or 50? Or 100?

If getting people to serve would change some things in your church for the better, then get busy. Do each one of these and you’ll have exponentially more people serving within the next week.

What About You?

Would you add anything to this list? If so, what would it be? I’d love to hear from you! Leave a comment below or on social media (Facebook Group | Facebook Page | Twitter)!

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