Volunteering...It's Not Just Stuffing Envelopes Anymore - Ministry & Business Marketing, Media and Strategy Blog

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On to volunteering...

If your ministry is anything like most of the organizations I help, you need more volunteers. In fact, you'd love to have a few extra pairs of hands around, even if it's just for an hour a week.

But what is your volunteering strategy? How do you use volunteers? I bet if you stop to think about it, you could use more than just an army of envelope stuffers?

Whether you realize it or not, there's a new wave in volunteering, mirroring the recent seismic shifts in giving and ministry involvement. For those of you unaware, many donors are no longer content to simply write a check and pray for you. They want to be hands-on with the ministries they're passionate about and financially supporting...a very good change indeed.

And now even volunteers are looking to do more than help with the latest mailing or play part-time janitor. They want to volunteer strategically. That is, they want to give skilled time to your cause e.g., web design, plumbing, financial consulting, strategic planning, and more.

In response, ministry leaders need to prayerfully consider ways to use skilled labor to further the work God's called them to. Remember Paul's wonderful Spirit-led exhortation: "...we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the Head, even Christ, from whom the whole body, being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, cause the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love," (Eph. 4:15a-16). Paul wrote other great stuff on the Spirit-led workings of the body of Christ in 1 Corinthians 12:11-27 and elsewhere.

Reality check: if ministries would put to Kingdom use the skilled labor of the people whom God has partnered with them, literally billions of dollars could be saved! You need to stop looking for people simply willing to do your grunt work and start praying and thinking about what your key needs are and who you know that might be able to fulfill them. (If you don't currently know somebody who can fill your needs, pray that God will gather those strategic volunteers to you.)

As you consider your needs and prayerfully recruit folks to meet them, be sure to design opportunities that are manageable for folks who presumably are seeking Christ wholeheartedly and therefore already time-committed to their personal walk with Him, their family, and their church. Practically-speaking, you should aim for skilled laborers to help you an hour a week. If they want to give more time than that, great! But don't lean on them until they break (or snap!).

Shameless plug alert! MinistryHour.com is a new free service that connects biblical ministries with Christian professionals willing to offer skilled service, starting with an hour a week (a ministry hour). Just fill out their simple form, which remains confidential, and MinistryHour will do its best to connect you either with a like-minded ministry with a need you can fill, or with a Christian professional willing to serve.

Churches and parachurch ministries must completely revolutionize their volunteering scheme and make it just as much a part of their strategy as prayer, leadership choices, and more. Volunteering...it's not just stuffing envelopes anymore.

Defensive Blogging: Protecting Your Ministry in the Blogosphere - Ministry & Business Marketing, Media and Strategy Blog

By now, your web guy has sent you a thousand emails praising blogging as a means of getting the word out on your ministry or business. Sure enough blogs are a great way to keep friends posted on your efforts, bring on new folks, and reach more people for Christ than you can through your website alone. But have you ever considered blogging in light of what's being said about you outside the cozy confines of your church, business, etc.?

Introducing defensive blogging.

Case in point, today I searched Google for blogs from a ministry almost all of you have heard of, which will remain unnamed to protect the techno-challenged. The result of my search: no weblogs from the ministry in question and a slew of well-ranked posts from a blog actually bashing the very ministry I was searching for. Your takeaway: somebody's going to be talking about you; make sure that you're at least a part of the conversation.

For those ministries intent on shrewd, biblical outreach, blogs, as with websites before them, are no longer optional. In fact, if you have already or plan to soon achieve any sort of profile, things will be said about you online. And the blogosphere, thanks to Google rankings and more, has a way of spreading the word about you--for better or for worse.

The good news is that offering your own online voice will at least give you a seat at the table and will go a long way toward diffusing unjust criticism and attack. (Notice I said unjust; the rest of you see James 4:7.)

So what's it going to be? Will you use defensive blogging to protect and further the work God's called you to? Or will you skip the blogosphere and allow Satan and even some well-meaning but misguided brothers and sisters in Christ to use their online voices to tear down God's work through you and yours?

Defensive blogging. It's not just for Steve Jobs anymore...

Strategies for Christian Business Owners - Ministry & Business Marketing, Media and Strategy Blog

File this under the "and more" portion of our blog description...

Listen to this quick clip from Crown Ministries' Money Matters show, featuring Christian business owner and Lucky Rock friend Raymond Harris of Raymond Harris & Associates in Dallas, TX.

In the interview Raymond briefly discusses the need for great wisdom to effectively run a business and how Crown helped him biblically manage his business and shape his approach to giving. Hint: if you do it God's way, you'll be successful in every way that counts.

FYI, click here to subscribe to the excellent daily Money Matters show.

Ministry Branding and New Distribution Opportunities for Your Ministry - Ministry & Business Marketing, Media and Strategy Blog

Check out this recent article covering The Daily Show with Jon Stewart offering all of their show archives online (eventually including all nine years of episodes). Now think about your ministry.

Even if you're not a Crown Financial Ministries, which offers many different broadcasts in a variety of formats, your mp3s and videos could get a second life on your website. Imagine folks being able to search your ministry audio/video by keyword, sermon title, date, guest, etc. This could open a tremendous new channel for ministry without your spending a dime on new content or technology.

Take it a step further.

Don't just list your ministry archives. Enable links to clips to be sent by email or (even better) text messaged to the friends, family, and ministry partners of your site visitors. And allow "contagious" site visitors to post your content to their own blogs and to tag your content with their own keywords. (Your web guy should know how to do this. If you're the web guy, just cruise Google for html code on blog links, etc.)

As The Daily Show marketing execs know well, hosting content on your site not only provides you with an easy distribution channel; it helps you brand your ministry. Unfortunately, a simple podcast stream on ITunes a ministry brand does not make. Neither does merely offering your ministry goodies on oneplace.com, no matter how great your content is.

Think back to Southwest Airlines' prescient decision to offer tickets exclusively on their website rather than on Expedia, Travelocity, and other online locales. The result was that the Southwest brand concept remained strong while the brand identities of Southwest's competitors melted into the faceless fare war inherent to travel websites. The lesson: don't depend on other venues to brand you; do it yourself.

It is critically important that we exercise shrewdness in our ministry branding, not over and against other biblical ministries, but so as to mazimize the profit of every opportunity God gives us, (see Matt. 10:16, Col. 4:5). Offering viral-friendly content on your site will allow you to efficiently extend your ministry brand and, in turn, effectively reach many more folks than simple outside distribution alone.

Soon I'll blog about how to best tap outside distribution opportunities, especially for parachurch ministries.