5 Strategies to Elevate Your Ministry’s Efforts to Serve Others Well

In a world yearning for answers, truth, and faith, we stand ready with the power to make a profound impact. While we’re well-versed in our spiritual duties, let’s not overlook the importance of refining our organizational strategies for maximum effectiveness. Get ready to dive into five game-changing strategies that will not only elevate your church’s engagement, communication, giving, and service but will also spark a transformation that resonates far beyond the sanctuary walls!

Strategy #1: What gets tracked gets improved.

Effective reporting is crucial for any organization, including churches. Identifying and tracking key metrics can provide valuable insights into the congregation’s engagement and growth. Here are three areas that churches should focus on:

1. Track Engagement:
Find meaningful metrics that you can track around people’s involvement with your ministry. Here are a few examples of what you could track and why.

Track the number of people interested in receiving newsletters, emails, texts and other communication from your ministry. Members who want to be “in the know” and want to hear from you, are likely candidates for volunteering, serving, or attending events now and in the future. They likely have a sense of community.
Monitor the percentage of individuals serving.

One sign of church health is the percentage of people serving vs. attending. It’s easy to overlook this number if the few hands you have serving are doing a good job and everything is getting done. But looking at the numbers (and the names of who is doing what) can paint a better picture. A low serving-to-attending ratio could be a sign of things like:

• People gatekeeping, and not letting others serve in “their” area of ministry, because nobody else can “do it right.”
• Apathy.
• People not being aware of needs.
• People needing more encouragement to serve. It’s possible they got pushed out of, burnt out, or otherwise discouraged serving in another church or organization and need a pep talk to get back in the game.
• Future burnout of the people who are carrying the load.
• Future issues if the few hands who are doing most of the work leave or are called home.
• A need to pass the torch to the next generation.

A related statistic you can track is looking at individuals who are serving, and knowing the average number of ministries they’re serving in. This may help you identify people who need can start passing the torch and raising up other leaders.

Keep an eye on regular attendance. We shouldn’t make people feel like they’re being closely monitored and reach out too often or too quickly when they miss. However, attendance patterns can reveal who might need a brother or sister to reach out to go get coffee. Or who might need someone to come babysit so they can have a day to recharge.

2. Track Touchpoints:
What is a touchpoint? A touchpoint is any interaction that your ministry has with an individual or family. “Anything” means, well, anything from: sending a member an email, to a child attending VBS, to a couple attending a marriage counseling session, to someone stepping up and serving in your ministry for the first time.

When you track touchpoints, you’ll get a clear picture of how your ministry is making an impact in others’ lives. You’ll see how your relationship with some members is growing and where your relationship may need to be improved with others. You’ll even see where your ministry may be letting a certain family or individual fall through the cracks, and be able to step in and make sure they can get better connected and feel the love and service your ministry wants to show them, or get them plugged in to serve and love others.

Over time, you’ll be able to look back and see personal faith growth through members going from being first-time visitors, to attending Sunday school classes, and eventually being baptized, joining discipleship relationships, and discipling and serving others.

3. Outreach:
Tracking your outreach efforts can be a good predictor of both present and future ministry health.

Here is a list of ways to track outreach efforts and some of their effectiveness. But first, remember, you may never know how God chooses to use your outreach efforts. And just because they don’t result in someone new attending your ministry does not mean that your efforts for for nothing. Do your outreach and trust God with the outcome.

Even still, here’s how you can see how your efforts may be used to grow your ministry or your ministry’s impact on the community:

• Track the number of events and outreach efforts you have each year. Decide if that number could grow based on your ministry size and resources, or if maybe it would be better to cut some efforts to be able to put more focus on others.
• Track the number of new people who visit your church. Ask them if they have a connection to any other ministry. Bringing people into your church who have no other church association is a good sign that God has used your efforts in some way to reach someone new.
• Good tracking of who connects with your ministry via outreach efforts will help you know when they eventually start coming to your church. Sometimes it may take years before a first interaction with your ministry before it turns into a church visit. So tracking this over time can help you see the impact that a particular ministry outreach can have.

Strategy #2: Communicate the right message to the right person at the right time.

