Improve Your Church Volunteer Ministry With Zoom

Every year it’s the same story with your church volunteer ministry. We need to do another training, so we need to find a time when our volunteers can meet, a place to meet, and try to herd everyone together. But it doesn’t end there…

We still have volunteers that can’t make the meeting, so we have to have a special second meeting for them that’s rushed and unorganized so we end up not giving all the critical details needed.

All this hassle and disarray can cause headaches for your precious volunteers, which then passes the stress to them too…the last thing you want.

There has to be a better way to do this, right?

 

Zoom: The Answer To Your Church Volunteer Ministry Meetings

 

 

There are many productivity tools for churches, and Zoom is becoming one of our favorites.

With Zoom you have the ability to create online meetings with your volunteers to have anyone join from anywhere. No more finding the perfect time, finding a big enough space, and hoping people show up.

So how can you use Zoom for your church volunteer ministry? Let’s go.

Try Zoom today for free

Purchase Zoom with a discount for nonprofits with Tech Soup.

 

Volunteer Policy Training

Many churches have yearly training for their ministries, often for children’s ministry volunteers. These are usually required, which makes the stakes even higher to have a 100% attendance.

Zoom allows you to do your annual training better by allowing you to hold the meetings online, so your volunteers don’t have to commute to the church or find babysitters.

You’re also able to record the sessions:

  • Your volunteers that can’t make the live meeting can watch the replay
  • Any volunteers that come in the middle of the year can rewatch the training, onboarding properly right off the bat

 

Information Sessions

Zoom gives you more flexibility outside of your volunteers. If you need to hold information sessions for parents before camp or even just your community members, Zoom lets you do all this with the same benefits as above.

  • No need for physical space
  • Makes it easier for people to attend
  • Record for rewatching

 

Include Volunteers In Ministry Meetings

There are many times in my church staff meetings when we needed the input from volunteers. Once, we had a budget meeting and we wanted to have a volunteer who worked in transportation present to give input on what costs we were looking at for a new bus.

In another meeting, we needed a small business owner present to walk through what a transition would look like moving to cloud bookkeeping.

These meetings were constantly rescheduled because we couldn’t get the volunteers on campus due to their work schedule.

With Zoom, you’re able to include these volunteers in your meetings so they can watch and participate from their own office or home. And if they have to leave early you can record the rest of the meeting for them to watch later.

 

Train Volunteers How To Do Something

One of my pet peeves is walking into church on Sunday morning only to see something’s changed. What makes me fume is if someone knew about it but couldn’t show me ahead of time.

Zoom allows you to share your screen in meetings, allowing you to show volunteers how to do something on the computer.

Imagine you upgrade your church live streaming equipment. Instead of waiting until Sunday morning when there are already a thousand things happening, you can host a meeting in the middle of the week to get your volunteers prepared.

My workflow looks like this:

  1. Host and record a meeting during the week when people can tune in, showing the changes and how they affect how we do things.
  2. Record the meeting for people not able to attend.
  3. Archive the recording and have it available for new volunteers to watch as part of their training and onboarding

 

Record Meetings For Playback

Life in the church world moves fast. We often have last-minute meetings, pushed meetings, and even accidental meetings – ever had the Pastor walk up to you and start talking about the church announcements for Sunday?

Not everyone can be Mr. Notetaker in the moment, so Zoom gives you an easy way to record your meetings for future playback.

You also have the benefit of being on your computer during the meeting so if you need to share your screen or look something up, you’re right there.

 

Conclusion

The “old way” of having meetings left people out, made you chase down absentees, and bred inconsistency. With Zoom you have a new way to get everyone on the same page and keep your volunteers up to date.

Try Zoom today for free

Purchase Zoom with a discount for nonprofits with Tech Soup.

Have you used Zoom or another online meeting software? How has it improved your ministry? Let us know in the comments below!

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