Effective communication is the cornerstone of any successful organization, and churches are no exception. Servant Keeper offers powerful features to personalize and time communications accurately. Here’s how churches can optimize their communication:

1. When:
Based on research of millions of email sends and opens, if possible, send your emails Tuesdays and Thursdays between 9:00 am and 12:00 pm local time. But most importantly, maintain a consistent schedule to help members anticipate and locate messages easily. For example, if you send out a weekly newsletter email, send it out at the same day and time each week. If people miss the email when it comes in, they’ll know where in their inboxes to look for it.

2. Who:
Make sure you’re sending the right message to the right person by giving members and visitors the opportunity to opt into various forms of communication. Request communication preferences (letters, texts, or emails) from members. Encourage opt-ins for ministry messages, especially during outreach events.

3. What:
Craft engaging subject lines for emails. Also, “brand” your communications by adding something consistent to the title or subject line so that people can easily search for the email later.

Keep content concise and mobile-friendly. Remember, when it comes to communication length, sometimes less is more. If you find you got too wordy in a letter or email, you can write your message and use free tools like Chat GPT to copy and paste your text and make it more concise.

Some studies have shown that people need to see the same message upwards of 5-10 times before they remember it. Don’t repeat everything you say that many times, but for your most crucial messages, and for those items where you really need everyone’s attention and involvement, plan to leverage multi-channel communications. This means using every method of communication you have for the same message. Say it during the announcements on Sunday, put it in the bulletin, put it in an email, send it in a text, and put it on your website and Facebook page. You may even have to send it out in a letter or a postcard. Sometimes you may have to do all this twice.

Strategy #3: Make giving relational instead of transactional.

Giving is an act of worship. It’s part of an individual’s relationship with God and with your ministry. Keep giving relational and foster a culture of giving in the church. Here’s how churches can achieve this:

1. Focus on the ‘Why’:
Share mission progress and increase member awareness. Connect gifts to the overall mission and vision of the church.

2. Teach Biblical Giving:
Address the importance of financial commitment through sermons or series on giving.

3. Personalized Thank-Yous:
Show appreciation to donors with personalized notes.

4. Celebrate the everyday goodness of God.
No matter where your ministry stands today, you owe thankfulness to God for the way He has provided. You may be celebrating the completion of a major new building project, or you may have just completed another year where you weren’t sure if you could keep the doors open financially, but you made it! Either way, let the whole church come together to celebrate when God has supplied your needs. Open it to everyone and encourage all to attend. This can be a worshipful experience and its purpose is to praise and thank God. It may also lead people who have fallen away from giving to celebrate all that God has done and want to be part of it.

Strategy #4: Put giving on auto-pilot.

Simplify the giving process to encourage consistent contributions. Utilize online and recurring giving options to overcome forgetfulness and streamline financial support.

1. Encourage Online and Recurring Gifts:
Make it easy for members to set up recurring donations.

2. Automate Giving Receipts:
Confirm received gifts and tie them back to the church’s mission.

3. Provide Access to Giving History:
Allow members to access their giving history for transparency and accountability.

Strategy #5: Make it easy for people to serve.

Facilitate active participation within the congregation by providing user-friendly tools and resources. Servant Keeper has a tool to make it easier for people to serve across your ministry.

1. Pastors and Elders:
Servant Keeper’s mobile ministry apps will improve your ability to minister to others during visitation, counseling, and more.

2. Treasurers and Finance Teams:
In-depth reporting and accurate financial tracking is easy with Servant Keeper. Plus automated dashboards let you collaborate with other members of your team from anywhere.

3. Admins:
Administrators love Servant Keeper. We design new tools and features to streamline processes for efficient church operations. We’re meticulous about removing any extra steps and button clicks so you can do what you need to with a few clicks, and get on with your day.

4. Members:
Our online directory and member profiles allow for seamless connection with other members and your ministry.

Conclusion:
Implementing these five strategies can significantly enhance a church’s engagement, communication, giving, and service efforts. By leveraging tools like Servant Keeper and adopting a relational approach to engagement, churches can create a vibrant and thriving community that positively impacts its members and the broader community.